– The threshold for granting a postponement of the sentence is high, the Oslo District Court states in a recent ruling.
The woman, who in 2020 was sentenced to ten years in prison in a serious drug case, was not present when the court at the end of January dealt with her request for a postponement of the sentence.
As so many times before, she was taken to hospital with life-threatening seizures, when the question of her fitness for parole was to be dealt with. In court, the case took a surprising turn, wrote Dagbladet on 27 January.
A big surprise was served to the court.
In his written statement, the court-appointed expert, senior doctor Anders Palmstrøm Jørgensen at the Section for Specialized Endocrinology at Oslo University Hospital, had stated that the woman’s stress-induced potassium loss made her unfit for prison.
In court, he explained that he may have overlooked something important: the woman’s asthma medicine, Ventoline, administered through a nebuliser.
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The theory
Jørgensen thus launched a new theory that can explain why the 59-year-old constantly has severe seizures hypokalemiai.e. a significant drop in potassium, which can lead to paralysis and life-threatening heart rhythm disturbances.
Has she used this asthma medicine before she had an attack? Did she overdose? Has this triggered, contributed to or exacerbated the woman’s bouts of hypokalaemia?
– I think ventoline may be a factor that helps to trigger the seizures she has, Jørgensen said in court.
This came as a surprise to both the woman’s lawyer and the Correctional Service.
The woman herself has subsequently claimed that she had not used ventolin before she had the hypokalemia attack which prevented her from participating in the court hearing.
– Not justifiable
The expert doctor told the court that he had only read through the case’s papers the evening before.
The woman’s lawyer Monica Bjøndal Andrésen believes this has made it impossible to investigate whether the ventolin theory is relevant, and therefore asked that further processing of the case must be postponed.
– It must be clarified whether she has used ventolin in relevant periods, and whether lung medicine has anything to do with the hypokalemia attacks at all. Because sentencing could have fatal consequences for her, it is not justifiable to decide the case, without the new theory of what is the cause of the seizures being better elucidated, Andrésen stated in court.
The Correctional Service did not want a postponement and maintained that “the case is well enough informed that it is justifiable to decide it now”.
– The Correctional Service believes that serving a sentence – despite the cases of hypokalaemia – is not inadvisable because the woman will receive adequate accommodation and health care in the prison, said Probation Officer for the Correctional Service, adviser Aina Moum.
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“To be completed now”
The Oslo district court has now agreed to that.
“The court has come to the conclusion that the conditions for a suspended sentence have not been met, so that the sentence must be carried out now,” the ruling states.
The district court saw no reason to postpone the processing of the case.
The court believes it had sufficient grounds to assess whether the accommodation and health care the woman will receive in prison will make the sentence acceptable, without further information about the causes of the woman’s seizures.
The court points out that the 59-year-old must receive treatment in hospital if she has an attack of hypokalaemia. Otherwise, it can be life-threatening.
This is not in conflict with serving time in prison, the court believes, which assumes that it normally takes a few hours from the time the woman gets symptoms of hypokalemia until she has to receive treatment.
“In prison, she will be able to quickly call for help if she notices symptoms,” states the Oslo District Court.
The court further assumes that none of the many episodes of hypokalemia the woman has had to date has led to lasting damage.
The woman is appealing the district court’s ruling to the Court of Appeal.
2024-02-18 17:05:31
#Denied #postponement #prison
