At the Court of Appeal earlier, Benjamin Myers KC, representing Letby, had told the court her original trial in 2023 covered an “exceptional case with exceptional media interest”, which could lead to “exceptional unfairness”.
“We are dealing with the impact of media coverage and public comment arising from the first trial, upon the second,” he added.
Mr Myers KC told the judges that while media reporting of Letby’s first 14 convictions had been accurate, the accumulative effect of the stories and the comment that followed led to “unadulterated vitriol”.
This meant her retrial should have been “stayed as an abuse of process”, the legal term for a trial that is so damaged by unfairness that it should be stopped, due to “overwhelming and irremediable prejudice” after the first trial.
He pointed in particular to “emotive” comments made to the media by police officers involved in the investigation into Letby’s crimes.
However Nick Johnson KC, who prosecuted the original trial, said in written submissions that the defence application was “misguided” and the jury had found Letby to be a “multiple killer and habitual liar”.
