Lucy Letby sobbed in court as she was described as “the obvious target” for a hospital that failed babies in its care, during the nurse’s murder trial at Manchester crown court.
Letby, 33, became emotional and wiped her eyes with a tissue as her barrister said she was a “hard-working” and “committed” nurse who was “distraught” at being accused of murdering babies.
Benjamin Myers KC told jurors the prosecution case had been “driven by a relentless presumption of guilt” and “partisan and poorly reasoned” expert evidence.
Concluding his closing speech on Letby’s behalf, Myers said it was “easy to lose sight of the person at the centre of this” and not the “picture conjured” by the prosecution.
“Please keep in mind the person she was at the time the events were happening, not what she has been reduced to now,” he said.
“I’m saying this on her behalf because no one else will. She was hard-working. She was deeply committed. She had a happy life. She loved her work and she was there much of the time because she was committed, because she loved being a nurse, and so she was there at the time these events happened.
“For a system that wanted to apportion blame when it failed she was the obvious target – not because of the evidence … because she was there.”
Letby denies murdering seven babies and attempting to murder 10 others on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.
She is accused of injecting days-old babies with air, overfeeding them with milk, deliberately obstructing their airways or poisoning them with insulin.
Myers, concluding his closing speech after five days, said the evidence against Letby was “incomplete, inconsistent or absent”.
He listed seven of the nurse’s alleged victims and said they were all victims of “serial failures of care”.
Myers added: “We say there were terrible failings in care on that unit that have nothing to do with Lucy Letby.
“Between June 2015 and June 2016 the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester took more babies than it would usually care for and took babies with greater care needs. In that same year there was an increase in the number of deaths and the types of collapses we’re looking at in this trial. Those two facts are connected, we would say.”
Myers said Letby was a dedicated nurse who cared for hundreds of babies. “She suddenly didn’t change her behaviour in 2015,” he said. “What changed was the babies on the unit and the inability of this unit to cope.”
The barrister asked the jury of eight women and four men to “apply a presumption of innocence and not a presumption of guilt”.
“If you do that, you will reach the right verdicts, verdicts of not guilty, and those are the verdicts we ask you to return,” he said.
The trial, which began nine months ago, continues on Monday.
