A nurse in the neonatal care unit of a British hospital was found guilty on Friday of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six more.
Lucy Letby, 33, was charged with the murder of five boys and two girls and the attempted murder of five boys and five girls while working at the Countess of Chester hospital in north-west England between 2015 and 2016.
She was charged with deliberately harming newborn children in a variety of ways, including injecting air into their veins and introducing air or milk into the stomach through nasogastric tubes.
She was also charged with poisoning infants by adding insulin to intravenous feedings and interfering with the intubation system for assisted breathing.
Letby has denied all the accusations.
A jury of seven women and four men deliberated for 22 days before reaching a verdict. A juror was dismissed for personal reasons late in the deliberations and the judge gave the other jurors the option of reaching a verdict by a majority of ten people instead of unanimity.
The defendant was found not guilty on one count of attempted murder and the jury was unable to reach a verdict on several others.
During the lengthy trial, which began in October last year, prosecutors said the hospital was the scene, in 2015, of a significant increase in the number of premature babies who died or suffered sudden deterioration in their health for no apparent reason. Some suffered “catastrophically severe failures” but survived with the help of medical personnel.
Prosecutors claimed that Lucy Letby was on duty in all cases, describing her as a “constant malevolent presence” in the neonatal unit when children lost consciousness or died.
They explained that the nurse harmed babies in ways that left virtually no trace and that she persuaded her colleagues that failures and deaths were normal.
The first baby allegedly victimized by Letby was a premature infant who died at one day of age in June 2015. Prosecutors alleged that the nurse injected air into his bloodstream.
Police launched an investigation into the infant deaths at the hospital in May 2017. Letby was arrested three times in connection with the deaths before being charged in November 2020.
Prosecutors reported that a sticky note was found at Letby’s home when she was arrested in 2018, on which she wrote “I’m bad, I did this,” which was “literally a confession.”
Her defense attorney, Ben Myers, maintained that she was a “hard-working, dedicated and caring” nurse who loved her profession and that there was insufficient evidence that she had committed any of the alleged harmful acts.
It also argued that sudden organ failures or infant deaths could be due to natural causes or a combination of other factors, such as a lack of staff at the hospital or a lack of others to provide the necessary care.
Letby’s lawyer also alleged that four doctors blamed him for covering up failures in the neonatal unit.
Lucy Letby testified for 14 days, denying all allegations of intentionally harming any of the babies.
“I’ve always done my best to take care of them,” he said, adding: “I’m there to take care of them, not harm them.”
Sometimes she would cry and justify the amount of medical records she had at home on some of the babies in her care.
However, on that green post-it, shown in court, she wrote: “I do not deserve to live. I killed them on purpose, because I am not good enough to care for them. I am a bad and horrible person. I AM THE EVIL . I DID”.
Her lawyer argued that these were the anguished thoughts of a woman who had lost confidence in herself and blamed herself for what happened in that hospital room.
“A note says ‘I’m not good enough,'” Myers emphasized.
“Who did she write this for? It wasn’t for us, the police or this trial. It’s a note for her. She wrote it to herself,” she insisted.
Source: TSF
