Lucy Letby: jurors head out to deliberate in trial of nurse accused of murdering seven babies

Jurors in the trial of murder accused nurse Lucy Letby have been sent out to begin its deliberations, after a gruelling nine months of evidence.

Letby, 33, is accused of murdering seven babies and trying to murder 10 others during the course of her work on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital. She denied these allegations as she gave evidence in the witness box at Manchester Crown Court for 14 days during the trial, which began last October.

The defendant, from Hereford, is said to have deliberately harmed the infants in various ways, including by injecting air intravenously and administering air or milk into their stomachs via nasogastric tubes.

She also allegedly added insulin as a poison to intravenous feeds, interfered with breathing tubes, and in some cases, inflicted trauma.

Letby denies doing anything harmful to any of the infants in her care, and that the sudden collapses and deaths could have been due to natural causes, for some unknown reason, or from failure by others to provide appropriate care.

The defence said she was a “hard-working, dedicated and caring” nurse who loved her job.

Trial judge Justice Goss told the jury of eight women and four men as they headed out to begin deliberations on Monday (10 July) to approach them in a “fair, calm, objective and analytical way”, and to cast aside emotion - or any feelings of sympathy or antipathy.

Justice Goss added: “You are under no pressure with time", given the months of evidence they would need to consider. But what was at the heart of the cases presented by both sides throughout the lengthy trial?

Here's everything you need to know.

The prosecution's case

At the heart of the case against Letby is her presence at - and her role in caring for - a large number of the alleged victims.

In his closing speech to the jury, prosecutor Nick Johnson KC said Letby had “gaslighted” her hospital colleagues to persuade them that the rise in baby collapses was “just a run of bad luck”.

“Lucy Letby got away with her campaign of violence for so long because people didn’t contemplate the remotest possibility of a nurse trying to kill tiny babies," he said. Mr Johnson said the “similarities” of many of the cases involved showed a single person was sabotaging the children.

The prosecutor continued: “Lucy Letby had used ways of killing babies and trying to kill them that didn’t leave much of a trace. Certainly nothing was spotted at the time as being significant and her behaviour persuaded many colleagues that the collapses and deaths were normal... Many of them simply couldn’t see the wood for the trees."

A number of the post-mortem examinations in isolation had not raised alarm, he said, "because no-one - no-one - was contemplating the possibility of foul play".

Mr Johnson went on: “We suggest Lucy Letby is an opportunist. Some of the children she targeted were sick but they would have recovered. She used their vulnerabilities to camouflage her acts.”

He pointed to the case of twin boys, called Child E and F, to highlight what he said showed her “calculated” behaviour. The Crown say Letby murdered Child E in August 2015 with an injection of air and then tried to kill Child F the next day by poisoning his intravenous feed with insulin.

Mr Johnson said two bags of nutrients were contaminated. one which Letby hung up during a night shift, and a replacement stock bag used the next day when she was not at work. Tests showed both bags - in the same fridge - contained about the same amount of insulin, the court heard.

“It was only going to one child. It was going to be connected to that child when the poisoner was not there," Mr Johnson said. “This is why it was a targeted attack. What better way for a poisoner to cover their tracks than to use a replacement bag to be used by an unsuspecting colleague, a member of her ‘nursing family’.

“It shows a degree of cold-blooded, cynical planning. It diverts suspicion on to someone else. It deflects suspicion from Lucy Letby."

He also claimed Letby "knew the net was closing", and made a calculated attempt to deflect suspicion in one instance, by submitting an incident report stating that she noticed a bung left off the port of an intravenous line, which could accidentally let air in.

“Text messages showed she knew there was going to be an investigation... She put in a form that contained a lie and the purpose of putting this in is to create the impression that air embolism could have arisen on the unit as a result of poor practice."

The defence's case

Letby has denied seven counts of murder and 10 counts of attempted murder, between June 2015 and June 2016.

In his closing speech at Manchester Crown Court, defence lawyer Ben Myers KC told the jury there was "no direct evidence" of Letby doing any of the acts alleged against her.

“Between June 2015 and June 2016, the neonatal unit took more babies than it would usually care for and with greater care needs," he said. “You have heard that repeatedly."

In that same year there was an increase in the number of deaths and type of collapses of the sort looked at in the trial, Mr Myers continued. “What did not change was Miss Letby. She was dedicated. She cared for hundreds of babies. She did not suddenly change.

“What changed was the babies cared for on the unit in terms of their numbers and needs, and we say the inability of this unit to cope."

Mr Myers also said scientific evidence of how nurse Lucy Letby was said to have harmed a number of the babies was “so poor” it could not be “safely used” to support the allegations - in this case, the theory of air embolisms.

He said: “This is meant to be reliable, scientific medical theory, underpinning the most serious allegations," he said. But he claimed neither of the two prosecution experts had clinical experience in identifying or treating air embolus.

He said both had principally relied on a research paper written more than 30 years ago about the effect of air embolism on infants.

Jurors were sent home on Monday evening, and will return to resume deliberations on Tuesday morning.