To think that Lucy Letby will get a new trial?

[NameChangeMay2026]

The previous thread on Letby is almost full. Posting here for traffic.

If we have any lawyers here, what do you think the likelihood is of Letby getting a new trial? I'm a layperson, but I'm going to guess that she will get one. It seems that many, many rebuttals have appeared since her conviction.

YABU - she will not get a new trial. The case is settled.
YANBU - the new evidence/discussion is compelling and she will probably get a re-trial.

I've been mainly convinced of her guilt, but I have started reading the free Private Eye series on the case by Phil Hammond. Now I don't know what to think. Here's the series, if anyone wants to read it. https://www.private-eye.co.uk/special-reports/lucy-letby

Agree with all. If she does have her conviction quashed (as opposed to having a retrial and being cleared that way), she will surely need a new identity. She would not be safe otherwise.

That's a good point.

Actually a large group of medical experts do agree that the medical evidence doesn't show murder, with a broad range of specialities (the sort of panel that should have been instructed for the trial, as opposed to allowing one professional expert witness to nix it in favour of his recommendations).

And no, I'm not a doctor, but it's not beyond the wit of an averagely intelligent lay person to google the things I highlighted and see the problems at a very basic factual level.

The “confession” notes are only one part of the 9 months worth of evidence that was heard in the case. The fact that people are placing undue emphasis on them shows they know nothing about how the criminal justice system and law if evidence works and would be best to refrain from commenting or expressing an opinion at all. An ignorant and ill informed opinion doesn’t carry any significance, legally anyway.

But the problems are not basic. They are extremely complex.

Hopefully she does get a new trial. It was such an emotive crime that people obviously want someone to blame but it sounds like there was an awful lot of failings in the hospital trust that were attributed to one person.

We happen to be discussing the notes in the last few pages. That does not mean that anyone thinks they are the most major part of the case or that anyone is placing undue emphasis on them. It simply means we are currently discussing one aspect. In fact, I said a few posts up that she may be innocent but that there is a lot of smoke when you take all the weird things about the case together. That is, specifically not focusing on just the notes.

I really hope she gets a new trial too.

I know there are questions about whether a new trial could be fair, given the publicity. But there surely must be a lot of people who haven't been invested enough to read about it in-depth.

I cannot believe that a) there wasn't a whole group of defence experts, but now there is 🙈 and b) that the police didn't convene a panel of prosecution experts as the National Crime Agency told them to, but relied on one long-retired expert.

It's basic in terms of saying that a person did fatal damage to an internal organ in the circumstances described without being able to define a mechanism is a very basic problem when it comes to the standards supposedly required for a criminal conviction. Likewise the incredibly unscientific "dollop of air" alleged administration. See also "the baby died" - direct quote from Dewi Evans on the stand when he refused to answer certain questions - he repeated it several times as the proof of harm, without explaining why. If medical experts can't precisely explain how death has occurred, they can't claim it is murder, at least not by the expected standards for beyond reasonable doubt.

I don't think that people are not bright (just not able to understand the technical details) and I don't think judges would be any better. If anything a jury has less faith in the system and so is likely to be more skeptical. Many of the issues in Lucy's case are down to the judge. The court of appeal also has a lousy track record with scientific evidence.

I think one of the main problems here is the mechanism by which it was decided the babies were murdered. This ought to be established first before a culprit is sought or a trial can take place. Usually it is the coroner who decides this in a non adversarial manner. But in this case the coroners' verdicts were disregarded.

Sorry to keep plugging Private Eye (I don't work for their marketing department honestly) but in one of their articles they write about this. Apparently in the Netherlands, following a false conviction of a nurse, they now send an independent multidisciplinary team into hospitals if there is a spike in deaths to determine the cause.

Also the Law Commission published reccomendations to improve the expert witness system ages ago. Probably time to dust those off.

if this was a miscarriage of justice then how horrific. I’m shocked that a mistake like this could be made in this day and age.

Pat Brown agrees with you. She thinks that Casey Anthony would never have been acquitted under a professional jury.

Re. your first sentence: That there was a liver injury is not in question. How it occurred: Dr. Modi says possibly a birth injury. Other opinion (I'm not sure whose) is that Dr. Brearey may have punctured the liver with a needle during resus, although there was not a needle injury on the liver per the postmortem, I think (would have to check). The implication during the trial was that Letby hit him.

So I understand that there are issues with the medical evidence, which is why I support a re-trial.

I can't understand the AE and insulin stuff, except that I can see there are now conflicting opinions contrary to what was presented at her trial. For me, that's a big reason to have a re-trial.

