ITALY'S SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS LIFE SENTENCE FOR FORMER NURSE FAUSTA BONINO

Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation has definitively upheld the life sentence for Fausta Bonino, the former nurse from Piombino hospital. She was found guilty of causing the deaths of four patients in the Villamarina hospital's intensive care unit by injecting them with massive doses of heparin.

The Fifth Criminal Section of the Supreme Court rejected the appeal filed by Bonino's defense against the life sentence handed down last May by the Court of Assizes of Appeal during the second-degree retrial.

The Complex Case of Fausta Bonino

This complex case has seen numerous twists and turns in its legal proceedings. Fausta Bonino, who was 56 at the time of the events, was accused of injecting massive doses of heparin into patients in the Villamarina hospital's intensive care unit between 2014 and 2015, leading to the deaths of four individuals. (During the investigation, there were fourteen suspicious cases, a number later reduced at the start of the trial).

Bonino, who has always maintained her innocence, was arrested on March 30, 2016, at Pisa airport upon returning from a trip to France. Three years later, the first-instance trial in Livorno concluded with an initial life sentence. In 2022, the appeal process overturned this verdict, with the judges acquitting the nurse, deeming her uninvolved in the events.

The prosecution then appealed to the Supreme Court, which decided to annul the second-degree ruling and send the case back for another appeal trial. This time, the Florence Court of Appeal confirmed the life sentence initially pronounced in the first degree. Following this reversal of the verdict, Fausta Bonino's defense filed another appeal with the Supreme Court, which, with its ruling this evening, definitively closes this controversial case.