Benjamin Geen

Geen has maintained his innocence but his multiple appeals have failed. Two applications for appeal to the Criminal Case Review Commission, the independent body which investigates alleged miscarriages of justice, have been rejected, most recently in 2020.

Geen's subsequent applications for appeal to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the public body that investigates alleged miscarriages of justice, have all been rejected. For his first application his defence team recruited mathematical experts who stated that a statistical cluster of respiratory arrests was not unusual, but the miscarriage of justice watchdog was unconvinced and rejected his application. The CCRC noted that, besides the statistics, there was other compelling indicating Geen's guilt, such as the syringe full of drugs found in his pocket which he had tried to hide and the fact that all of the patients had rapidly declined while under his personal care. Statistics had actually only made up a minor part of the evidence against Geen, and his conviction had mainly been based on the direct evidence against him that the CCRC had taken note of when turning down the application. The commission was then forced to reconsider its decision in the wake of a legal challenge, but in July 2020 the CCRC again announced that they saw no reason to refer Geen's case to the Court of Appeal and rejected his application. In total his appeals have been denied on three occasions.

In a 2017 episode of the CBS Reality programme The Jury Room, in which 12 members of the public were asked to act as a 'jury' and review the evidence against Geen, the 'jury' unanimously concluded that Geen was guilty and not a victim of a miscarriage of justice. High-profile detective Colin Sutton, best known for leading the Metropolitan Police investigations into Levi Bellfield and Delroy Grant, has also publicly stated that Geen is likely guilty, highlighting that his defence team's argument that statistical clusters of respiratory arrests are not uncommon does not explain why all the arrests happened while nurse Geen was on duty tending to the patients. He has also pointed to the fact that there was a large amount of other evidence against him which the statistics could not account for.

A patient who fell into a coma for six days after being treated by Geen, John Thorburn, later died in 2009. His son Richard would state to The Times in December 2014 that his father had never fully recovered from Geen's attack and this led to his subsequent death.

A first appeal failed in November 2009, when the Court of Appeal rejected his defence. Richard Thorburn, son of Geen victim John Thorburn, publicly insisted in 2014 that Geen had been rightfully convicted.

On 18 April 2006, a jury found Geen guilty of the two murder charges and of intentionally inflicting grievous bodily harm on 15 patients. On 9 May 2006 Geen, then 25 years old, was given 17 life sentences with the recommendation that he spend at least 30 years in prison before being considered for parole. In court, Geen maintained his innocence and vowed to appeal his conviction.

Geen was arrested as he arrived at the hospital to work on 9 February 2004. He had on his person a syringe with the potentially lethal muscle relaxant vecuronium inside, despite it being strictly forbidden for nurses to take syringes or such drugs out of the hospital. The same muscle relaxant had been given to David Olney, one of the patients who had unexpectedly died on Geen's watch, and to other patients who had gone into respiratory arrest while treated by Geen. As he saw the officers approaching, Geen discharged the contents of the syringe into the pocket of his jacket in an attempt to hide the fact he was taking this drug and syringe into the hospital that morning. He refused to tell the officers what the drug was when they apprehended him, further raising suspicion.

Benjamin Geen is a double murderer who killed two patients and committed grievous bodily harm against 15 others while working as a nurse at Horton General Hospital in Banbury, Oxfordshire in 2003 and 2004. Geen was believed to be motivated by his 'thrill-seeking' temperament, and injected a number of patients with dangerous drugs in order to cause respiratory arrest so he could enjoy the 'thrill' of resuscitating them. He was apprehended after staff at the hospital noticed that it was always when he treated patients, most of whom only had minor injuries such as dislocated shoulders, that they inexplicably had respiratory failures. Upon his arrest, a syringe full of some of the drugs he used to attack patients was found on his person. When he saw officers approaching, he discharged the syringe contents into his jacket pocket in an attempt to hide the fact he had removed potentially lethal drugs from the hospital without authority. He was found guilty at trial in 2006 and sentenced to a minimum of 30 years imprisonment.

Between December 2003 and February 2004, 18 patients treated in the hospital's accident and emergency department suffered respiratory arrests or depressions while Geen, a trainee nurse, was alone with each patient. These patients had all been admitted with only minor complaints such as dislocated shoulders and other mostly non-life-threatening conditions, yet suddenly found themselves fighting for their lives when they were treated by Geen. The respiratory arrests were unexplained since none of the patients' conditions should have caused a respiratory arrest to occur. Two of those patients had died in January 2004: Anthony Bateman (age 65) and David Onley (age 75).

Geen was known at Horton General Hospital as a nurse who always looked for action. Colleagues noted that whenever patients unexpectedly fell ill Geen was around, leading to them nicknaming him 'Ben Allitt'. This was a reference to the infamous serial killer nurse Beverly Allitt, who in 1991 had injected a number of patients with lethal substances to seek attention. Geen was himself described as someone who wanted to be the centre of attention. He had joined the army reserve and was said to want to "walk towards the action and not away from it". Despite the fact that his post was in the minor injuries unit at the hospital, he would often leave his post without authority to work in the emergency department. He was a self-acknowledged "thrill-seeker", and enjoyed the adrenaline rush of working in the casualty department on life on death cases. He said that there was a 'jinx' on him and that things tended to go wrong when he was around.