Is Lucy Letby innocent?
UK journalists are now able to report on criticism of evidence used in the former nurse’s murder trial and questions over whether she's a killer or a victim of coincidence.
“I’m innocent.” Those were the words of convicted child killer Lucy Letby as she was led away from the dock at Manchester Crown Court last week after receiving her 15th whole life jail sentence.
This was a retrial for the charge of attempted murder of an infant, known in court as Baby K, in February 2016.
It comes 10 months after the trial where the neonatal nurse was jailed for seven murders and six attempted murders of babies in her care at the Countess of Chester hospital.
There was an intense period of news reporting after that conviction, but this went quiet after the CPS decided to pursue the retrial.
And so for some months the British press has not been able to report on the doubts experts have expressed regarding the evidence at Letby’s first trial due to the impending retrial and contempt law.
However across the pond The New Yorker published a 13,000 word article, which at its core argued that Letby’s convictions were not safe and that perhaps there had been no murders at all.
The article was blocked for UK readers, but links avoiding the ban were widely circulated online.
The contempt law is in place to ensure a defendant gets a fair trial. One could argue in this day and age it is as pointless as a leaky bucket, given the law was written in 1981, pre-internet and pre-social media. In the UK, you could easily view discussions about the article on social media but not read the actual article.
The Guardian referred to the New Yorker piece as the “elephant in the room” during the retrial in its post-conviction article.
The piece had a range of expert sources calling into question the medical evidence and the defence case. These are legitimate questions being raised by professionals in their field (more on what they are shortly).
My issue with the New Yorker piece was it cherry picked the evidence and was clearly biased in Letby’s favour from the opening paragraph. It described the case against Letby as a “rush to judgement”, which flies in the face of facts. There was a police investigation lasting years. A trial lasting 10 months. A retrial lasting three weeks. If this is a rush, I would hate to see what would be considered a long drawn out process.
The article states British people view the NHS as a religion, with the implication being we would rather blame a single nurse for these babies’ deaths than consider the possibility the calamitous environment at the hospital was to blame. An inquiry into what went wrong at the hospital is underway now. Even the new health secretary Wes Streeting has stated the NHS is broken. We aren’t deluded about problems in the system.
And in its final paragraphs the article refers to a police-made documentary and a Netflix deal to produce a documentary, as if true crime TV has only just been invented with this particular case.
In a subsequent interview the article author Rachel Aviv complained: “So much of the media coverage — and the trial itself — started at the point at which we’ve determined that [Lucy] Letby is an evil murderer; all her texts, notes, and movements are then viewed through that lens.”
Anyone who has ever sat through a British trial - and I should imagine a US one - would know it is the prosecution’s job to prove Letby is guilty. That’s why the media coverage of what the prosecution said in the trial put across the view that Letby is guilty. Her own evidence and the defence’s case also received media coverage about how they proclaimed her innocence. This is how a trial works. The prosecution is there to prosecute and the defence is there to defend, while the media is there to report it. To then complain “they reported the prosecution says she’s a murderer *shock horror*” is just bizarre.
It’s also odd to question the media coverage after the guilty verdicts framing her as an “evil murderer”. How else should the media refer to a nurse found guilty of killing premature babies by a jury of her peers following a trial lasting 10 months? The “persecuted innocent”?
Now that the retrial has ended and those restrictions are over, UK publications are free to publish their own analysis. Features by the BBC, Guardian and Telegraph are worth reading if you have an interest in this case.
Most experts quoted in the press have emphasised they are not speaking out to proclaim Letby’s innocence. They are questioning whether the evidence presented to the jury was sound and therefore whether her trials were fair.
These are the key issues with the evidence being discussed in those articles:
The shift pattern. A shift chart presented to the jury showed Letby as being on shift during all of the incidents of death or collapse. Statisticians say the chart only includes the babies related to the charges, and excludes other collapses and deaths that occurred at other times. When doctors were first arguing with senior management to have Letby taken off duty, the management pushed back that it was all a coincidence.
David Wilson, emeritus professor of criminology at Birmingham City University, told the Telegraph: “The weakness of that sort of statistical analysis was really as plain as a pikestaff. What the defence never did was challenge the fact there were other incidents during that time period when Letby wasn’t on duty, and, in fact, there were [at least] nine other neonatal deaths on the ward during that period.”
Air embolism. The prosecution’s lead expert witness was Dr Dewi Evans, who concluded seven of the babies were harmed by air being injected into them. There is very little scientific research regarding this sort of condition in babies. However Evans relied on a academic paper from 1989 that observed an unusual rash in babies who experienced the condition. Critics argue the evidence for air embolus is weak, and there are other reasons babies may present the way they did. The defence also tried to get Evans’ evidence dismissed, as they argued he had constructed theories designed to support the charges. This was rejected by the judge, who decided it was for the jury to assess the quality of the evidence.
