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A panel of experts claimed Lucy Letby did not commit murder after its chairman presented “significant new medical evidence” on her court case.
Evidence used to convict the killer nurse was newly challenged on Tuesday as Canadian professor Dr Shoo Lee – whose research formed part of the prosecution’s case – convened a panel of experts in London.
Following a review by the 14 experts, he claimed there was no medical evidence to support the convictions and suggested the deaths and injuries were caused by natural causes or “bad medical care”.
They were joined by Conservative MP David Davis, who recently claimed in the Commons there was “no hard evidence” against the former medical worker.
Letby, 35, was convicted by a jury of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill another seven between 2015 and 2016. She is currently serving 15 whole-life orders for the crimes, which took place at the Countess of Chester Hospital where she worked as a neonatal nurse.
The two previous attempts to challenge Letby’s convictions have been unsuccessful. But her legal team applied on Monday to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) to investigate her case as a potential miscarriage of justice.
Who are Dr Shoo Lee and the other experts?
Dr Shoo Lee is a Canadian professor of paediatrics and founder of the Canadian Neonatal Foundation. His 1989 research on air embolisms was used by the prosecution in its case against Letby at her trial between 2022 and 2023.
The respected professor now thinks his academic paper was misinterpreted by the prosecution and its lead expert witness, Dr Dewi Evans. Dr Lee explained to The Times: “I looked at [the court transcripts] and I wasn’t very happy because what they were interpreting wasn’t exactly what I said.”
Retired consultant paediatrician Dr Evans previously said concerns regarding his evidence were “unsubstantiated, unfounded, inaccurate”.
Dr Lee however said he is challenging the evidence used against Letby to be entirely sure that the case against her was not based on faulty evidence.
The professor said that, upon learning the low chance of having her conviction overturned after a failed appeal, he remarked: “Well, this is not fair, because the evidence that was used to convict her, in my opinion, wasn’t quite right.”
Dr Lee told reporters he conferred with Letby’s legal team to assess whether the 35,000 pages of medical evidence was “faulty or good”. What followed was the assembly of 14 experts from six countries, organised by the professor, who presented their findings.
These experts were drawn from institutions around the world, including Canada, the US, Japan, Sweden, Germany, and the UK. They include ten neonatologists, one paediatric surgeon, one paediatric infectious disease specialist, one senior neonatal intensive care nurse, and another paediatric specialist.
What evidence did the panel present?
Letby’s legal team said it revealed “significant new medical evidence” on Tuesday morning based on findings from the expert panel which Dr Lee assembled. Lawyers claimed these findings show no evidence of deliberate harm in any of the 17 cases, but other varying reasons including natural causes and “bad medical care”.
The expert panel also challenged the prosecution’s claim that Letby murdered seven babies by injecting air into their veins and causing an air embolism which blocks the blood supply. Their evidence was supported by Dr Lee’s 1989 paper on the topic, which Letby’s legal team said was based on a different kind of embolism.
The professor also takes issue specifically with the prosecution’s claim that skin discolouration on the skin of several of the babies was evidence of an air embolism. He said there are several other reasons this could have occurred, adding discolouration is only a symptom in around 10 per cent of cases of air embolism – but it was present in nine of 17 babies harmed at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
The professor added: “In summary, ladies and gentlemen, we did not find any murders. In all cases, death or injury were deemed to be natural causes or just bad medical care.”
Did the panel discuss any specific cases?
During the conference, Dr Lee spoke about the specific cases of several of the babies. He began with the death of baby one, a pre-term boy who collapsed two days after being born, with skin discolouration noted and who did not respond to resuscitation.
The professor called into question the use of his paper to support the finding that Letby had injected air into the veins, causing the baby’s death. He indicated skin discolouration was not safe evidence of this, saying “the notion that these babies can be diagnosed with air embolism because they collapsed and had these skin discolourations has no evidence in fact”.
Likewise, Dr Lee said the panel claimed the death of baby four, also attributed to an air embolism, was actually caused by “systemic sepsis, pneumonia and disseminated intravascular coagulation” resulting from poor healthcare.
