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Times
2 days ago
- Times
Barrister fighting for Lucy Letby: She's feeling new hope
When Mark McDonald answered the phone, almost exactly a year ago, he had no idea he was about to step into the heart of one of the most high-profile cases in British legal history. The call was from Lucy Letby's parents and they wanted his help. 'A week later, I'm meeting Lucy,' McDonald recalls. Letby's family wanted him to take over from her previous lawyer, Ben Myers, and free her from prison, where she is serving 15 whole-life terms. At the end of her ten-month trial in 2023 (one of the longest in British legal history) she was convicted of seven counts of murder and six of attempted murder at the Countess of Chester Hospital in Cheshire between 2015 and 2016. A further trial last year added one more conviction on a count of attempted murder. McDonald was Letby's last hope. 'I get the phone call when it's all gone wrong,' says McDonald, 59, a seasoned criminal defence barrister with a reputation for high-profile appeals. McDonald is in Devon on a family holiday, so we speak over Zoom. His two children, aged three and four, have spent all day building sandcastles and eating ice cream. But work never stops when it comes to McDonald's most high-profile client. McDonald speaks to Letby, 35, once a week or every two weeks — sometimes more often — and visits her once a month at Bronzefield prison in Ashford, Surrey. He says Letby is 'in a very different place today than what she was 12 months ago'. '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.' At least some of that is thanks to McDonald. Back in 2023, under photos of her dead-eyed mugshot Letby was universally branded the blonde-haired, blue-eyed 'angel of death' who was 'evil' and 'a monster'. Slowly at first and then all at once, the public debate over the veracity of her conviction became more heated. In the past 12 months McDonald has done everything he can to transform what was initially a tiny ripple of outlier conspiracy theorists decrying the nurse's guilt into overt support ranging from celebrities and newspaper columnists to scientists and some MPs. But he still has a way to go. For Letby to be allowed to appeal against her conviction, McDonald must first submit 'new evidence' to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), an independent public body that assesses potential miscarriages of justice. To this end he has assembled a 14-strong independent panel of international neonatal and paediatric experts with whom he shared the babies' medical notes. In February, McDonald called a press conference in which they cast a shadow of doubt upon the prosecution's expert medical case. It caused a media storm. McDonald and his panel claimed to have assembled evidence to refute the sky-high insulin levels found in some of the babies ('the [insulin] test was not fit to be used as forensic evidence,' he says); the rota showing Letby was on duty (he says it 'doesn't stack up with statisticians'); and highlighted inconsistencies in the testimony of Dr Ravi Jayaram, who had claimed during the trial to have seen Letby standing over a baby with a dislodged breathing tube. The parents of some of the victims say McDonald's 'publicity stunt' is 'distressing' and that they 'already have the truth'. A BBC Panorama documentary last week raised concerns about McDonald's case. The documentary suggested there was a lack of consensus among the experts. In the case of Baby O, one expert, Dr Richard Taylor, claimed in a December 2024 press conference that the baby's liver was pierced with a needle by another doctor. However, another expert on the panel, Professor Neena Modi, claims the baby's liver injuries may have been caused by a traumatic birth. The Thirlwall public inquiry was told Baby O was delivered by caesarean section and their medical records had no reference to any difficulties or trauma. A defiant McDonald says the most recent documentary, by Judith Moritz and Jonathan Coffey, was 'a shambles' and he 'felt that much of it was wrong, misquoted' and 'poorly put together'. Moritz was one of the few reporters given access to the whole Letby trial at Manchester crown court and The Times's review called the documentary 'impressive' and 'a rigorous look at the evidence'. However, what the panel do agree on is that Lucy Letby is innocent. Heading the panel is the Canadian neonatologist Dr Shoo Lee, whose research paper on air embolisms in babies was referenced at Letby's trial. He says his research was misinterpreted and should never have been used. But the Court of Appeal dismissed his argument as 'irrelevant and inadmissible' because the babies had never been diagnosed like he claimed. McDonald takes issue with the prosecution using the medical expert Dewi Evans — an expert paediatrician and former clinical director for paediatrics and neonatology — who he says 'has been retired for 14 years and wasn't even a neonatologist' — to convict Letby, but hasn't he done the same, cherry-picking his medical experts to counter Evans's opinion? Many of the experts on his panel asked to see the medical notes under the condition that they could say publicly if they thought Letby was guilty, but all were in concurrence — no crime had been committed; Letby was innocent. Were there any experts who received the babies' medical notes and were not prepared to join the panel? 