2 days ago
Lucy Letby has 'new hope' as barrister prepares to submit appeal file
Lucy Letby was a 'broken person' but now has a 'new hope', her barrister has said. Letby's parents contacted Mark McDonald almost a year ago and requested he take over from her previous lawyer and free her from prison, he said in an interview with the Sunday Times.
A week later he met Letby, who is serving 15 whole-life orders after murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others, with two attempts on one of her victims, between June 2015 and June 2016. Mr McDonald said he is submitting 'new evidence' to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, and has also spent the past year working to boost public criticism of her convictions.
He gathered a panel of 14 neonatal and paediatric experts, shared the babies' medical notes with them, and held a press conference casting doubt on the prosecution's case. Lawyers for the families of Letby's victims previously rubbished the panel's findings as 'full of analytical holes' and 'a rehash' of the defence case heard at trial.
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In July, Cheshire Police passed evidence of further allegations related to baby deaths and collapses at the hospitals where Letby, 35, worked. Mr McDonald, who is known for making high-profile appeals, told the Sunday Times: 'Remember, 12 months ago, she'd lost every argument. She had been saying that she was not guilty right from the beginning and nobody believed her.
'She went through a whole trial and she was convicted. She went to the Court of Appeal and she was convicted. She had a retrial; she was convicted. She went to the Court of Appeal again; she was convicted. And that was it.
'There, you have a broken person. But today, after everything that has happened in the last 12 months, she's got new hope.'
McDonald, 59, estimated he has spent thousands of hours on Letby's case and spoke to the newspaper while on holiday with his two children, aged three and four. He said he speaks to the killer at least once every two weeks and visits her each month at Bronzefield prison, in Ashford, Surrey.
'I'm on holiday in Devon and I'm working on (the case). I had a telephone conference with Lucy yesterday. I won't stop. I will not stop until she is out,' he said. It is important to 'win the public narrative' of a potential miscarriage of justice case before taking on the legal narrative, because 'the Court of Appeal will know that the country is going to be looking at them', he added.
The barrister claimed he has never submitted this much evidence to the CCRC and 'if this is not referred back to the Court of Appeal then one has to question the purpose of the CCRC'.
The possible potential offences against Letby are now being considered by lawyers at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).The news emerged hours after police confirmed three people who were part of the senior leadership team at the hospital where Letby worked have been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.
Cheshire Constabulary said the suspects, who occupied senior positions at the Countess of Chester Hospital (CoCH) between 2015 and 2016, were arrested and later bailed pending further inquiries. Police said corporate manslaughter and gross negligence manslaughter probes are continuing.
Mr McDonald previously said the police's announcement about potential new charges against Letby came at a 'very sensitive time' and that a proper and full public inquiry into failings by the hospital is needed. In the latest interview, Mr McDonald told the Sunday Times: 'I'm not naive; I'm a criminal defence barrister – I've represented many people over the years who are guilty.
'But I'm also able to see very clearly where this has gone wrong. There's no forensic evidence. There's no CCTV. There's no eyewitness evidence.
'There's just a theory by a man called Dewi Evans,' he said, referring to the person who was the lead prosecution medical expert in her trial.
