LONDON (AP) — Three senior leaders at the English hospital where nurse Lucy Letby was convicted of murdering seven babies and trying to kill seven others were arrested on suspicion of manslaughter, police said Tuesday.
The unnamed suspects being investigated for gross negligence manslaughter were arrested after a corporate manslaughter probe was expanded following Letby’s 2023 convictions for the infant deaths at the Countess of Chester Hospital in northwestern England, said Detective Superintendent Paul Hughes of the Cheshire Constabulary. The three were released on bail.
“This focuses on senior leadership and their decision-making to determine whether any criminality has taken place concerning the response to the increased levels of fatalities,” Hughes said.
Letby, 35, is serving multiple life sentences after being convicted of seven counts of murder and attempting to murder seven other infants between June 2015 and June 2016 while working as a neonatal nurse at the hospital.
Prosecutors said she harmed babies in ways that left little trace, including injecting air into their bloodstreams, administering air or milk into their stomachs through nasogastric tubes, poisoning them with insulin and interfering with breathing tubes.
Experts dispute evidence against the nurse
Letby, who testified that she never harmed a child, has continued to proclaim her innocence and support for her has grown as legal and scientific experts have questioned the circumstantial and statistical evidence used at her trial. A panel of international medical experts disputed the evidence against her and her lawyer said she was wrongly convicted.
A judge who oversaw a public inquiry seeking accountability of staff and management at the hospital is expected to publish her findings this fall. Justice Kathryn Thirlwall said at the outset of the inquiry that she would not review Letby’s conviction, but take a deeper look into how failures led babies to repeatedly be harmed at the hospital.
As that inquiry was underway earlier this year, an independent panel of more than a dozen medical experts issued a report that found no sign of a crime and concluded natural causes or bad medical care led to the demise of each of the newborns.
“In summary, then, ladies and gentlemen, we did not find any murders,” Dr. Shoo Lee, a retired neonatologist from Canada, said at a London news conference in February.
Letby’s lawyers and three former executives at the hospital unsuccessfully petitioned Thirlwall to halt the public inquiry after the medical panel released its findings. They argued that if the convictions are overturned, the inquiry might reach the wrong conclusions and waste more than 10 million pounds ($13.8 million) in taxpayer funds.
Letby, who lost two bids to appeal her convictions, now has her case before the Criminal Case Review Commission, which reviews possible miscarriages of justice and could lead to one another shot at an appeal.
The Crown Prosecution Service has said two juries convicted Letby and three appellate judges had rejected her arguments that the prosecution expert evidence was flawed.
While the medical panel said there was no evidence Letby intentionally harmed any babies, they did find that medical workers at the hospital were not properly skilled in resuscitation and inserting breathing tubes, lacked an understanding of some basic procedures, misdiagnosed ailments and acted slowly in treating acutely ill babies.