'No,' McDonald says. He is also backed by the MP Sir David Davis and the former health secretary Sir Jeremy Hunt, who has said her case must be 'urgently re-examined'. McDonald is so certain 'no crime has been committed' that he is working for nothing. Although he has other (paid) work, he estimates he has spent thousands of hours on Letby's case. 'I can't tell you, every day I work on it,' he says. 'I'm on holiday in Devon and I'm working on it. I had a telephone conference with Lucy yesterday. I won't stop. I will not stop until she is out.' McDonald says he can relate to the pressure of working in a hospital — it's where he started. He grew up in Birmingham and left school with no qualifications, becoming a general porter in a hospital aged 16, before becoming a plaster of Paris technician a couple of years later. Then he moved to the operating theatre as an assistant, and went to night school to study for A-levels that would lead him to study law at the University of Westminster. 'While I was at university studying law I continued to work all the time in the operating theatre. The last day of me working in the operating theatre was the day before my pupillage started as a barrister.' He has worked with 'many intensive care nurses in my time' and 'assisted in operating on neonates, paediatrics and intubation — the whole lot'. McDonald says he would have liked to have been Letby's lawyer from the start, and that 'I knew when she was arrested, I could write how this case would play out because I'd seen it before. I knew what was going to happen.' Letby is not the first killer nurse McDonald has represented. He has launched appeals for Ben Geen, who in 2003 and 2004 was convicted of murdering two patients and committing grievous bodily harm against another 15 after he was found to be administering drugs so he could resuscitate the patients at Horton General Hospital in Banbury, Oxfordshire. Geen's appeals have failed. I ask McDonald if he tends to see the best in people. 'Oh yeah,' he says as he runs a hand through his hair. '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.' The barrister's approach is not for everyone. McDonald doesn't deny he is a publicity seeker. He says when it comes to changing the public narrative in cases of miscarriages of justice, boosting the media profile is 'very important'. He says in such cases cases it is often 'important to win the public narrative' before winning 'the legal narrative, because the Court of Appeal will know that the country is going to be looking at them'. McDonald says when, not if, Letby's case goes back to the Court of Appeal, 'they're going to have to take notice of what's being said'. Although McDonald is a master of public relations, he can be prone to exaggeration. 'If there was a poll tomorrow — obviously I haven't done a poll — but I would say that 50 per cent of the country would say that she needs to have a retrial because something's gone wrong, 40 per cent would say she's innocent and 10 per cent would say that we think she's guilty. I think it's that high.' He says his family and friends have been supportive of his work with Letby, 'because, look, I'm right!' He catches himself, 'God, that sounds very arrogant, I don't mean it to, but I am. And that's not because I say I am, but because every international expert that's looked at this says I'm right.' There is no time frame by which the CCRC must decide on whether to refer the case but McDonald expects it to be around the new year. He says in his 26 years of being a barrister he has never submitted so much evidence to the CCRC and that 'there'd be public outrage' if it is not referred. He says: 'If this is not referred back to the Court of Appeal then one has to question the purpose of the CCRC.' He says there is 'no plan B'. McDonald plans to do more paperwork on the case on holiday. He is talking to Letby again on Monday. What's driving him, he says, is that 'there's an innocent woman in prison that's been sentenced to the rest of her life to die in prison. And potentially I can get her out. It's not 'why am I doing it?' but 'why wouldn't I do it?''
