Court orders review of Dutch nurse murder sentence

AMSTERDAM, Mar 15 (Reuters) The Dutch High Court has ordered a review of the sentence handed to a nurse convicted of murdering seven people in her care by giving them lethal doses of drugs, news agency ANP reported.

In 2004, an appeals court sentenced Lucia de Berk, 44, to life in jail and compulsory psychiatric treatment for killing seven patients, including several children and a retired U.N.

war crimes judge, and the attempted murder of three others.

The High Court upheld the verdict but referred the sentence back to a lower court, saying the woman could not be sentenced to both life in jail and psychiatric care, ANP reported. It was not clear how long the review would take.

The case touched a raw nerve in the Netherlands -- the first country in the world to legalise euthanasia.

De Berk, who wrote in her diary of giving in to her ''compulsions'' and whom prosecutors described as a psychopath, had protested her innocence.

De Berk, who spent her teenage years in Canada and worked there as a prostitute before moving to the Netherlands, was convicted of giving patients lethal doses of drugs while working in different hospitals in The Hague between 1997 and 2001.

Among her victims was the 91-year-old United Nations war crimes judge Haopei Li and a five-month-old girl.

Reuters SK VP0410