2 days ago
The case for Letby's innocence looks weaker than ever
The annual Panorama documentary on Lucy Letby appeared on BBC 1 this week, barely a week after a more one-sided pro-Letby documentary was shown on ITV. Channel 4 has a Letby show in the works and Channel 5 has already broadcast two.
Fortunately, there is plenty of material for producers to get their teeth into. Not only did her trial last ten months but there was a retrial after that, plus two appeal attempts, and her supporters have been making new claims on any almost weekly basis ever since.
The ITV documentary was Letbyism 1.0, mostly consisting of talking points about shift patterns, Post-it notes, door-swipe data etc. that have either been debunked or which are now understood to be irrelevant. The Panorama documentary – the third in what is sure to be an ongoing series – focused on the second phase of Letbyism that began with two press conferences, the second organised by Letby's PR firm (yes, she has a PR firm working for her), in December 2024 and February 2025. In the first press conference we were told that the insulin tests used to convict her of poisoning Baby F and Baby L were wrong, and that Baby O was accidentally killed by a doctor. In the second press conference we were told that no murders had taken place, that the insulin readings for Babies F and L were perfectly normal, and that Baby O died from a liver injury sustained during childbirth.
Confused? So are they. Letby has a number of distinguished medics in her corner but they seem to be finding it difficult to put forward a consistent narrative. A panel of experts convened by the Canadian neonatologist and economist Dr Shoo Lee has offered innocent explanations for all of the 22 collapses and deaths on Letby's indictment (including the ones for which she was not convicted, which seems over-eager). Thanks to the unexpected appearance of credible physicians on Team Letby, her supporters have been playing a game of 'my expert is bigger than your expert' ever since, but the Court of Appeal is not interested in how 'eminent' or 'world leading' a witness is. It only wants to know if they have a point, and it is far from obvious that the 'international panel', which contains no pathologists, radiologists, endocrinologists or haematologists, have cracked the case by looking at some medical records a decade after the events took place.
Dr Michael Hall, a neonatologist who was ready to give evidence for the defence in Letby's first trial but was never called, gave short shrift to the panel's theory that Baby A died from thrombosis. He pointed out that this suggestion had been raised in court and said 'I'm not sure that the expert witnesses have added anything to that conversation.'
Nor was there any evidence that Baby A's mother had passed a rare blood-clotting disorder onto the child. On the contrary, blood tests had disproved this.
Hall was also dismissive of the idea that Baby O suffered a liver injury during childbirth. Baby O's mother had plenty of complaints to air about the Countess of Chester Hospital at the Thirlwall Inquiry, but the standard of her planned Caesarean section was not one of them. In any case, Baby O's haemoglobin readings strongly suggested that he had not suffered a liver injury at birth and even Letby admitted that whatever happened to his liver had happened 'on my watch' the following day.
Speaking anonymously – presumably to avoid the wrath of Letby's increasingly militant fanbase – a pathologist told Panorama that the theory about Baby O being killed by a doctor's misplaced needle was poppycock. Indeed, everyone on the show seemed to agree that this never happened, despite Dr Richard Taylor stating it as fact on live television eight months ago.
With regards to the insulin poisonings, Shoo Lee relied on the expertise of the mechanical engineer Dr Geoff Chase and the chemical engineer Dr Helen Shannon, possibly because he couldn't get any paediatric endocrinologists to come out to bat for Britain's most prolific child-murderer. In their report, they claimed that the incredibly high insulin readings and extremely low C-peptide readings for Baby F and Baby L were 'within the expected range for preterm infants'. Professor John Gregory, a paediatric endocrinologist, told Panorama that such readings were 'exceedingly unlikely' to be natural; in other words, the babies were almost certainly given exogenous insulin. Interviewed by Panorama, Dr Chase said that 'within the expected range' was a poor choice of words, but insisted that such results were 'not uncommon'. He then downgraded this to 'unusual' and 'possible'.
The only British member of Lee's panel is Professor Neena Modi. Asked about the claim that Baby O had suffered a liver injury during childbirth, her response was essentially that although there wasn't any evidence that such an injury had been sustained in this instance, a traumatic childbirth is the kind of thing that could cause a liver injury. It was at this moment that the penny dropped: from the outside, Lee's panel do not seem to have been looking for the theory with the most evidence to support it, nor even for the most likely explanation. They appear to have been looking for anything that sounds vaguely plausible so long as it doesn't involve Lucy Letby inflicting deliberate harm on defenceless infants.
Dr Hall, who seems genuinely unsure whether Letby is guilty or innocent, said that he feared that the tenuous opinions of the international panel could 'rebound' on her. As this Panorama showed, many of them can be batted away with ease since they were either raised and rejected in court or have no evidence to support them. Letby can go to the Criminal Cases Review Commission as many times as she likes, and is likely to have plenty of time to do so, but every application takes years and the Court of Appeal does not appreciate having its time wasted with lengthy submissions of little merit. The eminence of the experts and the hard work of the PR company do not come into it.
Meanwhile, the public may see distinguished doctors disagreeing and conclude that there must be reasonable doubt by definition, but that is not how it works. Only one side can be right and the medical evidence, though important, was only one part of the case. Hundreds of pieces of evidence could be cited, almost all of it circumstantial but almost all of it pointing an accusing finger at staff nurse Letby. It will take many more documentaries for it all to be broadcast to the viewing public, but at the current rate we should get there by the end of the decade.
