A tentative trial date was set for June 10, 2024 at the same court.
Serial killer nurse Lucy Letby was convicted of murdering seven newborn babies and attempting to murder six others while in her care. She was arrested between June 2015 and June 2016 after a series of baby deaths in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital in north-west England.
According to a report from BBCLetby will face a new trial on an outstanding charge of attempted murder of a girl. The report says Letby will take no further action on a further five charges of attempted murder on which a jury at Manchester Crown Court was unable to reach a verdict.
A tentative trial date was set for June 10, 2024 at the same court.
Letby attended the hour-long hearing virtually at HMP New Hall in Wakefield, West Yorkshire.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said it was seeking a retrial on one of the outstanding charges – that Letby tried to murder a girl known as Baby K in February 2016. BBC reported.
The media reported that the new trial would take up to three weeks.
Letby was found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder six other babies. The prosecutor said Letby attacked her young and often premature victims by injecting them with air, giving them too much milk or poisoning them with insulin.
After a trial that began in October, a jury at Manchester Crown Court concluded more than 110 hours of deliberations in August. AFP reported.
The first babies Letby was accused of attacking were twins. A boy, named Child A, was just a day old when he died in early June 2015, while his older sister survived an assassination attempt.
Following the deaths of two triplet brothers within 24 hours of each other in June 2016, Letby was removed from the neonatal unit and placed on administrative duties.
Two years later, in July 2018, she was arrested for the first time. Upon her third arrest in November 2020, Letby was formally charged and taken into custody.
Letby’s motives remain unclear.
During the trial, the prosecutor described Letby as a “calculating” woman who “fooled” her colleagues into believing that the increase in infant deaths was “just a matter of bad luck.”
The jury was told Letby was on duty when each of the babies collapsed. Some newborns were attacked just as their parents left their cribs.