There is history of miscarriages of justice based on compelling but wrong experts. Sally Clark springs to mind immediately.
Will we ever know the truth in this case? I doubt it. Is the conviction safe? I doubt that too.

Agree with all.

The problem with that argument is that, I think it was 90% of the babies on the indictment, would’ve been treated on the downgraded unit, so they weren’t the most at risk babies in the first case, hence why their deaths were so unexpected.

I’ve been involved in a CCRC application before, and I don’t think she’ll get a retrial. It requires entirely new evidence unavailable at trial, not a new interpretation of existing evidence. Nothing that I can see that’s being argued is “new” - it is all arguments that could’ve been advanced at the original trial, but weren’t. The only people who know why they weren’t are Lucy and her defence team.

I do think the media circus is entirely unedifying though on the part of her new legal team.

Well we broadly agree it seems with regards to the deficiencies of the medical evidence. This trial was handled arse about face and postulating that Lucy Letby hit a baby with enough force to cause the liver injury is completely undermined when you look up the basic anatomy.

Not a lawyer.
There has been a major cover-up of incidents and she has been made a scapegoat for failings in the department and she was an easy target. They have closed ranks and pointed evidence to her, it is toxic and I'm hoping she gets a retrial.

The Private Eye special report does not say “Lucy Letby is innocent”, but it does argue that the evidence used to convict her was scientifically flawed, incomplete, and potentially unsafe, and therefore a retrial or at least a full appeal is justified. It is a critique of the process, not a declaration of her innocence.

Yes, exactly. While I remain deeply suspicious of her, I do hope she gets a re-trial, for the reasons you said.

I would also rather a guilty person went free (if she is guilty) than an innocent person be imprisoned (if she is innocent) if her guilt cannot be proved beyond all reasonable doubt.

I hope so too.

I haven't looked up about the liver anatomy. What does the literature say about it in the context of a proposed blow?

I can’t be bothered to go back and look now, but I think as part of the Thirwall enquiry there was something about the whole service in the area being in a state of change, transitioning to a different structure, and this is a very high risk period for users. It had impacted the availability of intensive care cots and the efficiency of the transport service as well as communication and ease of collaboration between senior clinicians across the various units.

If you look it up, a neonates liver is usually between 5 and 7 cm in size, and is protected somewhat by the ribs. In a preterm baby possibly smaller. In my opinion, and apologies for being possibly too graphic, a blow of sufficient force externally would have to be a very strategic upper cut to avoid either rib damage or soft tissue damage or damage to other organs. I have seen it suggested that it was an impact injury, which generated the force, but the feasibility of that is even more unlikely, as slamming a baby on a hard surface in a NICU environment without detection is rather difficult to envision. If a baby was accidentally dropped, the chances of only the liver being damaged are impropable.

No, you've picked up some inaccurate information there. (There is a lot of it around!) Almost none of babies on the indictment would have been treated on the downgraded unit

Once downgraded, the unit was not allowed to accept babies under 32 weeks' gestation, multiple births, of infants born after complex pregnancies.

So this means, out of the seven deaths:

Babies A, E, O and P wouldn't have been there (multiples)

Babies C and D wouldn't have been there (complex pregnancies)

Baby I - the medical team agreed she shouldn't have been transferred so much, so I doubt they would have been transferring her to a level 1 unit.

So six wouldn't have been there, one uncertain.

Out of the babies allegedly harmed:

Babies B, F, L and M wouldn't have been there (multiples, with the alleged incident shortly after birth)

Baby Q wouldn't have been there (too premature)

Baby G would certainly not have been there so soon. Her parents recalled that they were happy with her level 3 care, but Chester was agitating to have her moved back to them at level 2 (financial implications)

Babies H and K would likely have been born there because baby H was a sudden deterioration of later gestation baby and baby K was an emergency birth. They would have been transferred out as soon as possible since both needed mechanical ventilation and Chester now had only one emergency ICU cot. So baby H would have been gone before the first alleged incident with Lucy Letby. Baby K was transferred out quickly and died, but this wasn't alleged to be murder.

Baby J was a multiple with alleged incidents later in life than babies B, F, L and M. So perhaps she would have been transferred to a level one, but to one not used to handling stomas? Seems unlikely.

Baby N had haemophilia which again, the unit struggled to handle. Unlikely he'd have been transferred there as a level 1. He certainly wouldn't have been born there - complex pregnancy.

So six or seven out of the seven babies who died would not have been born or treated there.

It's a more mixed picture among the babies allegedly injured, but six out of ten would definitely not have been there. Four at most might have been. And of course, there's no reason to believe that "collapses" like these children's didn't continue after the downgrade anyway. Nobody is counting.