Doctor who was remanded for murder wins record damages

A junior hospital doctor in the Netherlands has been awarded record damages of €50 000 (£34 000; €60<thin000) for being wrongly imprisoned for eight days on remand. He had been charged with murder after the death of a terminally ill, 77 year old patient.

In a two year legal test case, 33 year old Peter Vencken has twice been acquitted. Courts accepted that his use of morphine and the sedative midazolam was to ease his dying patient's symptoms and not to end his life and was therefore “normal medical treatment” (BMJ 2004;329:1206).

Now the appeal court in Den Bosch has …