Jurors in the trial of a nurse accused of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill 10 others have begun deliberating their verdicts.
Lucy Letby, 33, denies harming infants on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester hospital in north-west England, where she worked.
The children’s nurse has been on trial for nine months over what the prosecution allege was a “calculated” and “cold-blooded” year-long series of killings from June 2015.
She is accused of murdering newborns by injecting them with air, and attempting to kill others by poisoning them with insulin or “sabotaging” their feeding tubes.
The judge, Mr Justice James Goss, told jurors not to discuss their deliberations with anyone and that they were protected by “lifetime confidentiality”.
He said: “You should, of course, respect each other’s opinion and value the different viewpoints you bring to the case. Listen to each other and no one should be, or feel, pressured. You are under no pressure of time.”
The judge said jurors should strive to reach unanimous verdicts but if they could not he would give them further directions in due course.
They were told to retire and begin their deliberations at 1.02pm on Monday.
The trial at Manchester crown court has heard how Letby allegedly attacked a number of babies shortly after their parents had left their cot-sides.
The jury of eight women and four men has been told that consultant paediatricians raised concerns about the Letby when they spotted her “common link” to the sudden and “unexplained” deaths.
One of the babies was just 24 hours old when Letby allegedly injected him with air, killing him just 90 minutes after she came on shift. She tried to kill his twin sister the next day, it is alleged.
However, the nurse has consistently denied the allegations. Letby insists that a number of the babies were the victims of poor care and that they should have been receiving specialist treatment elsewhere.
The university graduate, originally from Hereford, told jurors she had never harmed any child and added: “I only ever did my best to care for them. I’m here to help and to care, not to harm.”
Letby said in evidence that her “whole world was stopped” when she was accused of the “sickening” crimes.
