German federal court rejects appeal by nurse convicted of killing 28 patients

A German federal court said Monday that it has rejected an appeal by a former nurse against his murder conviction and life sentence for killing 28 patients at a hospital in Bavaria.

Last November, a court in the southern town of Kempten found Stephan Letter guilty on 12 counts of murder, 15 of manslaughter and one of mercy killing in what has been described as Germany's biggest series of killings since World War II.

According to evidence presented at his nine-month trial, Letter killed his victims by injecting them with a cocktail of drugs.

The Federal Court of Justice said that, in an Aug. 16 ruling, it rejected Letter's appeal against the verdict. It said it found no procedural errors and ruled that the conviction was supported by the lower court's evaluation of the evidence.

Letter testified at his trial that he had killed patients, but said he could not remember how many. His attorney argued that his client was motivated by compassion for seriously ill patients.

The defense argued for a 10-year sentence at most on charges of manslaughter.

The deaths at the hospital in Sonthofen, southwest of Munich in the Bavarian Alps, began in February 2003, less than a month after the nurse started working there.

The last suspicious death occurred in July 2004, just before Letter's arrest.

The patients were between 40 and 94 years old, though most were older than 75. They included two gravely ill women, ages 40 and 47, but not all were seriously ill, authorities have said.