British nurse Lucy Letby, who was on trial for the murder of seven infants in 2015-16, has been accused by a lawyer for the neonatology unit where her client worked of failing to cope with the pressure of the number of babies she was dealing with.
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Lucy Letby, 33, whose trial began in October in Manchester (NW England), is accused of killing these babies while she was a nurse in the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester’s Hospital.
According to the prosecution, she killed them by injecting air or insulin into their veins.
“There is no direct evidence against her,” said the nurse’s attorney, Ben Myers, on the last day of arguments.
“Between June 2015 and June 2016, the neonatology unit admitted more babies than usual with greater care needs,” pleaded the lawyer.
That year the number of deaths […] The case in this suit has increased,” said he. “What has not changed is Miss Litby. She was dedicated. “I have taken care of hundreds of children,” said the lawyer.
“What has changed is the children receiving care in the unit in terms of number and needs, and we say that the unit was not able to deal with the situation,” he said.
The jury, eight men and four women, was asked not to convict her.
On Monday, Ben Myers said his client was the victim of a “presumption of guilt.”
From the beginning of the trial, whose arguments were often grueling, Lucy Letby maintained her innocence, denying killing or harming newborn children.
During the trial, the prosecutor, in particular, showed the notes that the police found on the nurse.
“I don’t deserve to live. I deliberately killed them because I’m not good enough to take care of them. I’m a horrible bad person,” she wrote remarkably on a sheet of paper.
On other papers found in her home, the nurse, who was arrested in July 2018, declared her innocence.
According to the prosecution, she tried to kill some of the children on several occasions.
The youngest was a day old and doing well, but died less than 90 minutes after Lucy Letby went into service. Experts concluded that there was a deliberate injection of air or some other substance into his veins.
