Nurse jailed for murdering Peterborough husband loses legal bid to overturn conviction

Dominic McCarthy - the victim of wife Deborah Winzar, who was found guilty of his murder.

Deborah Winzar, 56, was jailed for life at Birmingham Crown Court in 2000 after being convicted of the murder of 34-year-old Dominic McCarthy, who died in 1997.

Mr McCarthy, had been a manager at the Kingfisher Centre for the mentally and physically disabled, in Bretton,

Her case was referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates possible miscarriages of justice.

Deborah Winzar leaving Birmingham Crown Court in JUne 2000 during her trial for the murder of her wheelchair-bound husband Dominic McCarthy.

Lawyers representing Winzar argued at a hearing in November that fresh medical evidence undermined the prosecution’s case against her and therefore rendered her conviction unsafe.

But, in a ruling on Friday, senior judges dismissed her bid to overturn her conviction, saying the expert evidence they heard did not provide any basis for allowing the appeal.

Mr McCarthy, who was paralysed in a motorcycle accident in 1984, was found unconscious in his bed at the couple’s home in Stonely, Cambridgeshire, on January 31 1997.

He lapsed into a coma and died in Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon on February 9.

Tests found Mr McCarthy had had a very high insulin level and the prosecution case at trial was his wife had the opportunity to administer it and the skills to inject it.

Winzar, who has served her 15-year minimum term and been released from prison, denied any wrongdoing and maintained he must have died of natural causes, but was found guilty by a jury of murder.

A previous challenge to her conviction was dismissed by the Court of Appeal in December 2002 and she applied to the CCRC in June 2005.

Winzar’s lawyers argued that new evidence from medical experts undermined the case put forward against her at her trial in relation to the “inappropriately high” insulin levels, and established a potential natural cause for the hypoglycaemia which led to Mr McCarthy’s death.

But, rejecting the appeal, Lady Justice Macur said: “In summary, we do not see how the ‘fresh’ evidence, so called, can be said to dilute the medical case against the appellant, or transform its perspective.

“The new evidence does not provide any ground for allowing the appeal.”