Former neonatal nurse, Lucy Letby will today go on trial over an allegation that she attempted to murder a baby girl at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
The 34-year-old, from Hereford, was convicted in August last year of the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of six other infants at the hospital in Cheshire between June 2015 and June 2016.
The jury at Letby’s 10-month trial at Manchester Crown Court was unable to reach verdicts on six counts of attempted murder in relation to five children.
Today, at the same court, Letby will be retried over one of those counts – an allegation that she tried to murder a baby girl, known as Child K, in February 2016.
The retrial comes after Letby lost her bid to appeal her convictions last month.
Three of the country’s most senior judges ruled the former nurse will not be allowed to challenge the guilty verdicts of the jury at Manchester Crown Court.
In April, her lawyers had applied for leave to appeal, arguing that she wanted to challenge her convictions on four grounds. Each involved arguments that Mr Justice Goss, the trial judge, wrongly refused legal applications made during the case.
But on May 24, Dame Victoria Sharp said Letby’s application had been refused on all four grounds.
In a short hearing, at London’s Court of Appeal, Dame Sharp said their judgement was being reserved to a later date.
‘Lucy Letby…put forward four grounds of appeal, each of which involved a position that the trial judge wrongly refused applications that she made during her trial,’ the judge said. ‘This court has, having heard that application, directed to refuse leave to appeal on all grounds and refused all associated applications.’
The full reasons for the judges’ decision were not made public and the full details of the appeal hearings, which took place over three days in April, also cannot be reported for legal reasons.
Letby was convicted of seven counts of murder and seven of attempted murder – one of the babies she tried to kill twice.
Mr Justice Goss sentenced Letby to 14 whole life tariffs for each guilty count, meaning she has no prospect of parole.
Letby applied for leave to appeal against her convictions soon after the guilty verdicts last year.
She lost the first stage of the process, in which a single judge reviewed her arguments as a paper exercise.
Letby had the right to a second stage, which involved renewing her application before Dame Sharp, Lord Justice Holroyde, and Mrs Justice Lambert at the public hearings. But their refusal of her application signalled the end of the appeal process for her.
Letby has always denied harming any child in her care and maintains her innocence.
She was cleared of two counts of attempted murder at the original trial.