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21st August 2023
11:14am BST
Lucy Letby has refused to come to court to face a likely whole life sentence after last week being convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six others.
The Countess of Chester Hospital nurse was on Monday branded "evil" by the parents of her victims as her sentencing got underway in her absence.
The 33-year-old is expected to be sentenced to a whole life order.
The former NHS nurse is the most profilic child serial killer in modern British history, and will become only the fourth woman in history – after mass murderers Myra Hindley, Rose West, and Joanna Dennehy – to be handed a whole life order. Other notorious murderers with whole-life orders include: Former Met Police officer Wayne Couzens.
Letby fled from her trial last week once guilty verdicts began to be returned by the jury, and vowed not appear again at Manchester crown court for the sentencing hearing.
The judge, Mr Justice Goss, has said the court has no power to force Letby to attend.
But the former justice secretary Robert Buckland called for proceedings to be broadcast into Letby’s cell, regardless of her wishes. And he has called on the government to change the law if necessary.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who was asked in North Yorkshire about Letby refusing to appear, called the move "cowardly" and said the government is looking at changing the law to make sure that happens - "and that's something we'll bring forward in due course".
The court, on Monday morning, began hearing impact statements from the many victims of Letby’s crimes.
Whole-life orders were introduced in 1983 and were initially imposed by home secretaries.
In 2002, the power to pass such a tariff was handed to judges.
Letby killed the babies by injecting them with air between June 2015 and June 2016, when she was working at the Countess of Chester Hospital, the Manchester Crown Court was earlier told. She also attempted to murder other babies in the hospital’s neonatal unit, with methods including deliberately injecting them with air, overfeeding them and poisoning them with insulin.
She faced a total of 22 charges.
Letby was found not guilty of two counts of attempted murder and the jury could not reach verdicts on six charges of attempted murder.
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