SUB-HEADING: "Today's the first step on Lucy Letby's road to freedom...and this is the smoking gun that will turbocharge the dismantling of her case.
GIST: "Today I shall be front row at a momentous press conference in London called by Lucy Letby's legal team.
What this press conference reveals will, I believe, turbocharge the dismantling of the prosecution's case against the former neonatal nurse, who is serving 15 whole life terms.
It will also focus attention very firmly on the claims of the prosecution's chief witness, Dr Dewi Evans, whose reliability I have questioned previously on these pages.
Sir David Davis MP is chairing the meeting. He has been valiant in his efforts to highlight what he feels are the flaws in the case.
However, Sir David and I part ways on one key point. He is calling for a retrial. I believe Letby's conviction should be overturned, and she should walk free.
The fight to show that her conviction is unsafe on all charges began last September with the appointment of barrister Mark McDonald. Support has since come from leading doctors, scientists, psychiatrists and statisticians who are concerned about the evidence on which the verdict was reached.
The key expert speaking today will be Dr Shoo Lee, an eminent Canadian neonatologist (now retired) and president of the Canadian Neo-Natal Foundation.
It was his (co-authored) 1989 academic paper on air emboli ('blockages') in the bloodstream of a newborn that was used by Dr Evans in the 2023 trial to explain how Lucy Letby targeted some of the babies in the neonatal unit by injecting air into their bloodstream, leading to sudden collapse.
Lucy Letby, 35, was convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder eight more
Dr Lee is deeply concerned at how his research was misrepresented in the trial. So concerned that he's flown 4,000 miles to unveil the details of an in-depth review conducted by a 'blue-ribbon' panel of 14 international medical experts who have independently examined the deaths of the infants that Lucy was convicted of murdering or harming.
Dr Shoo claims that 'my research was misused to convict Letby, and so I did my own inquiry'. I am told that his findings will be 'explosive'.
As The Mail on Sunday reported this week, previously undisclosed police notes, obtained by the news website Unherd, will also call into question the prosecution's claim that Lucy, now 35, was the 'common denominator' in all the suspicious incidents involving babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Chief prosecution witness Dr Evans originally looked at 28 cases of suspicious incidents, but the police notes show that Lucy was absent for ten of them.
Could it be the case that any other nurse working overtime shift patterns on the chronically understaffed unit – like those worked by Letby – could also have been present for the same number of incidents? The statistics used to support the guilty verdicts are, I have been told, 'all over the place'.
It was last November that I first raised my concerns in the Mail about Dr Evans and what, I believe, could be one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British legal history.
The bedrock of evidence used to convict Lucy – who was convicted of murdering seven babies and the attempted murder of eight more – was supplied to the court by Dr Evans, a 74-year-old general paediatrician from Wales.
Over 30 years he had given expert evidence in criminal and civil cases on clinical negligence and child safeguarding – but, crucially, by his own admission, he had never specialised exclusively as a neonatologist.
Moreover, he had retired from frontline medicine in 2009. In response to an email submitted by this paper, he said he had not been responsible for the care of a premature baby since 2007.
Given the gravity of the case, I cannot be alone in thinking that a medical expert witness, selected by police and the Crown Prosecution Service to work on behalf of the prosecution to inform a judge and guide a jury, should, at the very least, be a highly qualified specialist in the field and have recently practised in what is one of the most high-tech and rapidly changing specialisms?The bedrock of evidence used to convict Letby was supplied to the
How exactly was Dr Evans chosen for the case? I would argue that he self-selected. In court, he said that after reading about the baby deaths at the Countess of Chester Hospital in a Sunday newspaper, he sent an email to the National Crime Agency in which he wrote that it 'sounds like my kind of case'.
I believe it is fair to suggest that he was touting for work – as, indeed, Letby's barrister put to him during the trial. If so, does that not suggest an inherent bias?
And how exactly was it 'his kind of case'? How many other 'death clusters' in neonatal units had he investigated?
In a podcast after the trial, Dr Evans described visiting Cheshire Police HQ in July 2017 and being shown 'clinical notes' of one or two babies in the Countess cluster, including Baby O.
He recalled 'one of the medics had written down that he'd noticed what he thought was bruising around the liver. Well, that doesn't happen … and I saw some pretty florid, horrid photographs that showed several areas of bleeding over the liver.
'In other words, trauma to the liver – and I thought 'Oh my God, this is dreadful. This is inflicted injury. We need to investigate this.' Seemingly, within minutes, Dr Evans had decided a murder had taken place. What followed led to the arrest of Lucy Letby.
