Europe | Top Doctors Question Conviction of ‘Killer Nurse’ in 7 Baby Deaths
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After assessing the cases of 17 babies cited at her original trial, a panel of world-renowned specialists said that they had found no evidence that Lucy Letby had murdered anyone.
Dr. Shoo Lee, right, at a news conference in London, on Tuesday. Dr. Lee led a panel that looked into the evidence against the British nurse Lucy Letby, who was convicted in 2023 of killing seven babies. Credit… Andy Rain/EPA, via Shutterstock Feb. 4, 2025
An international panel of neonatal and pediatric specialists on Tuesday raised grave doubts about the evidence used to convict Lucy Letby, a British nurse who was found guilty in 2023 of murdering seven babies at the hospital where she worked and attempting to murder seven others.
In a dramatic news conference in London, the chairman of the panel, Dr. Shoo Lee, a Canadian neonatologist, said an extensive independent review had found no evidence that Ms. Letby had murdered or attempted to kill any of the infants in her care.
He also highlighted what the 14-member panel determined were errors in medical care at the unit where the deaths occurred, at the Countess of Chester Hospital in northwestern England, in 2015 and 2016, and serious failings in the management of neonatal conditions. Some of the deaths had been preventable, he said.
But, Dr. Lee said, “Our conclusion was there was no medical evidence to support malfeasance causing injury in any of the 17 cases in the trial,” referring to the original charge of harming 17 babies. He added: “In summary, ladies and gentlemen, we did not find any murders.”
The review is significant because it was carried out by some of the most respected and experienced neonatal and pediatric specialists in the world.
The findings raise the most serious questions yet about a case that horrified Britain and led to Ms. Letby being called “the killer nurse” by the news media and vilified as one of the worst serial murderers of children in the country’s modern history. The prosecution told the jury in two trials that she had harmed babies through a macabre range of attacks: injecting them with air, overfeeding them with milk, infusing air into their gastrointestinal tracts and poisoning them with insulin.
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