The lawyer for Lucy Ledby, a British nurse accused of killing seven babies in 2015-2016, has alleged that the neonatology unit where her client worked failed to cope with the pressure of the number of babies she was handling.
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33-year-old Lucy Ledby, in Manchester (north-west England), was accused of killing the babies while she was a nurse in the neonatology department of the Countess Hospital, which opened in October.
According to the lawsuit, he killed them by injecting air into their veins or insulin.
“There is no direct evidence against her,” the nurse’s attorney, Ben Myers, said on the final day of the plea.
“Between June 2015 and June 2016, the neonatology unit received more babies than normal and with higher care needs,” the lawyer pleaded.
“That year, the death toll […] The problem has increased in this case,” he said. “Nothing has changed Miss Ledby. She was dedicated. He took care of hundreds of children,” the lawyer said.
“In terms of numbers and needs, the children cared for in the unit have changed and we are saying that the unit is unable to cope with the situation,” he alleged.
He asked the jurors, eight men and four women, not to convict her.
On Monday, Ben Myers said his client was a victim of “guilt.”
Since the start of the trial, whose arguments have often been bitter, Lucy Ledby has maintained her innocence, denying she killed or harmed the newborns.
During the trial, the lawyer showed the notes found by the police on the nurse.
“I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I wasn’t good enough to take care of them. I’m a terrible villain,” he wrote in a paper.
In other papers found at his home, the nurse, who was arrested in July 2018, however declared his innocence.
According to prosecutors, he tried to kill some of the children on several occasions.
The youngest was a day older and doing well, but Lucy Ledby died within 90 minutes of going on duty. Experts concluded that air or some other substance had been deliberately injected into his veins.
