Former British nurse and convicted serial child killer Lucy Letby has lost an attempt to appeal against her most recent conviction for trying to murder a newborn girl by removing her breathing tube in 2016.
Letby had already been found guilty of murdering seven babies and the attempted murder of seven others between June 2015 and June 2016.
She was convicted of an eighth count of attempted murder at a retrial this year, after the original jury was unable to reach a verdict.
Letby's lawyer Benjamin Myers told London's Court of Appeal on Thursday that Letby "maintains and has maintained she is not guilty of the offences".
He argued that the retrial was an abuse of process as Letby could not have a fair trial because of extensive coverage of her convictions, which featured "intense hostility towards her" and comments made by the Crown Prosecution Service and police.
Lucy Letby appeared by video link at the hearing. (Reuters: Julia Quenzler)
"There was no way in which the jury in trial two were going to have the publicity and the comment and the hostility ameliorated," Mr Myers said.
Judge William Davis refused Letby's application for leave to appeal against the conviction from her retrial.
Letby attended the hearing by video link from prison and sat impassively as the judge stated the court's reasons for refusing her application.
"The outcome of the first trial undoubtedly led to an unusually large amount of publicity and online debate," Davis said.
"That is because, on its face, the case was extraordinary."
Who is Lucy Letby?
Letby, 34, was found guilty of murdering seven children and attempting to murder six more between June 2015 and June 2016 while working in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, northern England.
This makes her Britain's worst serial child killer of modern times.
Letby was found not guilty of two other attempted murders and the jury was unable to agree on six other suspected attacks.
She is currently serving 15 whole-life sentences in jail.
The jury had been told she poisoned some of her victims by injecting them with insulin, while others were injected with air or force fed milk.
A public inquiry into how she was able to commit the crimes is ongoing in Liverpool.
Letby was arrested in July 2018 after an investigation was launched by Cheshire police related to a "greater number of baby deaths and collapses" at the Countess of Chester Hospital in May 2017.
"I killed them on purpose because I'm not good enough to care for them," Letby wrote on a handwritten note that was found by police officers searching her home after she was arrested.
Some of the babies she attacked were twins, and in one case Letby murdered both siblings.
She also tried to kill one baby girl three times before finally succeeding on the fourth attempt, the court heard.
In another case, when the mother of one of the victims walked in on her attacking her twin babies, Letby said to her: "Trust me, I'm a nurse."
Who is child K?
This appeal related to her conviction on an eighth count of attempted murder at a retrial this year, after the original jury was unable to reach a verdict on a charge that Letby tried to kill a baby girl by removing her breathing tube.
The attack on the baby, referred to as Child K occurred in February 2016.
Prosecutor Nick Johnson told Manchester Crown Court that, little more than an hour after the child was born, a senior doctor found the baby's breathing tube dislodged and Letby standing there "doing nothing".
A clipping from the Chester Standard in 2013 included a staff profile and photograph of nurse Lucy Letby. (Supplied: Chester Standard)
The baby was stabilised when a consultant paediatrician Ravi Jayaram walked in.
He told the trial that he had seen no evidence Letby had been trying to help the child.
Child K was transferred to another hospital and died three days later of complications relating to her birth, which were unrelated to the attack.
She said she has no recollection of the incident.
What will happen now?
Letby's attempt to overturn her convictions from the first trial was refused in May.
She can now only challenge those convictions if the Criminal Cases Review Commission refer those cases back to the Court of Appeal.
Since her trials, Letby's conviction has come under a spotlight, following criticism by some experts of medical and statistical evidence presented by the prosecution.
Some media have questioned whether she might be the victim of a miscarriage of justice.