Context
Sentencing remarks of Mr Justice Goss following the verdict at the Child K retrial on 2 July 2024. A second whole life order was imposed to run concurrently with the 2023 sentence. The retrial concerned a single count of attempted murder on which the original jury had been unable to agree.
Key passages
What the second jury convicted on. Mr Justice Goss recorded that he had sentenced Letby in August 2023 for seven murders and seven attempted murders, and was now sentencing her “for a further offence of attempted murder of which you have been convicted by another jury”. The offence was dated to 17 February 2016. Child K was born at 02:12 that morning at 25 weeks gestation weighing 692 g, and the remarks note that although she should have been born in a hospital equipped for babies of that prematurity, her mother had gone into labour and the decision was made that “for reasons of safety, she would be delivered at the Countess of Chester”.
The mechanism the judge found. The remarks describe the assigned nurse asking Letby to cover while she updated the parents, and find that she “took the opportunity to attempt to kill her by pausing her alarms and deliberately dislodging the endo-tracheal tube through which she was being ventilated causing the oxygen saturation levels in her blood to start to drop”. The consultant on duty, the judge said, “was apprehensive about you being responsible for Baby K in the light of the series of other incidents with which you were associated”, came to check, and “saw you standing by her incubator doing nothing as she continued to desaturate”. Both limbs of that finding — the paused alarms and the dislodgement — are disputed by the Shoo Lee Panel; see our Child K evidence page.
The death was not attributed to her. This is the passage most often lost in summary. Child K was transferred to Arrowe Park Hospital and died three days later, and the judge said in terms: “Baby K was an extremely premature baby and her death cannot be attributed to your actions. You are to be sentenced for attempting to murder her.” The conviction is for attempted murder alone.
Motive, again declined. As in August 2023, the judge refused to supply one: “I repeat what I have said before, only you know the reason or reasons for your murderous campaign.” He characterised the offence as “another shocking act of calculated, callous cruelty”, repeated that “whole life sentences of imprisonment are reserved for wholly exceptional cases”, and found again that “You have no remorse. There are no mitigating factors.” A further whole life order followed.
What to read alongside this
Dr Shoo Lee’s Panel has reviewed Child K’s medical notes and concludes that a dislodged endotracheal tube in a 25-week infant is a routine clinical event. See our Child K evidence page and our summary of Dr Jayaram’s testimony.