Lucy Letby convictions under scrutiny as experts challenge trial evidence in new ITV doc
Several medical experts criticise the 'deeply disturbing' and 'flawed' evidence used to convict killer nurse Lucy Letby in a new documentary on TV tonight.
Letby was found guilty of murdering seven newborn babies and attempting to kill seven others and was handed 15 whole life sentences, meaning she will never be released from prison.
But in ITV 's Lucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt? her barrister Mark McDonald says: 'There's no direct evidence, no one saw her do anything wrong.' It comes after it was reported that 'scared' Letby can't lose weight as she hoards 'junk food' behind bars.
He adds: 'In the trial, they started from the starting point, 'She has done harm. Now we have to show how she has harmed each child....we're just going to put together a theory.' And she was convicted on that theory.'
Two appeals have failed. But in February a panel of medical experts, led by Dr Shoo Lee, found Letby did not murder any babies. Her defence team has now submitted an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
Dr Neena Modi, ex-president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, says: 'It's been deeply disturbing that one can have such a... tremendously important trial that seems to have been conducted with so many flaws.'
One alleged flaw is a shift chart, used to prove Letby was always present when the babies were harmed at the Countess of Chester Hospital from 2015 to 2016.
But statistician Professor Jane Hutton says some incidents, when Letby was not working, were left off, adding: 'This is a summary that is so crude it can only be described as grossly misleading.'
It was also claimed Letby must have caused one baby's death by removing a breathing tube. But several experts say the tubes can be dislodged for a 'variety of reasons'.
Notes by Letby, including the phrase 'I am evil I did this' were presented as confessional in court. But it is claimed she was encouraged by hospital staff to write down her feelings to help cope with stress.
It is also alleged the prosecution's lead expert, Dr Dewi Evans, has altered his view about how three babies died since the case.
But he denies this, saying his evidence has been agreed by a jury and the Court of Appeal. He also argues the case by Dr Shoo Lee's panel has not been held to scrutiny in court and contains significant factual errors.
The CPS said: 'Lucy Letby was convicted of 15 separate counts following two jury trials.
'In May 2024, the Court of Appeal dismissed Letby's leave to appeal on all grounds, rejecting her argument that expert prosecution evidence was flawed.'
It added that it is considering police files on further baby deaths and collapses at the Countess of Chester and Liverpool Women's Hospital.
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ITV News
2 hours ago
- ITV News
Lucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt?
Lucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt? - This programme explores the views of a team of international scientists who say that the prosecution case against nurse Lucy Letby doesn't stand up to scrutiny. More info
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Lucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt? review – one of the most meticulous documentaries in years
When three times more babies than expected die on a neonatal ward and one nurse is on duty during those deaths, it's got to be pretty much an open-and-shut case, hasn't it? Especially when breathing tubes have been clearly deliberately dislodged by someone from their tiny bodies and blood tests show spikes in insulin that can only be explained by the stuff being injected. And if you find someone who has written notes to herself about her guilt, then the way forward is clear. Lock the perpetrator up. Throw away the key. Such was the initial and still persisting narrative in the case of Lucy Letby, the neonatal nurse at the Countess of Chester hospital in Cheshire who became, in tabloid parlance, 'Britain's worst child serial killer', when she was convicted in 2023 of seven murders and seven attempted murders of the infants in her care. Since then, there has been growing disquiet about the quality of the evidence against her and the reliability of her conviction. Lucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt sets itself the formidable task of forcing passion and sentiment aside and unpacking the science and statistics around the most contended pieces of evidence so that, perhaps, facts – buried, missed, distorted or otherwise – can be examined by a newly informed mass audience. In its marshalling and explanation of complicated medical and mathematical issues, it succeeds brilliantly, covering more ground more meticulously in an hour than any documentary I've seen in recent years, and perhaps ever. It also – and this is possibly an even greater and more precious rarity – trusts its audience emotionally. It acknowledges but does not linger on the terrible suffering of the bereaved parents. If you cannot see that we all appreciate that their pain was and remains fathomless, the makers' message seems to be that the fault lies with you and we will carry on with our stated objective meantime. It's a confidence that I wish all documentaries could show. Via a proliferating army of world experts on an array of issues brought up by the case, the alternative narrative is carefully put together. First there are questions asked and answered. Why was there a spike in mortality rates around the time Letby arrived? It is argued that she arrived at a time when the hospital was suddenly required to take in much sicker babies than it had before, babies it was hardly equipped to cope with. How do we explain that Letby was on duty every time a baby died or collapsed? The claim is made that she wasn't – that the infamous shift chart that the prosecution used did not explain how its data was compiled and in fact showed only the fatalities and deteriorations during which she was present. If you compile a chart showing the proportion of all those that occurred on the ward during her period of employment, the correlation – and damnation – disappears. What, then, of the dislodged tubes? As a witness for the prosecution, paediatric doctor Ravi Jayaram asserted that infants that age could not dislodge them themselves. This is simply not true, say experts including Dr Richard Taylor, a specialist in neonatal care with 30 years' experience. 