Dr Richard Taylor, a Canadian neonatologist, told a recent press conference about the Letby case that he believed Baby O had not been murdered by the nurse. He said of Dr Brearey’s alleged involvement: ‘If this had happened to me I’d be unable to sleep at night, knowing what I had done had led to the death of the baby. ‘And now there is a nurse in jail convicted of murder. The claim was that Letby had injected air into the baby. I’m not even sure what the prosecution was claiming but it’s nonsense, complete nonsense. The baby died from shock, from a liver perforation.’ Dr Brearey did not respond to a request for comment."
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GIST: "Lucy Letby’s appeal against her murder convictions will identify a doctor whose ‘sub-optimal care’ is alleged to have led to the death of one of the babies the nurse was accused of killing.
The allegation against consultant Dr Stephen Brearey will be in an appeal centring on disturbing new evidence about alleged poor quality of care given to babies at his hospital, Countess of Chester.
Evidence gathered by Letby’s new legal team raises the harrowing prospect that she is serving life in jail for murders which were in fact deaths caused by insitutional failings at the hospital.Experts have increasingly questioned how Letby, 35, was convicted with only circumstantial evidence, contested statistical probabilities and a lack of a convincing motive. Key planks of the prosecution case have since been cast into serious doubt.
Her lawyer Mark McDonald, who is building a case to take to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), said last night: ‘We now have numerous reports from internationally expert neonatologists with far more experience than those who gave evidence for the prosecution during the trial.
‘These experts have discovered major issues concerning treatment, diagnosis and care of many of the babies in the unit and none of this is the fault of any nurse.
‘It will soon be for the CCRC and later the Appeal Court to see where the truth really lies but for now everything points towards a series of unsafe convictions. If that is the case, this is the biggest miscarriage of justice in UK history.’
The developments follow Tory MP Sir David Davis calling for a retrial, telling the Commons this month: ‘There was no hard evidence against Letby, nobody saw her do anything untoward.’ He said much of the evidence was based on a ‘doctor’s gut feeling... based on a coincidence she was on shift for a number of deaths’.
He said analysis of hospital notes proved that, contrary to the prosecution’s claim that Baby O had been ‘attacked with blunt trauma to the liver and had air injected into the nasogastric tube’, doctors had used excessive ventilation pressure during resuscitation.
He said: ‘The consultant in charge took a decision to insert a needle into the abdomen to release what they thought was gas pressure in the abdomen. However, this was wrongly inserted into the right side of the baby’s abdomen.
‘As a result of this error, the needle penetrated the liver, causing serious internal bleeding. This was undoubtedly a significant contributory factor in the baby’s death, if not the outright cause.’
Sir David did not identify the consultant – one of Letby’s main accusers – but veteran investigative journalist John Sweeney claimed on his podcast ‘Was There Ever A Crime? The Trials of Lucy Letby’ that the doctor who put the needle into Baby O’s liver was the head of the unit, Dr Stephen Brearey.
Dr Richard Taylor, a Canadian neonatologist, told a recent press conference about the Letby case that he believed Baby O had not been murdered by the nurse.
He said of Dr Brearey’s alleged involvement: ‘If this had happened to me I’d be unable to sleep at night, knowing what I had done had led to the death of the baby.
‘And now there is a nurse in jail convicted of murder. The claim was that Letby had injected air into the baby. I’m not even sure what the prosecution was claiming but it’s nonsense, complete nonsense. The baby died from shock, from a liver perforation.’
Dr Brearey did not respond to a request for comment.
A source at Countess of Chester hospital said the case of Baby O had been through a full and thorough judicial process that involved a jury and three Appeal Court judges and the hospital would not comment further due to the ongoing independent inquiry by Lady Justice Thirlwall into the deaths, plus ongoing police investigations.
In August 2023, Letby was convicted of seven counts or murder and seven of attempted murder."
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14325963/Lucy-Letby-lawyers-doctor-death-baby.htmlPUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
