Lucy Letby, Former U.K. Nurse, Loses Bid to Appeal Attempted Murder Conviction

Ms. Letby is serving 15 life sentences after the deaths and collapses of babies in the neonatal unit where she worked.

Lucy Letby, a former neonatal nurse who was convicted of the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of seven others, was refused permission to appeal one of her convictions on Thursday.

The ruling was the latest blow to Ms. Letby’s attempts to appeal her multiple convictions, even as a growing number of statisticians and medical experts have questioned the reliability of the evidence used by the prosecution.

Ms. Letby, 34, who has always maintained her innocence, is serving 15 life sentences after she was found guilty of harming babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital in northern England between 2015 and 2016.

During two trials, the prosecution told the jury 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.

The first trial concluded in August 2023, when Ms Letby was found guilty of seven counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder, two of which involved one baby. In May, she was denied an attempt to appeal those convictions. She was then convicted of attempting to murder another baby in a retrial of one charge in July this year.

Thursday’s hearing in London focused on that single attempted murder conviction, for a child known as Baby K. Lawyers for Ms. Letby said that the retrial should never have gone ahead because the intense commentary following her earlier convictions meant she could not have a fair trial.

“It’s an exceptional case with exceptional media interest,” said Ben Myers, a lawyer for Ms. Letby. He argued that the “intense hostility and the saturation” of media coverage, including public comments on her guilt from the police, prosecutors and witnesses, had prejudiced her retrial.

But prosecutors countered that Mr. Myers’s approach was misguided and would establish a problematic principle that would allow anyone convicted of a notorious crime to avoid being tried or retried for additional offenses.

Nick Johnson, a lawyer for the prosecution, argued that public comments made by the police after the first trial were accurate. “What was said by the police in the aftermath of the convictions of the first trial was reasonable,” Mr. Johnson said. “It accurately and moderately described the horrendous offenses of which this applicant had been convicted.”

The three judges at the hearing denied Ms. Letby’s bid for a full appeal. Judge William Davis, one of the three, acknowledged that the former nurse’s case “is very well known to most people in the country,” but rejected her lawyer’s argument that she could not have a fair trial.

He reminded those present in the courtroom that Thursday’s hearing had a narrow focus, saying that the other convictions or any public discussion were not relevant to the decision.

Ms. Letby had already been denied appeals in the other seven murder and seven attempted murder counts for which she is serving life sentences. She appeared by video link from the high-security prison where she is being held, wearing a green dress and looking down through much of the hearing as she listened to the legal arguments.

Last month Ms. Letby appointed a new defense lawyer, Mark McDonald, who plans to apply to Britain’s Criminal Cases Review Commission, the official body responsible for investigating alleged miscarriages of justice in the country, and the one remaining way for her other criminal convictions to be revisited.

“I can tell you now, if I was innocent and in prison, I’d rather be in the U.S. than the U.K.,” said Mr. McDonald. “It is so difficult to overturn a conviction in this country, it is almost impossible.”

Mr. McDonald said that in his application to the C.C.R.C. he would focus on the reliability of the evidence presented by the prosecution, rather than claiming that Ms. Letby’s original defense was insufficient, and plans to submit the case within weeks.