  The nurse Lucia de Berk was convicted by the Dutch courts as a serial killer
with 7 murders and 3 attempts at murder in three hospitals where she worked.
The nurse however always professed her innocence and indeed was never observed
in such an act of murder. The courts based their decision on circumstantial
evidence and upon the use of statistics. In the appeal court, the use of
statistical calculations was repealed but the use of "data" and "statistical
insights" were not excluded. The trial hinged importantly on the role of
statistics and data gathering. It appears that data selection and confounding
feature strongly in this case. The notion of "nominal correlation" can be used
to highlight those two features. This suggests a mistrial with the conviction
of an innocent person.
