Lucy Letby: a condensed update on recent developments

[Kittybythelighthouse]

So, in the past week or so alone we’ve had:

Leading neonatology expert Dr Shoo Lee (Professor Emeritus at University of Toronto, Honorary Physician at Mount Sinai Hospital, President of the Neonatal Foundation, Founder of Canadian Neonatal Network, Previously Head of Neonatology at University of Toronto and a hospital for sick children) says his 1989 paper, which the prosecution relied on as their only proof of alleged intravenous air embolism (skin discolouration) was misused by the prosecution. He actually went to the appeal hearing and had his paper Judge-splained to him by three CoA judges who probably don’t even have a science A level (the judiciary have a poor record regarding science). He was so astonished and aggrieved that he has has published a new peer reviewed paper filling in all new evidence since 1989 and distinguishing between intravenous and arterial air embolism which the 1989 paper didn’t do. The conclusion: there is zero evidence for skin discolouration in intravenous air embolism, which is the only possibility in this case. This means there is absolutely no evidence to support an allegation of air embolism. It didn’t happen.

https://t.co/TRokh1hneu

Dr Shoo Lee pulled together a blue ribbon panel of the world’s best experts in relevant areas. Never before in legal history has a group of such highly regarded international experts come together to challenge the evidence against a convicted serial killer. They went through all of the evidence independently and pro bono (with the proviso that they would publish reports regardless of findings). Yesterday they held a press conference. Conclusion: there were no murders. There was plenty of poor care, medical malpractice, mistakes, and a poorly run struggling hospital.

“If this was a hospital in Canada, it would be shut down”

Link to their summary report: drive.google.com/file/d/1aV4zwwdBYw8Z_E-Tpe9_-iPR7n8cZdFk/view

A leak from an Operation Hummingbird detective which reveals that deaths were chosen as suspicious or not based on whether Letby was on shift (remember, most of the babies had uncontroversial post mortems at the time). There were ten other cases originally classed as suspicious until it was established Letby couldn’t have done them, then they magically became unsuspicious.

“Four more children would later be added, two children would be dropped, collapses deleted and added as the focus was turned in different directions, and the whole chart thoroughly chopped and changed. The guiding principle being, always, that Letby must be in the frame.” Trials of Lucy Letby on X.

https://t.co/FOO55lWlCi

Chester Police responded with a statement to The Mail on Sunday:

“There is a significant public interest in these matters, however, every story that is published, statement made, or comment posted online that refers to the specific details of a live investigation can impede the course of justice and cause further distress to the families concerned. It is these families and the ongoing investigations that remain our primary focus.”

“Cheshire Constabulary's statement to the Mail on Sunday is remarkable, coming from a police force that put out an HOUR-LONG promotional video about their own investigation.

They claim to be demurring from commenting now because "every story that is published, statement made, or comment posted online that refers to the specific details of a live investigation can impede the course of justice and cause further distress to the families concerned."

Such concerns did not stop them, less than two years ago, from flooding the press with incendiary and prejudicial commentary, going so far as to announce that they'd be reviewing the care of 4,000 babies that Letby may have ever come into contact with.

The lead investigator, Paul Hughes, even sat down with the co-hosts of the Daily Mail podcast for an episode called "Catching the Killer Nurse," where he speculated to no end about the supposedly evil and cunning machinations behind Letby's every move, and concluded that "she clearly does love the attention. I think she's loved the attention of a trial." (From The Trials of Lucy Letby on X).

Is Letby the one who loved the attention? The investigation was as active then as it is today. Why the silence now? 🤔

Thirlwall released the witness statement of Michelle Turner on behalf of Liverpool Women’s Hospital. She speaks about Letby's placement in 2012 & 2015, including how unlikely she would have been in an intensive care room without another nurse present.

thirlwall.public-inquiry.uk/wp-content/upl…

Former Director of Public Prosecutions Lord MacDonald to BBC’s World at One: “It is clear that there is now this quite impressive body of work. Something may have gone wrong here. That clearly has to be taken seriously.”

"New documents released by the Thirlwall Inquiry also show how the Countess of Chester refused to take part in research to improve outcomes for premature babies."

Neena Modi: "The Countess of Chester was the only hospital to decline participation."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/04/the-10-baby-deaths-that-cast-doubt-on-lucy-letbys-guilt/

Meanwhile the CPS still (as far as we know) refuse to hand over former Dr Dewi Evans new report about how one of the babies died - written in October 2024 after BBC’s File on Four challenged him about Letby not having been on shift when an ‘incriminating’ x ray was taken. In fact she hadn’t been on shift since the baby was born. She was convicted of killing this baby.

