Posted 16 June 2023 - 06:59
Posted 16 June 2023 - 06:59
News
Lucy Letby trial enters final stage as judge tells jury to be calm
Judge in trial of nurse accused of multiple infant murders instructs jury to put their emotions aside and weigh only the evidence before them
Judge in trial of nurse accused of multiple infant murders instructs jury to put their emotions aside and weigh only the evidence before them
Jurors in the murder trial of nurse Lucy Letby have been told to approach the case in a ‘fair, calm, objective and analytical way’ as the trial nears its conclusion.
Ms Letby is accused of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder ten others between June 2015 and June 2016 while she worked on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital. She denies all the charges.
Neonatal nurse denies prosecution’s claims she used various means to harm babies in her care
She is said to have used various methods to seriously harm or kill the infants, including by intravenous injection of air, or by introducing air or milk into the stomach via nasogastric tube.
The nurse is also accused of adding insulin as a poison to intravenous feeds, of having interfered with breathing tubes and of using force to the abdomen.
In some infants’ cases, Ms Letby made repeated attempts to kill them, the prosecution claims.
Analyse the evidence before you and put emotion aside, judge urges jurors
On 15 June, trial judge Mr Justice Goss gave his first set of directions of law to the Manchester Crown Court jury of eight women and four men, ahead of closing speeches by the prosecution and defence counsel from next week.
He told jurors, who were sworn in last October, they should decide the case solely on the evidence before them.
He said: ‘As I said at the very beginning of the trial, you must not approach the case with any pre-conceived views and you must cast out of your decision-making process any response or approach to the case based on emotion or any feelings of sympathy or antipathy you may have.
‘It is instinctive for anyone to react with horror to any allegation of deliberately harming – let alone killing – a child, the more so a vulnerable premature baby. You will naturally feel sympathy for all the parents in this case, particularly those who have lost a child and the harrowing circumstances of their deaths.
‘You must, however, judge the case on all the evidence in the case in a fair, calm, objective and analytical way – applying your knowledge of human behaviour, how people act and react, using your common sense and collective good judgment in your assessment of the evidence and the conclusions to be drawn from it.’
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