Lucy Letby’s bid to challenge conviction for attempted infant murder | United Kingdom | news

Child serial killer Lucy Letby has had an attempt to challenge a conviction for the attempted murder of a girl dismissed by the Court of Appeal.

Lawyers for Letby, 34, asked senior judges for their approval to appeal against his most recent conviction after she was found guilty at the end of a retrial in July of trying to kill a newborn, known as Child K.

Lawyers for the former nurse told the Court of Appeal on Thursday that the attempted murder charge should have been “upheld” as an “abuse of process”.

They argued that this was due to “overwhelming and irreparable prejudice” caused by media coverage of his first trial and that the retrial should not have followed.

But three senior judges dismissed Letby’s bid at the end of the hearing in London.

Letby used to be sentenced to 14 life sentences for the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of six more, with two attempts on a child. She was sentenced to a 15th life sentence for the attack on Child K.

Thursday’s ruling marks Letby’s second appeal bid to be rejected after the Court of Appeal dismissed a challenge to his first set of convictions in may

Nick Johnson KC, acting for the Crown Prosecution Service, said in writings that the plea offer was “flawed” and the jury found Letby to be a “multiple murderer and habitual liar”.

He argued: “The application appears to rely on the sheer volume of publicity as a sufficient reason in itself to base an application to stay the prosecution.

“It also leans heavily on the proposition that it is wrong for a witness to speak to the media and that fact in itself taints the prosecution to the point that it should be dropped. That is the wrong approach.”

Benjamin Myers KC, representing Letby, told the court the charge of attempted murder should have been “upheld”. He said: “The learned judge erred in rejecting the application made by the defense at the start of the trial to stay the prosecution as an abuse of process.”

Myers continued: “It is an exceptional case, with exceptional media interest, and therefore an exceptional injustice can occur, despite the safeguards that are often used.”

The lawyer added: “We are dealing with the impact of media coverage and public comment arising from the first trial, on the second.”

Myers said media coverage before the retrial was “saturated with unadulterated vitriol” towards Letby, including coverage on the BBC’s Panorama and ITV’s Loose Women which “depicted her as mean and depraved”.

The court heard that comments made by police and members of the Crown Prosecution Service created “powerful prejudice against the defendant while reinforcing his own status”. Myers said this “should provide the court’s sense of justice and fairness.”

He added: “It’s really not what should happen at all and in the circumstances of this case, given everything that had already happened, the public interest could be served by finding that there was an abuse (of process )”.

Letby, formerly of Hereford, watched the hearing via a video link from HMP Bronzefield, wearing a green suit.

At the end of its first trial, which ran from October 2022 to August 2023, jurors were unable to reach a verdict in Child K’s case, but a second jury took just three and a half hours to sentence her to retrial at Manchester Crown Court.

The jury was told Letby targeted the “very premature” baby during a night shift at the Countess of Chester Hospital in the early hours of February 17, 2016, dislodging Child K’s breathing tube after transferring- that of the delivery room in the intensive care unit. care unit

Sentencing judge Mr Justice Goss said the offense was “another shocking act of calculated callous cruelty”, describing Child K as “exceptionally vulnerable”.