The CCRC announced yesterday that they have opened their investigation of the case. They assembled a team specifically for this case late last year, in anticipation of an application. This is an extraordinarily speedy and organised response from the CCRC.

https://ccrc.gov.uk/news/lucy-letby-application-received-by-criminal-cases-review-commission/

This has been a remarkable, historic, run of events. It is now looking very likely that the case will go back to the Court of Appeal, or there may be a more expedient solution. Whatever happens, it’s very unlikely to take the CCRC their usual 10 years to deal with it. They are on the ropes recently, with a CEO stepping down and a raft of bad press. I am not Mystic Meg, but my money is on an exoneration within the year.

The CCRC and the Courts will overlook anything, no matter how extraordinary, if it doesn't fit their procedural niceties.

Initially I thought the intervention was premature, but I think actually they played a blinder - it was key to get this out in the public arena before the end of the Thirlwall.

Equally, they do have statisticians on their team. I’d hope they also have psychologists and microbiologists/epidemiologists for the sewage issues.

The thing about the “appalling vista” argument is that logically there is a high water mark where public confidence in major institutions (not just the police!) is already undermined and can only begin to be redeemed by righting the MoJ. At this point looking the other way will no longer work, but just make the “appalling vista” worse and worse and worse. We are way past that point with this case. This is why (imo) the CCRC assembled a Letby focused team months ago, before they even got the application. It’s a totally unprecedented situation.

Letby was alway there as there weren't enough staff on the unit with her qualifications, so overtime was in abundance.

Did they look at any babies that died when she wasn't on duty or had been around her care or did they only go back over the babies that died in and around when she was on duty?

Do you mean the panel? I don't think Lucy's defense team would get access to medical records for babies unless Lucy had been charged with harming or murdering them.

This is one of the unfair things about the case.

No the original police investigation, did they just concentrate on looking for LL to be the culprit or did they investigate each baby death and then find only the murdered babies had the same nurse.

In affect what im asking is was it a blind investigation from the start or was it LL is the murderer so lets find any babies that died and see if it looks like they are murdered by LL?

The latter. They actually initially flagged some deaths as suspicious but discounted them when they realised she wasn't on shift.

https://www.thejusticegap.com/become-convicted-serial-killer-without-killing-anyone/

Interesting blog post published before the Lucy Letby case occured predicting very accurately what would happen.

I think there is a male nurse in jail who's case doesn't sound very safe either.

This is an interesting explanation, but it still seems to me to point to a mishandling of the strategy by the defence. If the defence had called Shoo Lee (or another expert) to testify that a venous air embolism with the observed symptoms had never been reported in the medical literature, and called another expert to testify that the insulin test was invalid, then this would go far beyond "it's so long ago nobody can diagnose for sure", and would surely move the allegations to within reasonable doubt. This seems to me much stronger than just casting doubt on Evans's abilities without having a defence expert testifying. I may be misunderstanding some aspects of the court procedure though!

They actually initially flagged some deaths as suspicious but discounted them when they realised she wasn't on shift.

I wonder whether they could draw the same air or insulin murders form those deaths - shame all the deaths weren't presented without the shift pattern

It's funny how people are so sure that they would never be so unlucky as to be caught up in such a situation - they cannot comprehend that sometimes one left field occurrence can snowball into a series of unfortunate and apparently unpredictable events. I suppose if you haven't experienced it, it seems preposterous because there "must be" checks and balances within the system that would prevent it.

I can understand it to a degree, having been there and had my own very rude awakening, and it is then difficult to achieve the balance between paranoia and accepting that our systems are run by fallible humans, and will, statistically (ha!) have a smattering of individuals within them with their own unpleasant personal biases that will "unconsciously" motivate them in some ways.

What I find difficult to comprehend is that most people won't engage at all when you ask "what would you do / how do you think you would react" despite there being plenty of historical evidence of MoJs etc.

There is also this odd suggestion that those who are "unlucky" should just accept their fate and quietly take one for the team to protect system failure, because it does work most of the time right?

I think this mind set is driven by fear mainly, and magical thinking to a degree - if we stick our fingers in our ears, the nasties will go away by the power of thought.

There's the "greater good" approach, which demands the dehumanisation of victims of rogue regimes and systems, and the pragmatic acceptance of "collateral damage ". This is what saddens me so much. And it plays into an unpleasant zeitgeist so well encapsulated by the poem that ends (sic) and then they came for me, and there was no-one left to speak up.