Insulin poisoning. Letby was convicted of poisoning two babies with synthetic insulin. Experts have questioned the test results that indicated a steady flow of synthetic insulin had been administered. However Evans’ evidence on insulin poisoning was reviewed by another expert, who gave evidence at the trial and agreed with his findings. The defence never robustly challenged that poisoning had taken place during the trial, in fact they agreed and Letby gave evidence saying they were poisoned, just not by her. No one has proven that the tests used to convict Letby were wrong or inaccurate.
The Guardian writes: “The defence never asked the biochemists whether the test was the right kind to prove insulin poisoning.”
Questions on defence. During her original trial, Letby’s defence called no medical experts as witnesses to raise questions on the evidence around air embolus and insulin poisoning. At her appeal the defence did call Dr Shoo Lee, author of the 1989 paper on air embolisms, to provide expert testimony. The judge at the appeal ruled the criteria for the admission of fresh evidence had not been met and that the defence should have called Dr Lee to give evidence at the trial if they wanted to rely on his testimony. It’s worth noting that during the original trial the defence did challenge the evidence on air embolism when cross examining Evans, and suggested the deaths were due to failings on the ward repeatedly.
A baby unit under pressure. In 2013 the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester had four deaths each year. In 2015 to 2016 (the period of Letby’s crimes) there was a cluster of 13 deaths. A review of the unit highlighted issues such as staffing but found no “definite causal correlation” between the cases. The unit often did not meet British Association of Perinatal Medicine standards, which stipulated that babies in intensive care should have one-to-one care. The unit was downgraded so it stopped taking on the most premature babies as patients, and subsequently the number of deaths fell. This is around the same time Letby was removed from the unit.
Very poorly babies. The prosecution argued the babies were stable before attacks by Letby. However some experts have questioned whether the unexplained collapses of these premature infants could be linked to other causes. All were born early, were underweight and suffered multiple complications. However doctors on the ward who gave evidence at the trial were clearly struck by the spike of sudden and unexplained collapses. It’s also worth noting the defence did put across the argument during cross-examination that these were poorly babies.
Prof Peter Green, co-author of a Royal Statistical Society paper warning about the use of shift patterns as evidence in criminal trials, said: “As the RSS report makes clear, correlation is not causation, and it is essential to consider alternative explanations for the observed outcomes. There may have been no crime in the sense of any malice by any one clinician or nurse. There may have been incompetence, you can’t actually rule that out – but it’s not a crime to be bad at your job. And remember that these were desperately ill babies in a really sick, badly managed, hospital.”
In addition to these points, there is Letby’s insistence that she is innocent. She is not the first convicted criminal who continues to argue they are innocent after trial. And she won’t be the last.
This BBC article says:
“Even after two trials, questions about the nurse’s character, motive and psychology are still unanswered.”
Images of Letby from before her arrest show her smiling in her hospital scrubs, or on nights out with friends. Is this the face of a killer, people ask?
A lack of clear motive and the sentiment that “they don’t look like they have it in them” and “her mates say she’s nice” are not in my view grounds to find someone not guilty.
Serial killers do not look like monsters. They look like normal people. They have friends and families like normal people. This is why some are able to get away with their crimes for so long. And they do terrible things despite looking normal because there is something fundamentally wrong with them that most of us will never understand.
I make no judgement as to whether Letby is guilty or not guilty. I respect the verdict of a jury that has sat daily through 10 months of evidence and another that sat through three weeks of evidence.
They know far more than me regarding the overall picture created by all of the evidence in this case - not just the statistical evidence or medical evidence, but eye-witness testimony that found Letby’s behaviour odd. Her presence in rooms where she should not be. Her collection of hospital paperwork including discharge sheets that she kept at home. Her multiple Facebook searches for families of the babies involved. The doctor who said he saw Letby stand by a collapsing baby’s incubator doing nothing. The mother who said Letby told her “trust me I’m a nurse” after she found her stood in a room with her “acutely distressed” baby as he bled from the mouth.
And they have watched first hand the evidence given by witnesses. There is far more power in seeing someone cross-examined in person, than from reading a take of it after the event.
However if people with expertise in the type of evidence used in this case are asking questions then it’s right the press is reporting on them in an analytical way. That is crucial in an open justice system.
This is not the end of this case. A public inquiry into the tragic deaths at the Countess of Chester hospital is underway.
That inquiry's role will not be to question Letby’s guilt. She’s been found guilty in a court of law, the system respects those verdicts.
But that inquiry will seek to answer how this took place, and probe the conduct of those working at the hospitals at every level. It will not scrutinise the evidence submitted at trial, but perhaps it will be an opportunity to get more answers.