Yahoo
08-08-2025
- Yahoo
Prosecutors may appeal to US Supreme Court on 1979 missing child Etan Patz case
Missing NYC Boy NEW YORK (AP) — Prosecutors said Friday they might appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to restore a murder conviction in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz, a bewildering case that went without an arrest for decades. A federal appeals court recently overturned the conviction of Pedro Hernandez, the former convenience store clerk who became a suspect over 30 years after the New York City first-grader vanished. The appeals court ordered him freed unless he is retried 'within a reasonable period.' Prosecutors asked the appeals court Friday to hold off sending the case back to a lower-level federal judge to set a retrial date. 'The abduction and murder of Etan Patz is one of the most infamous crimes in recent American history,' the Manhattan District Attorney's Office wrote. 'This court's decision unsettles a nearly decade-old conviction that previously was upheld by every state and federal court to consider (Hernandez') claims.' Saying the situation presents 'substantial legal questions,' prosecutors wrote that they were determining whether to file a petition to the Supreme Court this fall. A message seeking comment was sent to Hernandez's lawyers. He already has been tried twice — his 2017 conviction came after a prior jury couldn't reach a verdict. Now 64, he has been serving a sentence of 25 years to life in prison. Etan disappeared while walking little more than a block to his school bus stop. He became one of the first missing children pictured on milk cartons, and his anguished parents helped reshape how American law enforcement agencies responded to missing-child cases. Other parents, meanwhile, became more protective of children over the years after Etan's case and others. No trace of Etan was ever found. After many years, his parents eventually had him declared legally dead. Investigators scoured the city, and even overseas, for leads. But no arrests were made until 2012, when police got a tip that Hernandez — who worked in Etan's neighborhood when the boy was last seen — had made remarks in the ensuing years about having harmed or killed a child in New York. Hernandez then told police that he had offered Etan a soda to lure him into the basement of the shop where Hernandez worked. The suspect said he then choked the boy and put him, still alive, in a box and left it with curbside trash. Hernandez's lawyers say he confessed falsely because of a mental illness that sometimes made him hallucinate. The attorneys emphasized that the admission came after police questioned him for seven hours without reading him his rights or recording the interview. Hernandez then repeated his confession on tape, at least twice. The trials happened in a New York state court, but the Hernandez appeal eventually wound up in federal court. 'The high cost of federally invalidating a state-court conviction is especially pronounced in this case,' prosecutors wrote. At issue was the state trial judge's response to jurors' questions about whether they had to disregard the recorded confessions if they found the first, unrecorded one was invalid. The judge said no. The appeals court said the jury should have gotten a more thorough explanation of its options, which could have included disregarding all of the confessions. Prosecutors argue that the confessions were freely given, and that the appeals court inappropriately applied a federal legal rule when assessing the state court's handling of the jury note.
