processes
Court acquits Högel superiors
A sign with the coat of arms of Lower Saxony hangs at the entrance to the Oldenburg district court: the court announced the verdict in the trial against Högel’s superiors. photo
© Hauke-Christian Dittrich/dpa
Could patient killer Niels Högel have been stopped? On Thursday, the district court of Oldenburg acquitted seven of the nurse’s former superiors of joint responsibility for the series of murders.
In the trial of seven former superiors of patient killer Niels Högel, the Oldenburg Regional Court has acquitted all of the accused. “There is no apparent intentional misconduct,” said presiding judge Sebastian Bührmann at the verdict on Thursday. However, intent would have been a prerequisite for a conviction. Possible accusations of negligence that could be considered would be time-barred.
With the verdict on Thursday, the court followed the demands of the public prosecutor’s office and the defense. Three doctors, two senior nurses and one senior nurse and an ex-managing director of the Oldenburg and Delmenhorst clinics were accused. They have been on trial since February for aiding and abetting killing by omission and killing by omission.
Judge: “This trial leaves us all sad.”
The defendants made mistakes, Bührmann said. Högel was a conspicuous person, colleagues and superiors increasingly distrusted him. “One would have wished that this distrust had been investigated much more clearly,” said Bührmann. Nevertheless, it had become clear in the process that nobody in the clinics had believed Högel capable of conscious killing. “That is the tragedy of the incomprehensible,” said the judge. “This procedure leaves us all sad.”
There were eight cases in total: three murders in Oldenburg and three murders and two attempted murders in Delmenhorst. Högel was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019 for 85 counts of murder. Judge Bührmann, who also led this process at the time, emphasized that it was certain that Högel had committed many more murders than those for which he had been convicted.
Högel had killed patients by injecting them with drugs that were not prescribed. The crimes began in 2000 in the Oldenburg Clinic and ended in 2005 in the Delmenhorst Clinic.