And meanwhile a team of detectives continues to investigate corporate manslaughter allegations against the Countess of Chester hospital. A team Is also looking at thousands of other babies who were cared for by Letby to see if there are other potential cases.
If Letby wants to continue to fight her convictions, she can turn to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. It investigates potential miscarriages of justice. For Letby to be successful here, there would need to be new information that may have changed the outcome of the case had the jury known about it.
Letby is guilty in the eyes of the law. But this story does not end with her conviction.
In other news
Hollywood actor George Clooney has called for Joe Biden to stand down as the Democratic nominee for the presidential race. It comes just weeks after Clooney was photographed alongside Biden at a fundraiser. Clooney writes for the New York Times: “It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
Last week’s UK general election result was not surprising to those who had been following the polls. However Sunday’s French election results were. The far-right National Rally, that had been expected to triumph, came in third behind a left alliance and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party. Vox writes: “…the winning parties in both the UK and France won by realizing that the nature of their systems required that they sacrifice some specific candidates in order to defeat the right.”
In advice to the new Prime Minister, who is in the US for the Nato leaders’ meeting this week, former Labour PM Tony Blair urged him to embrace AI, control immigration and avoid vulnerability on “wokeism”. Writing for The Times, Blair said the party had won by returning to the centre-left, where “policy comes first and politics second”.
Sir Keir Starmer should send a gift basket as a thank you to Rishi Sunak for his timing in calling the election. The new PM is benefiting from the national “good vibes” as a result of England’s win in the Euros semi-final. It doesn’t matter that he has zero power over the result, what matters is people now associate the start of a Labour government with a time when they felt national pride and happiness. That is positivity you cannot buy or manufacture.
The backlash against the Duke and Duchess of Sussex continues, with outrage over a decision to nominate Prince Harry for the Pat Tillman award for service. The award is named after a former American football player who was killed by friendly fire while serving in the US army. It is set to go to former soldier Harry for his work launching the Invictus Games for wounded service people. War hero Tillman’s mother has criticised the decision to award the duke, saying it shouldn’t be given to such a divisive individual. The duke has reportedly been left “stunned” by the controversy. The Sun, predictably, writes Harry’s charitable endeavours do not “outweigh his more contentious actions”. The Guardian writes the fact that the “award nomination is getting so much backlash from Americans speaks volumes about how badly his brand is faring in his new home”.
Did Reform UK field fake candidates for the general election? It’s the claim that’s been going viral on social media, but so far it seems the reality is less extreme, albeit the party still has questions to answer. The Byline Times this week highlighted a candidate, Mark Matlock, who some believed had used an AI-generated picture and had not been seen at the election count. Other candidates were reportedly also invisible on the campaign trail and hard to trace. In Scotland, several candidates have “ghost offices” that don’t appear to exist. What seems to have happened is Reform wanted to get candidates for every constituency, and as a result fielded a few that weren’t particularly serious about the job. Known as “paper candidates”, they were there only to increase the party’s voter share overall. The cries of “prove your candidates are real” plays right into Reform’s hands and the party is relishing laughing at the “fake news” tying itself up in knots over the story. Matlock is a real person, but he edited a photo of himself heavily to change the colour of his tie and remove the background. The questions the press should be pushing on is the transparency around who the candidates are, editing of photographs for campaign material, absence of photographs for some candidates and what’s going on with the campaign or agent addresses that do not appear to be real.
What I’m Watching
The Boys (Amazon Prime). If you were in any doubt that the previous three seasons of The Boys were about the rise of Donald Trump’s crazed style of politics then this latest round will erase them. The satirical show that seeks to shock with gruesome violence and sexual scenes (last year one of the heroes got intimate with an octopus) follows the story of The Seven. They’re a team of corrupt superheroes whose careers are overseen by a large corporation called Vought. One of the new additions this year is a loud-mouthed superhero YouTuber called Firecracker who yells deranged conspiracy theories to her loyal followers in order to bolster support for Vought (which is presumably like the MAGA wing of the Republican Party in this show). And there’s even a reference to Pizza-gate - the far-right conspiracy theory that kids were being kidnapped by Democrats and held in the basement of a pizza restaurant. That lead superhero Homelander is supposed to be Trump is no secret. The show creators owned that several years ago. The PR behind creating superheroes who America looks up to has always been a huge part of the show, but in this series we see that become messier. The narrative is harder to control now that former member of The Seven, Starlight, has gone rogue and is leading a small army against Homelander. We see Vought’s public message become even more about distorting the truth and trying to incite Starlight (ie, left wing politics) into reacting. I’ve not reached the end yet, but it very much feels like a satirical version of the build up to the next US election.
A Family Affair (Netflix). Do not watch this movie.
Excellent analysis of the Letby case, thank you.
“Do not watch this movie”! — noted!