I wonder if it is as religious types opine, an inherent flaw of humanity, or is it more likely conditioning - I suspect the latter.

What I find difficult to comprehend is that most people won't engage at all when you ask "what would you do / how do you think you would react" despite there being plenty of historical evidence of MoJs etc.

I don't think that's at all difficult to comprehend, personally. Not from people who believe that LL is in the wrong to appeal and that others are wrong to publicly discuss any concerns at all about her convictions. If they engage at all with the possibility that this might be another miscarriage of justice, their criticisms can't stand. It's one or the other. And some of them choose the criticisms.

I‘m not sure if anyone is familiar with the case of Michael Shirley here

The circumstantial evidence looked damning but the problem was, no matter how it looked, he hadn’t done it.

Colin Norris also has a seriously unsafe conviction. It is a similar case to Lucy Letby with potentially dodgy insulin evidence. But the CCRC referred it back to the court of appeal 4 years ago. Does anyone know what happened?

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2021/feb/12/colin-norris-serial-killer-nurse-conviction-court-of-appeal

Our justice system seriously needs to get a grip of the way it deals with medical evidence. I am surprised anyone wants to be a nurse.

I can totally understand. Having been involved with family court after a very nasty DV relationship I was absolutely blown away how little focus there was on evidence, and that outcomes were often made on pre-determined views. My solicitor told me in advance what the likely outcome was depending upon which particular Judge was involved.

I believe his appeal is being heard this week.

There are myriad problems with expert witnesses. In this case Letby’s team were likely very very overwhelmed. They had much less money than the prosecution and her solicitor was the same solicitor she used for her house purchase. Solicitors actually do the bulk of the research so this is more crucial than it seems. In order to have an expert like Lee on your team you need to A: know about him and how to contact him (have the connections, research base to find the right people etc). B: have the funds to pay him. C: hope that he is the type of expert who is even willing to do legal work.

In Lees case he seems like an obvious call, but to focus in on a name on a 1989 paper amongst a mountain of information, without knowing that he would take this as seriously as he has, or even disagree with the prosecution, is much more of a long shot than it seems with the benefit of hindsight. Besides, he would cost a lot of money, he’s based in Canada. Worst of all, as he said at the panel, he doesn’t like to do legal work.

It’s this last problem that is actually a huge issue for the courts. The courts want the best possible experts - we all do I think, given that their testimony can affect case law and therefore our own lives and future legislation. However, the BEST experts usually do not have the time, or the inclination, to work on legal cases. They are the best, so they are busy at the front lines of their particular speciality. Taking a year out of that to work on a legal case is not attractive and, I can well imagine, seems impractical. So, the reality is that the law experts the courts end up seeing are usually retired and not necessarily leaders in the field. It’s a conundrum.

In short, the panel that wrote the new reports wouldn’t have been in reach for the defence team at the time (most likely).

Doesn't bode well for Lucy being released any time soon does it?

That’s the big question. Cheshire police say they looked at everything, so does Dewi Evans. But we know for sure now that he originally had pegged a further ten deaths as suspicious but then decided they were not suspicious once it transpired that Letby couldn’t have done them. Whether or not the consultants, who by the time of police involvement were extremely focused on Letby as the only suspect, and who the police foolishly used to help them in their investigations, were in any way balanced or fair is a matter of conjecture at this stage. We also know that Dewi did not look at the records he was given blind, though he originally said he had.

The CCRC assembled their special Letby focused team in September last year. Ages before they even got the defence application (which was this month). That is unprecedented. I think it’s clear that this is an extreme situation of huge public interest at a time when the CCRC are under great scrutiny. I think it’ll have an unprecedented response, too.

Chilling

But the CCRC referred the other nurses case back to the court of appeal four years ago.

I mean if his conviction is unsafe how can it be ok for the court of appeal to take four years to hear it?

So even if the CCRC do refer it back the court could sit on it for years.

The point I’m making is that this case is so extraordinary and has so much public interest that it is unlikely (imo) to go the usual way. I make the point about the CCRC assembling a special team well in advance of receiving the application as an example of an extraordinary response to an extraordinary situation.

We also know that Dewi did not look at the records he was given blind, though he originally said he had.

if that is the case it's appalling

I’ve just read through what purports to be a court transcript which someone has posted elsewhere (T word). Evans is not only slippery but my goodness he doesn’t suffer a moment’s self doubt does he. What an arrogant and thoroughly obnoxious piece of shit he is whilst blatantly lying through his teeth.