Letby no-show as nurse sentenced to whole life order

Nurse Lucy Letby refused to appear in court today as she was sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for killing seven babies and attempting to kill another six.

Judge Mr Justice Goss said that Letby’s crimes were a “cruel, calculated and cynical campaign of child murder involving the smallest and most vulnerable of children” as he sentenced the nurse to life without parole in Manchester Crown Court. 

The verdict makes Letby the most prolific child serial killer in modern British history and one of only three women alive to have received such a sentence. 

Her refusal to appear in court was denounced by the parent of one of her victims as a “last act of wickedness” and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called it “cowardly”. 

Lucy Letby’s crimes were committed when she was a nurse on a neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester hospital between June 2015 and June 2016. She was first arrested in 2018 and has been remanded in custody since her third arrest in 2020. 

The court heard that the former nurse had fatally injected seven babies with air and had attempted to kill others by poisoning them with insulin and forcing a nasogastric tube down one baby’s throat. 

The mother of a baby that was murdered by the nurse at four days old said that knowing the murderer of their child had been watching them grieve was like “something out of a horror film.” “The trauma will live with us all until we die,” she added.

It comes as a senior manager at the hospital where Letby committed the crimes has been suspended due to negligence and a failure to respond appropriately to complaints. Alison Kelly was in charge during the period in question and was part of the management team that refused to listen to Dr. Stephen Brearey, the lead consultant at the neonatal unit, who first raised concerns about Lucy Letby after the final two murders in 2016. 

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has also urged that the government inquiry into what went so wrong at the hospital be upgraded to a statutory footing. Starmer said this was necessary as it gave the government the power to order documents and witnesses “So we get the fullest, proper, comprehensive analysis of what went wrong here.” Responding to the fact that Letby never appeared in court to receive her sentence, the former Director of Public Prosecutions also said Labour was eager to work with the government to change the law to make it a legal requirement that criminals attend their sentencing in person.

Justice secretary Alex Chalk was in agreement that the law should change and was at pains to stress how the Conservative government is being proactive about it: “Cases like these make me even more determined to make sure the worst offenders attend court to face justice, when ordered by the judge.

“That’s why we are looking at options to change the law at the earliest opportunity to ensure that in the silence that follows the clang of the prison gate, society’s condemnation will be ringing in prisoners’ ears.”

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