Lawyers for the former neonatal nurse argued her retrial for trying to kill a newborn known as Child K should not have gone ahead due to “overwhelming and irremediable prejudice” caused by media coverage of her other crimes.
However, three senior judges swiftly dismissed the bid in a Court of Appeal hearing yesterday, ruling the trial judge was right when he concluded she would have a fair second trial.
The 34-year-old was previously sentenced to 14 whole life orders for the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of seven others, with two attempts on one child, when she was working at the Countess of Chester Hospital. A bid to appeal against those convictions was dismissed in May.
Following her first trial, which ran from October 2022 to August 2023, the jury was unable to reach a verdict in the case of Child K, but a second jury took just three-and-a-half hours to convict her at the retrial at Manchester Crown Court in July. She was handed her 15th whole life order for the crime.
Benjamin Myers KC, for Letby, told the Court of Appeal that the charge should have been “stayed” as an “abuse of process” due to “overwhelming and irremediable prejudice” caused by media coverage of her first trial.
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