When British nurse Lucy Letby went on trial in 2023, the case against her seemed overwhelming. She was charged with 22 murders and attempted murders in the neonatal unit where she worked at Countess of Chester Hospital. The case centered on an abnormally high number of deaths between June 2015 and June 2016. Although no one ever saw Lucy harming a baby and the coroner did not find foul play in any of their deaths, thousands of pieces of evidence were gathered to convict her. In August of 2023, Lucy was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole.

Join us at the quiet end for Lucy Letby: The Common Denominator, Part One. At her sentencing, the judge said that Lucy had committed a cruel, calculated, and cynical campaign of child murder involving the smallest and most vulnerable of children. A public inquiry was ordered to discern how Lucy Letby was able to commit her crimes and how the hospital failed to protect babies. But she maintains that she is innocent and there are questions about the statistical evidence used to convict her and the working conditions on the unit. Is Lucy Letby the cruel, calculated killer that the jury found her to be, or could she be the victim of a false conviction?

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Sources

A British Nurse Was Found Guilty of Killing Seven Babies, Did She Do It? The New Yorker, Rachel Aviv, 5/13/2024.

Countess of Chester Hospital: Woman held in baby deaths probe, BBC News, 7/3/2018.

Lucy Letby: how did a nurse commit such unthinkable murders? The Guardian, 8/18/2023.

Lucy Letby: The Complete Story by Katherine Smith, 2023.

Lucy Letby whistleblower says babies would have lived if hospital had acted sooner, The Guardian, Josh Halliday, 8/18/2023.

The King v. Lucy Letby, Sentencing Remarks, Honorable Mr. Justice Goss Kt., 8/21/2023.

Panorama, Lucy Letby: The Nurse Who Killed, BBC One TV documentary, 8/21/2023.

Revealed: the files that show how Lucy Letby was treated as a victim, The Times, Shaun Lintern & David Collins, 8/20/2023.

Sudden unexpected neonatal death in the first week of life: Autopsy findings from a specialist centre, The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine, Martin A. Weber, Michael T. Ashworth, Anthony R. Risdon, Ivan Brooke, Marian Malone, Neil J. Sebire, 2009.

What I learned about Lucy Letby after 10 months in court, BBC News, Judith Moritz, 8/24/2023.

What is the evidence against Lucy Letby? Five key points that convicted baby killer, YorkshireLive, Sophie Corcoran, 8/24/2023.