Context
These are the sentencing remarks delivered by Mr Justice Goss in the Crown Court at Manchester on 21 August 2023, following the jury’s verdicts of 18 August 2023 in the original trial (case number T20217188). Lucy Letby was sentenced to a whole life order — only the fourth woman in UK history to receive one — for the murder of seven infants and the attempted murder of seven more. These remarks record the court’s findings as they stood on that date, on the evidence as it was then before the court.
Key passages
What to read alongside this
The remarks date from August 2023. In February 2025, a 14-member international panel of neonatologists led by Dr Shoo Lee concluded publicly that there was no medical evidence of deliberate harm in any of the cases reviewed. The remarks above must be read in the light of that later evidence, which is now before the Criminal Cases Review Commission. See our summary of the Panel press conference and the Evidence problems page for per-issue breakdowns.
The notes cited by the Judge are addressed in detail on our Post-it notes evidence page, which sets out the broader text of the same notes (including contradictory passages such as “I haven’t done anything wrong” and “WHY ME?”) that independent psychologists have characterised as stress-diary entries rather than forensic confessions.