Lucy Letby bids to overturn her baby murder convictions again using 14-day rule

07 February 2024 , 17:18

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Letby, 34, of Hereford, was sentenced to 14 whole life orders (Image: PA)

Child serial killer Lucy Letby is renewing her bid to challenge her convictions at the Court of Appeal.

The nurse had an initial application for permission to appeal against all of her convictions refused by a judge without a hearing last month. Letby has since chosen to renew her efforts to take forward her appeal, a judicial spokeswoman confirmed on Wednesday. A hearing is expected to be held in London before a panel of three senior judges at a later date, where they will decide whether to grant leave to appeal.

In August 2023, Letby, 34, of Hereford, was sentenced to 14 whole life orders after she was convicted of the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of six others, with two attempts on one of her victims. The offences took place at the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neonatal unit, where nurse Letby worked, between June 2015 and June 2016.

Typically, applications for permission to appeal against a crown court decision are considered by a judge looking at legal documents without a hearing. If this is refused, people have 14 days to renew their bid for permission at a full court hearing before two or three judges. The jury in Letby’s trial at Manchester Crown Court was unable to reach verdicts on six counts of attempted murder concerning five children.

Letby will face a retrial at the same court in June on a single count that she attempted to murder a baby girl, known as Child K, in February 2016. A court order prohibits reporting of the identities of the surviving and dead children who were the subject of the allegations.

Baby boy has spent his life in hospital as doctors are 'scared' to discharge him

At the time of her sentencing, Justice James Goss said the number of killings and attempts and the nature of the murders by a nurse entrusted with caring for the most fragile infants provided the “exceptional circumstances” required to impose a rare “whole-life order.” Only three other women have received such a harsh sentence in the UK.

Lucy Letby went on a year-long killing spree while working in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester (Chester Standard / SWNS.com)

“There was a deep malevolence bordering on sadism in your actions,” Goss said, addressing the absent defendant, who will be given a transcript of the proceedings. “During the course of this trial, you have coldly denied any responsibility for your wrongdoing. You have no remorse. There are no mitigating factors.” Letby sickened babies by injecting intravenous lines with air, poisoning some with insulin and force-feeding others with milk. After killing them, she sometimes sobbed in grief, made keepsakes for parents and bathed the little bodies and dressed them for burial.

“I don’t think we will ever get over the fact that our daughter was tortured till she had no fight left in her and everything she went through over her short life was deliberately done by someone who was supposed to protect her and help her come home where she belonged,” the mother of a girl identified as Child I said in a statement read in court.

A mother who conceived her twin boys through in vitro fertilisation said there were “no children in the world more wanted than them” and didn’t know if she would have others. Letby killed one, Child E, and left Child F with learning deficiencies his mother attributes to insulin poisoning. One father called Letby “the devil” and said she had tried to kill his daughter twice. The nurse didn’t succeed but the girl was left blind, with brain damage and having to be fed through a tube.

Rachel Hagan