A neonatal nurse, Lucy Letby was on Friday convicted of the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of six others at a Manchester Crown Court in England.
The 33-year-old Letby’s conviction followed a gruelling 10-month trial during which she testified for 14 days and denied any wrongdoing.
Prosecutor, Pascale Jones said in a statement after her conviction that the nurse deliberately harmed the newborn babies in various ways, including by injecting air into their bloodstreams and administering air or milk into their stomachs via nasogastric tubes.
“Lucy Letby sought to deceive her colleagues and pass off the harm she caused as nothing more than a worsening of each baby’s existing vulnerability. In her hands, innocuous substances like air, milk, fluids – or medication like insulin – would become lethal. She perverted her learning and weaponised her craft to inflict harm, grief and death,” the prosecutor said.
In court, prosecutor, Nick Johnson KC averred that Letby enjoyed “playing God” by harming babies and then being the first to alert her colleagues to their decline.
“She knew what was going to happen. She was controlling things. She was enjoying what was going on. She was predicting things that she knew was going to happen. She, in effect, was playing God,” Johnson told jurors.
Here are 5 key points about the nerve-racking case:
1. Letby worked at the Countess of Chester Hospital in northwest England between 2015 and 2016 during which prosecutors said she committed the offences.
2. She was a band 5 nurse, meaning she was qualified to care for the sickest babies on the neonatal unit.
3. Letby was arrested and released twice. On her third arrest in 2020, she was formally charged and held in custody.
4. After her arrest at her home in July 2018, prosecutors found handwritten Post-it notes containing incriminating text in her handbag. On one she had written: “I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them,” and “I AM EVIL I DID THIS”. She also wrote: “I will never have children or marry. I will never know what it’s like to have a family.”
In her defence, Letby claimed the note was not a confession and that she wrote it after being moved off the unit, in July 2016, because she was struggling with being blamed for something she hadn’t done.
5. She was convicted by a jury of 11, comprising seven women and four men, which deliberated for 22 days before reaching the verdict.