Fox News
18-07-2025
- Fox News
Murdaugh lead attorney says jury fix and hidden texts could blow up conviction, force new trial
The defense attorney for convicted killer Alex Murdaugh said newly uncovered evidence of jury tampering may be enough to overturn the disgraced South Carolina lawyer's murder conviction. Dick Harpootlian, a Columbia attorney and former state senator who led Murdaugh's defense, told Fox News Digital that Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill's actions during the 2023 double murder trial tainted the jury and should result in a new trial. "If she had left the jury alone, clearly the worst we would have done was a mistrial," Harpootlian said. "There were two jurors—two—who would not have voted guilty had it not been for Becky Hill's influence." Murdaugh was found guilty of the murders of his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, and son, Paul Murdaugh, who were shot to death on June 7, 2021 at the family's hunting estate in Colleton County, South Carolina. He was convicted on two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime in March 2023. Harpootlian said one juror, dubbed the "egg lady," was vocal in the jury room about her doubts and was dismissed just days before the verdict based on information provided by Hill. A second juror allegedly told the defense she was pressured into voting guilty by Hill and other jurors. The defense alleges that Hill attempted to sway the jury to sell more copies of a book she was writing about the high-profile trial. "She told several of her coworkers that a guilty verdict would be good for book sales," Harpootlian said. "She was working them to influence them to convict." Hill has been charged with misconduct in office, obstruction of justice, and perjury for allegedly influencing the Murdaugh jury, leaking sealed evidence and lying under oath during a 2024 hearing. During a 2024 evidentiary hearing, a retired South Carolina Supreme Court chief justice ruled that Hill was not credible and found she had attempted to influence the jury's deliberations. Murdaugh is currently appealing his conviction before the South Carolina Supreme Court. The state's brief is due Aug. 8, and Harpootlian said a ruling could come by the end of the year or early 2026. "We have an appeal based on judicial errors and jury tampering," Harpootlian said. Many believe we have a substantial chance of getting a new trial. If the appeal fails, the defense plans to pursue a federal habeas petition. "If we don't get a new trial, then there's something called habeas or post-conviction relief. And if you find that police or prosecutors have hidden evidence that would have been made a difference, you can appeal on that basis," Harpootlian said. In addition to the jury-tampering allegations, Harpootlian also pointed to newly uncovered text messages between Murdaugh and Curtis "Eddie" Smith, Murdaugh's alleged drug dealer, that may have changed the trajectory of the defense's strategy if they had been disclosed. The messages, revealed by FITSNews, show Smith and Murdaugh communicating in the days leading up to the June 7, 2021 murders of Murdaugh's wife and son. Harpootlian said his team was unaware of the texts during the trial and might have called Smith as a witness had they known. "Those texts—some from the very week of the murder—give us more of the timeline around those drug distributions," he said. "It might have made the difference in us calling him to the stand or not calling him to the stand." The text messages show that Smith and Murdaugh conversed in the days leading up to Murdaugh's murder of his wife and son on their family's hunting estate in Colleton County, South Carolina. "Hey Brother i need to come get the chech (sic) you got one with you or are you going to be around later," Smith texted to Murdaugh on June 3, four days before the slayings. Murdaugh replied that he would be back that afternoon and that he "had to deal with some bulls--- this morning." "Ok Brother just give me a holler," Smith texted, later adding, "Leaving the house now." The day before the murders, Murdaugh texted Smith, "Call me back." Within a span of two minutes the morning after the murder, Smith texted Murdaugh, "Tell me what I heard is not true," and, "Call me please." Those texts went unreturned, and around 6:30 p.m., and Smith cryptically texted Murdaugh, "At fishing hole." After that message was also met with silence, he texted, "803 *** **13 it will not go through on my phone." Harpootlian also questioned why Smith had not been prosecuted, calling it "perplexing" and "unjust." "Eddie Smith, according to the attorney general, is probably the largest distributor of OxyContin in the state's history—and he has not been prosecuted," he said. "Everybody else who was indicted pleaded guilty—except Eddie Smith." The defense attorney also criticized South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, who he claims referred to Hill as "Becky Boo" during the trial. Harpootlian said Wilson's relationship with Hill is a conflict of interest and urged him to recuse himself from any future investigation into her conduct. Fox News Digital has reached out to Wilson's office for comment. "There should be a grand jury investigation into Becky Hill's conduct," he said. "But the AG hasn't opened one. Maybe he's waiting to see what the Supreme Court does." If the court grants a new trial, Harpootlian said it will be "a very different case." Since Murdaugh has already pleaded guilty to financial crimes, the prosecution will no longer be able to present weeks of financial evidence. "All that will be left is the forensic evidence and the facts," he said. "And the forensic evidence, I believe, overwhelmingly proves that Alec Murdaugh did not kill Paul and Maggie."