After a “prolonged, premature rupture of membranes” had caused an infection, he said “the mother did not receive antibiotics”, adding “there were important delays in the admission, diagnosis and treatment of the baby after the baby was born”.
He said: “This was not a stable baby, as alleged by the prosecution witness, and in fact, this baby continued to deteriorate for the next few days until final collapse with worsening symptoms of infection as we went along.”
Dr Lee said the panel had next looked at a girl identified only as baby nine. He said her death was preventable, suggesting she had been poorly cared for. He said there was no evidence of an air embolism, for which Letby has been blamed after claims she injected the child with air.
He said the child was born severely pre-term with chronic lung disease and needed to be resuscitated. Letby had been accused of injecting air into the child through a nasal-gastric tube into her stomach causing respiratory arrest, heart failure and death.
The former nurse was also accused of turning off a monitor alerting medics if the baby stopped breathing for longer than around 20 seconds, causing a delay in her treatment.
Dr Lee said the alarm was not switched off and the baby was “gasping” for air. He suggested the medics caring for her failed to respond timely to a bacterial infection with antibiotics, and he concluded the child died from respiratory complications with no evidence of air embolism.
The professor went on to discuss baby 11 (whose death Letby was not found guilty of), baby 15 and baby seven, finding fault with the allegations against the former nurse in each case.
Dr Lee, summarising his panel’s findings, cited what he claimed were flaws in the prosecution evidence.
He cited incomplete medical treatment, failure to consider medical histories, disregard for warnings about infections, misdiagnosis of babies, caring for very poorly babies beyond their medical competencies, delays in treatment of acutely poorly babies, poor medical skills in certain procedures and poor supervision of more junior medics and a lack of understanding of some basic procedures.
He also cited poor management of common medical conditions and lack of knowledge about commonly used equipment in the hospital unit, adding: “There was a lack of teamwork and trust between the health professions.”
Dr Lee also said there was evidence of inadequate numbers of staff, a lack of training, workload overload, and some poorly babies should have been treated at a “higher level” unit or hospital.
Could this change Letby’s convictions?
Following the previous unsuccessful attempts, Letby’s legal team can no longer challenge her convictions at the Court of Appeal without significant new evidence that was not available during her first trial.
Dr Lee had previously given counter-evidence concerning air embolisms during Letby’s appeal, but the judge said this was inadmissible as he was not called by her defence at the original trial. The professor claimed he was first contacted in October 2023, after Letby was convicted, and did not know his paper had been used in the trial.
The new file of evidence convened by him and his panel has been submitted to the CCRC. The body aims to complete most investigations within a year of application. If it finds a substantial possibility that judges could overturn the conviction, it has the power to send the case back to the Court of Appeal.
A CCRC spokesperson said: “We are aware that there has been a great deal of speculation and commentary surrounding Lucy Letby’s case, much of it from parties with only a partial view of the evidence.
“We ask that everyone remembers the families affected by events at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.
“We have received a preliminary application in relation to Ms Letby’s case, and work has begun to assess the application. We anticipate further submissions being made to us.
“It is not for the CCRC to determine innocence or guilt in a case, that’s a matter for the courts.
“It is for the CCRC to find, investigate and if appropriate, refer potential miscarriages of justice to the appellate courts when new evidence or new argument means there is a real possibility that a conviction will not be upheld, or a sentence reduced.
“At this stage it is not possible to determine how long it will take to review this application. A significant volume of complicated evidence was presented to the court in Ms Letby’s trials.
“The CCRC is independent. We do not work for the government, courts, police, the prosecution or for anyone applying for a review of their case. This helps us investigate alleged miscarriages of justice impartially.”
A public inquiry into how the nurse committed her crimes is also underway, and detectives from Cheshire Constabulary are continuing their review of the care of some 4,000 babies admitted to hospital while Letby worked as a neonatal nurse.
Source: independent.co.uk
