Lucy Letby, the neonatal nurse who became Britain’s worst child serial killer, has lost an initial attempt to challenge her convictions at the court of appeal.
The 34-year-old lodged an application for permission to appeal against all of her convictions in September. A judge has since refused her application after considering the case documents, a judicial spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday.
Letby, 34, of Hereford, was sentenced to 14 whole-life orders after she was convicted of the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of six others, with two attempts on one of her victims.
She is the third woman alive to be handed a whole-life jail term in the UK. The other two women serving whole-life terms are Rose West, who tortured and killed at least nine young women in the 1970s and 80s, and Joanna Dennehy, who murdered three men in what came to be known as the Peterborough ditch murders in 2013.
Letby’s offences took place at the Countess of Chester hospital’s neonatal unit between June 2015 and June 2016.
Typically, applications for permission to appeal against a crown court decision are considered by a judge looking at legal documents without a hearing. If this is refused, people have 14 days to renew their request for permission at a full court hearing before two or three judges.
Letby’s legal team have not revealed her grounds for appeal. To succeed, an appeal must identify errors of law, for example in how a judge sums up a case for a jury, or draw on substantial fresh evidence.
In December, Letby was stripped of her nursing credentials after a panel ordered she be struck off from the register at a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) hearing.
The panel chair, Bernard Herdan, said her actions were “so serious that to allow her to continue practising would pose an unacceptable risk to the public and would undermine public confidence in the profession”.
The panel was told Letby was asked in a “tick-box exercise” if she accepted the NMC charges. She ticked “yes” to each of the charges, writing: “I accept the fact of the convictions. However, I do not accept that I am guilty of any of the allegations. I maintain my innocence in respect of all of the convictions.”
The jury in Letby’s trial at Manchester crown court was unable to reach verdicts on six counts of attempted murder in relation to five children.
Letby will face a retrial at the same court in June on a single count that she attempted to murder a baby girl, known as Child K, in February 2016.
A court order prohibits reporting of the identities of the surviving and dead children.
