Experts Cast Doubt on Evidence Used to Convict ...

Lucy Letby, a former British neonatal nurse, was convicted of murdering seven infants under her care

Published Time: 14.07.2024 - 15:31:14 Modified Time: 14.07.2024 - 15:31:14

Lucy Letby, a former British neonatal nurse, was convicted of murdering seven infants under her care. It was a case that captivated the public and attracted international media attention. Though her attempts to appeal the verdicts have been unsuccessful, several experts have since come forward expressing doubts over the evidence used to convict Letby.

Letby was found guilty of killing seven newborn infants and attempting to kill seven others over the course of two trials, PEOPLE previously reported. She was convicted on 15 of 22 possible counts. The retrial came after the initial jury failed to reach a verdict on one of the attempted murder charges.

Letby, 34, was working as a nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, England, at the time of the infant deaths, with the alleged crimes having spanned from 2015 to 2016. She has consistently denied any wrongdoing despite her convictions.

The former nurse was sentenced to life in prison and recently had her request for appeals rejected in court, the BBC reported.

But multiple investigative reports examining the evidence presented in Letby’s months-long murder trial last year include claims that possibly cast doubt on the convictions.

The first story was published by The New Yorker in May, while two subsequent articles published on July 9 — one in The Guardian and the other in The Telegraph. All three quote experts that raise concerns about the evidence, noting that Letby’s conviction stemmed from circumstantial evidence and expert testimony.

One of the key pieces of evidence prosecutors used against Letby was a chart showing that Letby was the only nurse present for the 25 suspicious cases prosecutors said were connected to Letby.

“People get the wrong end of the stick with statistics,” John O’Quigley, a University College London professor of statistical science, told The Guardian. “In my opinion there was nothing out of the ordinary statistically in the spike in deaths, and all the shift chart shows is that when Letby was on duty, Letby was on duty.”

Both The Telegraph and The Guardian reported that there were other neonatal deaths during the time span, for which Letby was not charged. Those deaths were left off the chart, and Letby was not working at the time, the outlets reported.

David Wilson, a criminology professor emeritus at Birmingham City University, told The Telegraph he believes the data on the chart was “cherry-picked.”

During Letby’s trial, prosecutors also pointed to handwritten notes found in her home, in which she wrote that she “killed them on purpose” and that she was evil. Medical experts also testified that the babies who were harmed either suffered an embolism resulting from being injected with air or were poisoned with insulin.

The lead witness for the prosecution during Letby’s first trial was Dr. Dewi Evans, a consultant pediatrician, according to The Guardian, who performed an analysis of the cases of the babies that Letby was accused of harming.

The outlets reported that Evans’ theory on air embolism was based in part on a 1989 paper that analyzed air embolisms in dozens of newborns, finding that the embolisms caused skin discoloration that was also observed in some of the babies in Evans’s analysis of babies prosecutors said were connected to Letby.

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ut one of the doctors who co-authored the paper, Dr. Shoo Lee, who testified during Letby’s appeal but not at her first trial, spoke to both The Guardian and The Telegraph, and pushed back on the prosecution’s claim that the discoloration found in the babies indicated an air embolism.

Lee told The Guardian that in his opinion, the discolorations did not match discoloration caused by an air embolism.

The Guardian reported that Lee’s testimony was not admitted by the court of appeal, with judges ruling that Letby’s attorney’s could have called him during the trial and that the skin discoloration was not the only piece of evidence used by witnesses to indicate an embolism.

The New Yorker spoke to Michael Hall, a retired neonatologist, who, as a defense expert, was expecting to be called to testify during trial. Hall said he would have pointed out what he believes were flaws in the air embolism theory, and also what he says were undetected signs of illness in the babies. But he was never called to testify.

Letby was also convicted of trying to kill two babies by injecting them with synthetic insulin, a theory that was buoyed by blood tests showing drops in blood sugar for the two infants, both of whom survived.

The Telegraph reported that the blood sample was not tested in a forensic lab and that the sample was disposed of before the defense could re-test it, since foul play was not originally suspected.

Alan Wayne Jones, a forensic toxicologist at a Swedish university, told The New Yorker he believes the blood test used was “not sufficient” for prosecution.

“Insulin is not an easy substance to analyze, and you would need to analyze this at a forensic laboratory, where the routines are much more stringent regarding chain of custody, using modern forensic technology,” he told the magazine.

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The New Yorker’s article also described hospital conditions at the time of the deaths, reporting that staff members were overworked and that sanitary conditions were poor, citing an inquest for the former claim and the testimony of a plumber for the latter one.

Letby's lawyer Benjamin Myers is declining to discuss the case with the media, his clerk tells PEOPLE.

Letby was arrested three times in connection with the deaths. Once in 2018 and then again in 2019, but she was released in both instances. Following a 2020 arrest, Letby was remanded in custody.

The key witness at Letby's second trial, prosecutors say, was a doctor who claimed he saw her standing next to an infant whose oxygen levels were dropping and doing nothing about it. The doctor intervened but the baby died three days later at a different hospital.

The Guardian reports that even though Letby has essentially exhausted the appeals process, the case could be investigated by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. The commission has the ability to refer the case back to an appeals court, the paper reports, if it finds new evidence that could have changed the verdict had the jury known about it.