Al Arabiya
16-07-2025
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
New execution date set for Texas man Robert Roberson in shaken baby syndrome case
HOUSTON (AP) – A judge on Wednesday set a new execution date for Robert Roberson, a Texas man who won a last-minute reprieve last year and could become the first person in the US to be put to death for a murder conviction tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome. State district Judge Austin Reeve Jackson set an Oct. 16 execution date for Roberson during a court hearing. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office had requested that the execution date be scheduled. Roberson's lawyers had objected, arguing Roberson still has an appeal pending before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that his legal team says contains powerful new evidence of his innocence. Roberson received a last-minute stay last October after a flurry of legal challenges that were prompted by an unprecedented maneuver from a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers who say he is innocent and was sent to death row based on flawed science. Roberson, 58, was convicted of the 2002 killing of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, in the East Texas city of Palestine. Prosecutors argued he violently shook his daughter back and forth, causing severe head trauma in what's called shaken baby syndrome. His lawyers and some medical experts say his daughter died not from abuse but from complications related to pneumonia. In its latest appeal, filed in February, Roberson's legal team said that, based on new evidence, no rational juror would find Roberson guilty of capital murder, and unreliable and outdated scientific and medical evidence was material to his conviction. The new evidence includes statements from pathologists that state the girl's death was not a homicide and who question the reliability of conclusions by the medical examiner on the cause of death. Roberson was in a holding cell on Oct. 17, 2024, a few feet away from America's busiest death chamber in Huntsville, waiting to receive a lethal injection when he was granted an execution stay after a group of Texas lawmakers issued a subpoena for him to testify before a House committee several days after he was scheduled to die. The Texas Supreme Court ruled in November that although the subpoena was valid, it could not be used to circumvent a scheduled execution. Roberson never testified before the House committee, as Paxton's office blocked efforts to have him speak to lawmakers. Court documents show the Anderson County District Attorney's Office, which had prosecuted Roberson, has agreed to let Paxton's office take over the case.
Associated Press
16-07-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
New execution date set for Texas man Robert Roberson in shaken baby syndrome case
HOUSTON (AP) — A judge on Wednesday set a new execution date for Robert Roberson, a Texas man who won a last-minute reprieve last year and could become the first person in the U.S. to be put to death for a murder conviction tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome. State district Judge Austin Reeve Jackson set an Oct. 16 execution date for Roberson during a court hearing. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office had requested that the execution date be scheduled. Roberson's lawyers had objected, arguing Roberson still has an appeal pending before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that his legal team says contains 'powerful new evidence of his innocence.' Roberson received a last-minute stay last October after a flurry of legal challenges that were prompted by an unprecedented maneuver from a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers who say he is innocent and was sent to death row based on flawed science. Roberson, 58, was convicted of the 2002 killing of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis, in the East Texas city of Palestine. Prosecutors argued he violently shook his daughter back and forth, causing severe head trauma in what's called shaken baby syndrome. His lawyers and some medical experts say his daughter died not from abuse but from complications related to pneumonia. In its latest appeal filed in February, Roberson's legal team said that based on new evidence 'no rational juror would find Roberson guilty of capital murder; and unreliable and outdated scientific and medical evidence was material to his conviction.' The new evidence includes statements from pathologists that state the girl's death was not a homicide and who question the reliability of conclusions by the medical examiner on the cause of death. Roberson was in a holding cell on Oct. 17, 2024, a few feet away from America's busiest death chamber in Huntsville, waiting to receive a lethal injection when he was granted an execution stay after a group of Texas lawmakers issued a subpoena for him to testify before a House committee several days after he was scheduled to die. The Texas Supreme Court ruled in November that although the subpoena was valid, it could not be used to circumvent a scheduled execution. Roberson never testified before the House committee as Paxton's office blocked efforts to have him speak to lawmakers. Court documents show the Anderson County District Attorney's Office, which had prosecuted Roberson, has agreed to let Paxton's office take over the case. ___ Follow Juan A. Lozano:
