On the first day of a public investigation into what transpired before the deaths, a judge stated that remarks regarding the legitimacy of Lucy Letby's convictions for murder and attempted murder have caused her victims' parents "a great deal of stress."

Letby, 34, was found guilty in two trials of killing seven newborns and attempting to kill seven more, and she was given 15 whole-life orders.

The investigation at Liverpool Town Hall will look into what transpired in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester hospital, where Letby worked as a nurse from 2015 to 2016.

Lady Justice Thirlwall began the hearings by stating that the only source of doubts about Letby's convictions had been "people who were not at the trial."

Thirlwall stated that the court of appeals had reviewed the convictions with a "clear result," and it was not her place to examine them. Letby's request to appeal was dismissed by three senior judges in a 58-page ruling that was released in May.

“In the months since the court of appeal judgment there has been a huge of outpouring of comment from a variety of quarters on the validity of the convictions,” Thirlwall said. “So far as I’m aware it has come entirely from people who were not at the trial. Parts of the evidence has been selected and there has been criticism of the defence at the trial.l

All of this noise has caused additional enormous stress for the parents who have suffered far too much. It’s not for me to set about reviewing the convictions. The court of appeal has done that with a very a clear result. The convictions stand.”

Thirlwall said that at the heart of the inquiry were “the babies who died and were injured, and their parents”. “I do not presume to describe the emotions those parents have already experienced and what lies ahead,” she said.

The counsel to the inquiry, Rachel Langdale KC, in her opening statement made reference to the serial killer nurse Beverley Allitt, who was convicted of four counts of murder, three of attempted murder and a further six of grievous bodily harm on children at the Grantham and Kesteven hospital in Lincolnshire in the 1990s.

Langdale said the inquiry had received a statement from the former health secretary Virginia Bottomley, who ordered an inquiry to establish the facts after Allitt’s crimes.

“Nevertheless, and distressingly, 25 years later another nurse working in another hospital killed and harmed babies in her care,” Langdale said.

She said the inquiry would hear that the crimes of Allitt formed part of the training course Letby underwent at the University of Chester.

Langdale said failure to take into account all the evidence could be damaging.

“There is a requirement in every case to take into account all of the evidence and to consider each piece of evidence in the context of all the other evidence. Medical or scientific evidence in the case should never be compartmentalised or examined in isolation,” she said.

“Those who do this will be less likely to see the picture as a whole, and if they do not see the picture as a whole, they may reach conclusions that are not only wrong but are speculative and damaging.”

The comments at the start of the long-awaited inquiry come after reports highlighting doubts over Letby’s convictions.

A committee of some of the top neonatal specialists and statisticians in the UK urged the government to reschedule or modify the parameters of the investigation on the raised concerns.

Legal representatives stated over the weekend that the families of the victims had been outraged by headlines that questioned Letby's convictions. "I can't stress enough how upsetting that has been for all of the families that I represent," Tamlin Bolton said in an interview with BBC Breakfast.

SOURCE: BBC NEWS