Letby: a case study on change
It is rare that the world reels with collective shock from one individual’s actions. Yet, just over a year ago, Lucy Letby’s trial for the murder of seven infants and the attempted murder of six more in a Chester neonatal unit had millions staring at their TV screens, united by disbelief and horror as the story unfolded.
The whole life order imposed upon Letby last year made this young nurse the most recent addition to an exclusive list of the three other women to receive this sentence. She is in the company of none other than Joanna Dennehy, Rosemary West and Myra Hindley – three notorious British serial killers, the latter two also figureheads of sexual sadism. It is obvious that these four women stand in stark contrast to the approximately 100 men to receive this sentence since it was introduced in England in 1983. This ratio deserves an article in itself, if not a thesis. It is also notable that the crimes of 75% of the females who’ve received whole life orders involve children, suggesting a certain outrage that can only be induced by the suffering of little ones. In these cases at the hands of a woman, whose traditional role has, for centuries, been perceived as a maternal one.
To be given a whole life order (WLO) means, from a legal standpoint, that there will be no parole, no minimum term, and no early release for the perpetrator. This sentence is the strictest available under UK law, and thus reserved for the most extreme cases of utmost desolation and depravity. From a human stance, however, its implications are even more confounding: WLO is emblematic of irredeemability. It is issued when experts rule that there is no chance of rehabilitation for the person in question; there is no hope or opportunity for change.
What does it mean for a human being to be judged incapable of change? And is such a pronouncement of irredeemability ever truly justifiable from a philosophical perspective?
In the cases of Hindley and West, their continued refusal to provide closure to their victims’ families by revealing their bodies’ locations suggests a lack of remorse and repentance. This supports the idea that some minds are indeed incapable of change, illustrating an inability to be rehabilitated and an unwillingness to alter their torturous, murderous paths. But such cases seem to me a complete contradiction of the very fabric of the human spirit. To be human is to be subject to and conductive of change. At its most basic, physiological level, change manifests itself in the biology of growth: height, hair, nails - the latter two prove that even after death the human body is reluctant to relinquish its capacity for growth. Every second of every day, new cells replace old ones, indicating a ritual of change that goes beyond our conscious control.
Could the same be said of non-physical change? As long as we are alive, new experiences and encounters form the cellular building blocks of our daily lives, adding to our understanding in a process of continuous deconstruction and rebuilding, demolition of previously misconceived ideas and the construction of new ones in their place. If this anthropological observation is correct, then change must be situated at the very heart of human experience, existing as a cornerstone of human nature. And further, I would suggest that where there is change, there is hope, and where there is hope, there remains the possibility of redemption.
Perhaps, then, for a judge to declare these four individuals truncated and incapable of change, for all the world to read about, is to declare them inhuman, rendered so by the complete and utter absence of all that we consider normal symptoms of humanity. They have entered a state of self-imposed exile through their choices, and are thus relegated to a sub-human league of their own, an additional circle of hell reserved for female child serial killers (with the exception of Dennehy, who is something of an outlier, having only killed adult men). Such static psyches cannot be expected to participate in the broader scheme of sociological change expected from individuals, this wider network of collaborative striving that we term “societal progress,” hence their removal.
Returning to an earlier point regarding ¾ of the women to receive WLOs being convicted for child-related offences: does this say something about how we judge women specifically? Women are most likely to be ruled inhuman when they violate what society still perceives as their primary function: nurturing children. In the words of the Honourable Mr. Justice Goss, Letby’s actions were “contrary to the normal human instincts of nurturing […] babies.”
Perhaps such stereotypes also speak to the essential dissonance between Letby’s mugshot, background and the crimes of which she stands accused. Letby, the first in her family to attend university, and clearly loved by friends who stuck by her throughout her trial, cuts a sympathetic, all too human figure far removed from the archetypal recluse one might associate with the word ‘serial-killer’.
But this is ultimately irrelevant, rendered so by the jury’s verdict last year. Perhaps, beneath those blue eyes and the nurse’s uniform, there indeed lurks an evil that knows no change and will admit no redemption, something inhuman at its most fundamental level – this is what the court is saying through its decision to issue a life-long sentence. Whether it was correct in this judgement remains to be seen – only time and change, or lack thereof, will tell.