But when Baby O deteriorated, Letby was not even on duty. And it has since emerged – in hospital notes obtained by her legal team – that the liver injury was caused by a consultant, Stephen Brearey.
During an attempt at resuscitation, he had inadvertently inserted a needle into the wrong side of the baby's body and punctured the liver, causing internal bleeding. This fact was not made known at the trial.
It is also important to note that prior to Dr Evans' involvement, several of the baby deaths Lucy is accused of committing, including Baby O, had been appraised by neonatal pathologists in Liverpool for a lot longer than ten minutes. They had found no evidence whatsoever of inflicted harm.
It is estimated that over the seven years (from 2016 to the trial in 2023) that Dr Evans was working for Cheshire Police and the CPS, he earned substantially more than seven figures in fees paid to his company, Dewi Evans Paediatric Consulting.
Dr Evans has been asked repeatedly by the Mail to confirm the sum, but he has declined to respond. Surely the public has a right to know: we paid the bill.
(Dr Evans has said that concerns about his evidence are 'unsubstantiated, unfounded and inaccurate' but he declines to comment further until the conclusion next month of the Thirlwall Inquiry, examining events at the Countess of Chester Hospital and their implications following the trial and subsequent convictions.)
Lucy Letby's case has something of the Salem witch trials about it, writes Nadine Dorries
You may ask why I am so interested in this case, the role of Dr Dewi Evans and the conviction of Lucy Letby. Let me explain.
My interest was informed by my own two years as the Health Minister responsible for maternity, neonatal care and patient safety. Two of my three children were born at the Countess Hospital, and, as a former nurse I worked briefly on a Special Care Baby Unit.
As a minister, I launched an inquiry into the unexplained deaths of 15 babies at two hospitals, Margate and Ashford. I was also responsible for extending the terms of reference of the Ockenden Inquiry at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust to encompass the deaths of almost 1,900 babies.
I spent a harrowing time talking to mothers who had lost their babies at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and ordered an inquiry into baby and mother deaths there as a result.
I spent hours talking to hospital chief executives, the Care Quality Commission, doctors, hospital midwives and families before I made the decisions I did.
I instructed the Health Care Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) to prioritise baby deaths, and instructed them to regularly report to me personally. I found £500,000 for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologist to conduct their own research into safer maternity practices.
So, you see, I had some inkling into how and why hundreds of babies had died nationwide over a number of years, mainly in hospitals which were mostly rural, coastal or outliers away from teaching university hospitals, and where staff churn and updated learning was low.
The reports resulting from the inquiries I instigated all told a similar story of sub-optimal care, poor working relationships, rivalry and a lack of communication between midwives and doctors.
There were failures in governance and leadership, as well as understaffing and instances of underqualified staff being placed on high-risk units.
In June 2016, the CQC published a report into the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital covering the year which saw the cluster of deaths subsequently linked to Letby. They found the profile of a murderer.
None of it made sense to me, and it still doesn't.
Which brings me back to Dr Evans. How could he have been unaware of all the inquiries into the sub-standard pre and post-natal care of mothers and babies across the UK? Was he really so oblivious to the problems in some units as to be certain that murder was the most likely explanation?
Dr Shoo Lee and his panel of experts will hopefully shine a light today on why those poor babies really did die.
And if their findings suggest that Lucy Letby was not to blame, how long will it be before the establishment admit they got it wrong?
Well, I am hopeful.
The Mail reported yesterday that three members of the Criminal Cases Review Commission are 'familiarising' themselves with the Letby case ahead of a formal application from Lucy's team in a fresh challenge to her conviction announced in December.
The CCRC investigates potential miscarriages of justice and can refer a case back to the Court of Appeal.
Given the time this can take and the new evidence which has come to light, Lucy's barrister Mark McDonald has also applied directly to the Court of Appeal.
For me, Lucy's case has something of the Salem witch trials about it. A popular, young nurse – one whom many colleagues believe is innocent – has been portrayed as an evil monster.
Will the judiciary be more concerned with protecting the integrity of the criminal justice system than it will be with discovering the truth? And if it does grant the appeal or overturn the conviction, will it lead to an overhaul of how medical expert witnesses are appointed to cases?
Only time will tell. But it can't come fast enough – not least for Lucy Letby, whose life is on hold."
The entire story can be read atL
PUBLISHER'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
———————————————————————————————
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;
—————————————————————————————————
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;