'We've all seen it.' We hear that, on the stand, Dr Jayaram also stated that he saw Letby standing by doing nothing and raising no alarm as one baby's oxygen levels dropped dangerously. However, we're told that an email he wrote, which has been discovered since, suggests that he was present precisely because she had called him. On we are taken, step by step, through alternative explanations for the insulin results, the Post-it notes on which Letby apparently confessed her guilt, and the rest of the circumstantial evidence amassed by the prosecution. Just one witness was called in Letby's defence at trial – a hospital plumber, to testify to sewage issues and therefore possible hygiene problems on the ward. We also hear that the prosecution's main witness, Dr Dewi Evans, has since changed his mind on how one of the babies Letby was convicted of killing died. And we are invited to consider how all of this should be weighted against Letby's apparent lack of motive and, more implicitly, the extreme rarity of young, female serial killers of children. The makers do not dwell on why Letby's team put forward such a minimal defence, though I'm sure further and broader analyses will come in time, probably encompassing such factors as the trust we place in ministering angels and the fury we feel when it appears to have been betrayed, as well as the general public's relative ignorance of science and how to compute data. But, by the end of this considered, brilliantly cogent hour you cannot help but feel that at the very least Letby's conviction is unsafe. The final scenes are of her (new) lawyer Mark McDonald delivering an application to have her case re-examined to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. But this can only be granted if new evidence has come to light – and, technically, everything he has submitted was available to her original defence at the time. The question of what constitutes justice continues. Lucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt? aired on ITV1 and is available on ITVX.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Inside baby killer Constance Marten's 'new life' inside notorious prison dubbed 'female monster mansion' as fellow lags reveal she 'might be wise to pal up with Lucy Letby for protection'
Baby killer Constance Marten has been told to befriend Lucy Letby 'for protection' as she faces life behind bars inside a notorious prison dubbed the 'female monster mansion'. The socialite is locked up at Surrey's HMP Bronzefield where she previously whinged in a prison magazine about her treatment. The runaway aristocrat, 38, had already reportedly become close to Sara Sharif 's killer stepmother Beinash Batool during her murder trial. Batool has already struck up a friendship with killer nurse Letby where the pair play Uno together and make cheese toasties together in the kitchen. Violence is said to be rife on the ward with child killers a target among other inmates. A source told The Sun: 'Letby and Batool have become friends, and that is partly for their own protection, because child killers are a target for all the women there. 'Marten comes out in the same group as Letby and Batool. She is not yet friendly with them and mostly keeps herself to herself. They added: 'It might be wise for Marten to try to pal up with Letby and Batool, otherwise her time at Bronzefield could become extremely tough.' Marten and her lover Mark Gordon were convicted last month of killing their baby. The couple shook their heads in the dock of the Old Bailey as they were found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence of their daughter Victoria after going on the run to stop her being taken into care. In an extraordinary case which gripped the country, the couple went on the run with their baby in a 'desperately selfish' bid to prevent her being taken into care after their four previous children were removed by social workers, who feared they would come to harm. Scotland Yard launched a nationwide manhunt, spending more than £1.2million chasing the couple around the country after discovering a placenta in their car when the vehicle was ablaze on a motorway in Greater Manchester on January 5, 2023. More than 100 officers pursued the couple as they fled in taxis, travelling hundreds of miles across the country from Bolton to Liverpool, then to Harwich in Essex, and on to East London before finally resorting to camping on the South Downs in the freezing cold. A day later, when Victoria died in their flimsy freezing tent, Marten and Gordon, 50, dumped their baby in a soiled nappy inside a Lidl bag for life. There is equally grisly company for Marten inside HMP Bronzefield, which also houses Sian Hedges, locked up for life last year for killing her 18-month-old son Alfie Phillips. Former prison officer Linda de Sousa Abreu, disgraced for having sex with an inmate, was also locked up there before her release last month. When Batool was jailed last year for life with a minimum of 33 years for the murder of little Sara, the girl's father Urfan Sharif was also locked up for life and will serve at least 40 years. Sara's uncle Faisal Malik was also imprisoned for 16 years minimum for causing or allowing the death of a child. The young girl suffered more than 70 fresh injuries and 25 fractures after her father and stepmother battered her to death at their home in Woking, Surrey - before fleeing to Pakistan. Meanwhile, Marten, who is from an aristocratic family, had previously made headlines within jail when she featured as the cover model for a magazine selling itself as 'for women with conviction'. Appearing on the cover of The View, Marten wore a glamorous dress and earrings in a shot said to have been taken at least 10 years ago. In an article written during her retrial, Marten set out some of her objections about prison life, becoming a notorious irritant for staff at the prison due to her constant complaints about jail conditions. In a bid to sway jurors midway through her prosecution, Marten's magazine interview was titled 'Surviving Serco', in which she claimed her trial was 'prejudiced' by the 'inhumane' conditions she endured behind bars. In an accompanying podcast which proclaimed, 'this is the very foundation of a fair trial being undermined', Marten bemoaned the long journeys to court in transport provided by private contractor Serco and 'disgusting' microwave meals in her 'stone-cold' Old Bailey cell. Letby (pictured) was given 15 life sentences after being found guilty of the murder of seven babies and attempting to murder another eight whilst she worked at the Countess of Chester Hospital. One of her fellow inmates revealed in February that the killer was struggling with life behind bars 'I'm being made to survive these 17 to 19-hour days with little or no rest, no food,' she said. Marten also breached a High Court anonymity order by providing photographs to the magazine, risking prosecution for contempt of court. It was one of the many extraordinary attempts she and her partner Gordon made to derail a prosecution which has cost taxpayers around £2.8million over two trials across the last two years. Over that period, the couple conspired to delay, lie and obfuscate, often failing to turn up to court, inventing fictitious ailments and disregarding the judge's orders, shouting across him and chatting in the dock as the evidence was outlined. As a consequence, their first trial last year was scheduled to last six weeks but ended up taking six months – and concluded with jurors unable to agree verdicts. Then their retrial overran by more than a month as the pair continued to manipulate proceedings. Letby was given 15 life sentences after being found guilty of the murder of seven babies and attempting to murder another eight whilst she worked at the Countess of Chester Hospital. One of her fellow inmates revealed in February that the killer was struggling with life behind bars. The insider, who lives with Letby in Houseblock Four, described her fellow prisoner as 'really weird' and claimed the baby killer was always accompanied by a prison officer for her own protection and to ensure she does not harm other inmates.
