A neonatal nurse at a British hospital was convicted on Friday of killing seven infants and attempting to kill six others.
Lucy Letby, 33, was accused of murdering five boys and two girls and attempting to kill five boys and five other girls while working at the Countess of Chester Hospital in northwest England between 2015 and 2016.

She was charged with deliberately harming newborns in various ways, including injecting air into their bloodstream and giving air or milk into their stomachs via nasogastric tubes.

She was also accused of poisoning the infants by adding insulin to their intravenous feeds and interfering with their breathing tubes.

Letby denied all the charges against her. A jury of seven women and four men deliberated for 22 days before reaching a verdict. One juror was excused during deliberations for personal reasons, and the judge later gave the remaining 11 jurors the option to reach a verdict with 10 agreeing instead of a unanimous decision.

Letby was found not guilty on one count of attempted murder, and the jury was unable to reach a verdict on the others.

During the lengthy trial, which began last October, prosecutors stated that the hospital experienced a significant rise in the number of infants dying or experiencing a sudden deterioration in their health for no clear reason in 2015, with some suffering "catastrophic collapses" but surviving after the medical staff’s assistance.

They alleged that Letby was on duty during all the cases and described her as a “persistent malevolent presence” in the neonatal unit when the infants collapsed or died, asserting that the nurse harmed the children in ways that did not leave much evidence and convinced her colleagues that the collapses and deaths were natural.

The first infant Letby allegedly targeted was a premature boy who died at just one day old in June 2015. Prosecutors claimed the nurse injected air into his bloodstream.

The police launched an investigation into the infant deaths at the hospital in May 2017, and Letby was arrested three times in connection with the deaths before being charged in November 2020.

Prosecutors said a post-it note found in Letby’s home after her arrest in 2018 read, “I am evil, I did this,” which was described as a literal confession.
Her defense attorney stated that she was a “hardworking, dedicated, caring” nurse who loved her job and that there was not enough evidence to support any of the alleged harmful acts.

The attorney further stated that the sudden collapses and deaths of the infants could be due to natural causes or in conjunction with other factors such as staffing shortages at the hospital or failures by others to provide appropriate care.

It was also alleged that four senior doctors blamed Letby for covering up failures in the neonatal unit.

Letby testified for 14 days, denying all allegations that she deliberately harmed any child and stated, “I did my best to care for them; I am there to look after them, not to hurt them.”

She occasionally cried and defended the collection of medical records she kept at home for some children under her care.

She wrote on a green sticky note shown in court: “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them,” and wrote, “I am a horrible evil person. “I am evil; I did this.”

Her attorney defended the notes as painful writings from a woman who had lost confidence in herself and blamed herself for what happened in the ward.

Defense lawyer Ben Myers said, “One note says ‘not good enough.’ Who was that written for? It wasn’t written for us, or for the police, or for these proceedings; it’s a note to herself. Writing to herself.”