A public inquiry examining how British nurse Lucy Letby was able to murder babies in her care should be suspended because new evidence casts real doubt on her convictions, the lawyer for the hospital’s senior managers said yesterday.
Letby, 35, was found guilty of murdering seven children and attempting to murder eight more between June 2015 and June 2016 while working in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital (COCH) in northern England, making her Britain’s most prolific serial child killer of modern times.
Letby has failed with a number of appeals, but medical experts have since publicly challenged the evidence on which she was convicted, casting doubt on whether the babies were murdered. Her lawyer has now applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which examines potential miscarriages of justice, to have her convictions re-examined.
“There now appears to be a real likelihood that there are alternative explanations for these deaths and unexplained collapses, namely poor clinical management and care and natural causes,” Kate Blackwell, lawyer for the senior managers at the COCH, said in written submissions to the inquiry, set up to determine how the killings went undetected. She asked for the inquiry to be paused until there was clarity as to Letby’s involvement.
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