Lucy Letby loses bid to challenge conviction for attempted murder of baby

The convicted child serial killer asked judges for approval to challenge her most recent conviction for attempted murder of Child K.

Lawyers for the former nurse told the court today that the attempted murder charge should have been "stayed" as an "abuse of process" due to "overwhelming and irremediable prejudice" caused by media coverage of her first trial, and that the retrial should not have gone ahead.

Her barrister Benjamin Myers said that Letby "maintains and has maintained she is not guilty of the offences".

But Lord Justice William Davis, sitting with Lord Justice Jeremy Baker and Mrs Justice McGowan, said at the start of their ruling that they would "refuse permission" for Letby to challenge the conviction.

The former nurse, who watched the hearing via a video link from HMP Bronzefield wearing a green dress, showed no reaction as the judges gave their ruling.

Letby, 34, was previously sentenced to 14 whole life orders for the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of six others, with two attempts on one child.

Her bid to appeal against those convictions was dismissed in May.

She can now only challenge those convictions if the Criminal Cases Review Commission refer those cases back to the Court of Appeal.

The jury was unable to reach a verdict in the case of Child K during her first trial which ran from October 2022 to August 2023.

But a second jury took just three-and-a-half hours to convict her at the July retrial at Manchester Crown Court.

Letby's offences occurred at the Countess of Chester Hospital's neonatal unit, where she worked as a nurse, between June 2015 and June 2016.

Jurors were told that Letby targeted the "very premature" infant in the early hours of 17 February 2016 by dislodging Child K's breathing tube after she was moved from the delivery room to the unit's intensive care unit.

The court previously heard that she was caught "virtually red-handed" by consultant paediatrician Dr Ravi Jayaram, who intervened and resuscitated Child K.

Dr Jayaram told jurors he saw "no evidence" that she had done anything to help the deteriorating baby but Letby said she had no recollection of the event.

Child K had a planned transfer to a specialist hospital later that day because of her extreme prematurity and died three days later.

Letby's barrister told the court today that media coverage before the retrial was "saturated with unadulterated vitriol" towards her, which included comments by police officers and members of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) that created "powerful prejudice against the defendant".

The CPS opposed the appeal, with Nick Johnson KC telling the court on Thursday that the bid was "misguided" and that media reporting had been "mischaracterised".

He said: "What was said by police in the aftermath of the convictions in the first trial was reasonable and it accurately and moderately described the horrendous offences [for] which this applicant had been convicted."

Letby's latest appeal comes as a public inquiry into the events surrounding the nurse's crimes, chaired by judge Lady Justice Thirlwall, continues at Liverpool Town Hall.

It began last month and is due to finish in early 2025, with the judge expecting to publish her findings by late autumn that year.

-SKY NEWS