Guernsey Press

Ellis case: Nurses cleared after death on mental health ward

TWO nurses have been cleared of causing the manslaughter of a patient by gross negligence at The Oberlands Mental Health two years ago.

Published
Lauren Ellis was at the Oberlands Mental health Centre in October 2017 when she died. (25914142)

Naomi Prestidge, 31, and Rory McDermott, 32, had denied the offence.

Jurats of the Royal Court took about 90 minutes to reach a decision at the end of the 17 day hearing.

Miss Prestidge wept after senior jurat on the bench, Stephen Jones, told the court that they had found both defendants not guilty by the same 7-2 majority.

Lauren Ellis died at The Oberlands Mental Health Centre in the early hours of Thursday 12 October 2017. A post-mortem found she had died through ligature strangulation.

Judge Russell Finch spent more than an hour summing up the case and directing the jurats. He said the charge of manslaughter through gross negligence was an unusual one and this was the first time it was thought to have been used in Guernsey.

Rather than looking at it subjectively, the court faced an objective test. To achieve a conviction the prosecution did not need to show that there had been intent but that there had been gross negligence. While it would be easy for jurats to get emotional over what happened they should avoid it and their task was to do a cool, rational and fact-based analysis of the evidence.

While expert evidence was important, it was only part of it and the court had to reach a decision based on all the evidence it had heard.

Defence counsel had drawn the court's attention to what they argued had been failings within the mental health service in regards to Lauren's crisis admission to the ward on a voluntary basis.

Judge Finch said the case was not an enquiry into hospital practice and neither was it an inquest.

The court had heard how both defendants had been supposed to carry out checks every 15 minutes on Miss Ellis but six checks were missed in a row and there had been one hour and 42 minutes between the last check and the discovery of what had happened. Both defendants also accepted falsifying entries on the observation record log.

They are no longer employed by Health & Social Care.

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