The advice of the three experts appointed by the Court of Assizes in the murder trial involving the nurse Vincenzo Villani Conti has been filed. The college asked professors Alberto Salomone, Fortunato Stimoli and Cataldo Raffino to analyze the clinical documentation relating to the deaths of the two patients, who according to the prosecution died due to the administration of a fatal cocktail of drugs that were stolen from the hospital’s stocks. the Cannizzaro hospital, which was a civil party in the trial with the lawyer Eleonora Baratta.
The accusations
The nurse, during the night shift, injected the two women with a massive dose of Diazepam and Midazolam as revenge against the hospital by which he felt mistreated. Villani Conti, defended by the lawyer Salvatore Liotta and Francesco Calabrese, would have made a sort of confession to the psychologists of the hospital. It was precisely from those revelations that the investigation began that led to the arrest of the accused.
On July 2, the medical examiner, the chemistry professor from the University of Turin and the anesthetist will report on what they have put down in black and white in the almost 200-page report which is already available to the parties in the proceedings.
What the report says
«The cause of death of the two patients – we read in the report – can be obtained only from the documentary elements in the documents, as no macro-microscopic necrosectorial data has been found that can be used inclusively in the formulation of a rational cause of death». Which for the first would be “attributable to heart failure” and for the second to “cachexia with multiorgan dysfunction”. Breaking the medical-legal jargon, the three consultants trace the death to pathologies.
Starting “from the results of the toxicological analyses”, the three consultants write that “no conclusion can be reached on what the quantity of Diazepam and Midazolam administered was”.
But let’s get to the central theme of the questions posed by the Assize. That is, the cause of death. That according to the consultants «it is not possible to attribute it with a level of probability close to certainty to the administration in the hours immediately preceding fifteen milligrams of Diazepam and Midazolam, while taking into due consideration the health conditions in which both patients found themselves, the times of onset of the expected effect and the arrival of the death event”.
There are some factors that hinder the ascertainment of the correlation between the deaths and the drug cocktail: the impossibility of knowing the time and method of administration. «It is not possible to state with a criterion of logical probability and rational credibility that the dose (X) administered, the mode (X) and the time of administration (as a bolus?, as an infusion? and as the residual content of the infusion?) must be placed in direct causal correlation with the death of the patients because elements not possible to obtain with scientific awareness and precaution of the technical data”, conclude Salamone, Stimoli and Raffino.
