July 3: Neonatal nurse Lucy Letby: More proof that she did not have a fair trial. Special Correspondent Emily Dugan reports on a 100-page analysis prepared by Lucy Letby's legal team, which concludes that a key prosecution witness - renowned paediatric endocrinologist Professor Peter Hindmarsh - who gave evidence at the trial, should have given the jury alternative explanations for why two babies she was convicted of poisoning fell critically ill, noting that: "Letby’s barrister, Mark McDonald, said: “Professor Hindmarsh’s evidence occupied a position of exceptional importance at the trial and was the cornerstone from which the prosecution invited the jury to infer criminal intent on all the allegations. The detailed report submitted last week identifies several arguable errors in his evidence.” McDonald said that if the CCRC (Criminal Cases Review Commission) were to find there were details on important aspects of insulin and biochemical analysis that the jury should have been told about “then all the convictions are unsafe”.

PASSAGE OF THE DAY:  "Since her conviction, leading medical experts from the UK and around the world have questioned the evidence given by the prosecution at trial.  Last year an independently convened panel of 14 experts found no evidence of murders or intentional harm, arguing her conviction was unsafe. A retired neonatologist named Mike Hall was hired by the defence as an expert witness but was not called at trial. At a meeting of the experts in August 2022, Hall decided to “defer to the expertise of Hindmarsh” on both babies F and L."

STORY: "Lucy Letby witness ‘should have told jury about other explanations,’  by Special Correspondent  Emily Dugan. published by The Times, on June 27, 2026. (Emily Dugan is special correspondent at The Sunday Times, focused on in-depth investigative journalism. She won crime and legal affairs journalist of the year at the British Journalism Awards for her work on the case of Andrew Malkinson, who was imprisoned for 17 years for a rape he did not commit. She was previously the newspaper’s social affairs correspondent, investigating babies taken into care over a single bruise; the death and violence behind a large supplier of avocados to Britain; and sexual harassment by the police. She has worked at The Guardian, BuzzFeed News and The Independent. She won the Paul Foot award for her investigations into failings in the justice system and has twice been shortlisted for news reporter of the year at the British Press Awards.)

SUB-HEADING: "A report by the nurse’s legal team claims there are other potential reasons two babies fell ill."

GIST: "An expert witness who gave evidence at the trial of Lucy Letby should have given the jury alternative explanations for why two babies she was convicted of poisoning fell critically ill, a report has claimed.

A 100-page analysis prepared by Letby’s legal team questions the evidence given at her trial by the renowned paediatric endocrinologist Professor Peter Hindmarsh.

Letby was found guilty of attempted murder of two premature twins born eight months apart after the jury heard evidence from Hindmarsh that test results showed babies’ blood sugar could only have plummeted after they had been poisoned by insulin. Other paediatricians instructed in the case deferred to Hindmarsh, an emeritus professor at University College London, because of his expertise in hormones and diabetes in children.

The report — co-authored by Dr Neil Aiton, a consultant neonatologist at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Trust and Dr Hilde Wilkinson-Herbots, associate professor at the Department of Statistical Science, University College London — alleges that there were errors of fact and omissions in the evidence presented to the jury.

The experts who compiled the report allege that an email from Hindmarsh suggests he was aware of other potential causes for the babies’ insulin levels. Alternatives were not discussed at the trial as a decision was taken not to challenge Hindmarsh’s conclusion. It is understood they were considered and discounted by Hindmarsh, meaning only one explanation was put to the jury. The report does not address why Letby’s team did not question his evidence during the trial. The experts say he acknowledged another case of similar symptoms in an unrelated family court case where he gave evidence.

The report argues that if these alternative scientific explanations “had been placed before the court, the jury may have come to a different conclusion”.

Letby’s team hope the new analysis, which was submitted last week to the miscarriage of justice watchdog, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), will mark a turning point in the former nurse’s application to have her convictions referred back to the appeal court. The Court of Appeal has twice refused to reconsider her convictions.

Letby, 36, is serving 15 whole-life terms at Bronzefield prison after being convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder eight others while working as a neonatal nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016.

The jury were unanimous about the two insulin cases, which were the first on which they returned a verdict. Letby’s team argue the evidence on these cases is crucial to considering the safety of her conviction.

Prosecutors argued that Letby attempted to murder Baby F in August 2015 and Baby L in April 2016, by adding insulin to intravenous feed bags. It was contended at trial that the babies were doing well until Letby poisoned them.
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Hindmarsh was called by the prosecution to explain evidence on insulin. Experts instructed by Letby’s defence team did not give evidence in court, but in written reports they accepted findings made by Hindmarsh and deferred to his expertise.

Hindmarsh told the court that the test results in relation to Baby F and Baby L could only be explained by the administration of synthetic insulin. They had low levels of blood sugar and C-peptide, a by-product made when the body produces insulin. Hindmarsh said that if insulin had been produced naturally the C-peptide would have been higher.

In further answers to written questions about this he repeated: “There are no other conditions that would cause these readings.”

In the witness box, Hindmarsh was questioned by the prosecution about whether he had been asked to consider natural reasons for the babies’ insulin readings and replied “I was” but was not asked to elaborate. Letby’s barrister did not question the professor about it.

Email correspondence since the trial suggests that Hindmarsh considered the possibility of insulin antibodies as an alternative explanation for the results in babies F and L, but came to the conclusion that they were not relevant in this case.

In emails to a scientist in August 2024, Hindmarsh was asked if he had considered two alternative explanations for the results that would not involve poisoning, including transfer of antibodies that attack insulin from mothers.

Hindmarsh acknowledged that “consideration was given to maternal antibody transfer which the labs are well aware of” but said that “there were no issues in the mothers as there were more than two cases so would be very unusual to have a number of affected mothers over a short period of time. The behaviour of the blood glucose was also against ongoing antibody effect.”

The new report also refers to Hindmarsh’s evidence in a separate family court case in July 2022 where he acknowledges “another explanation” for similar results in a child whose mother was accused of deliberately injecting insulin. While Hindmarsh ultimately dismissed this explanation in his family court evidence, he did acknowledge it within the hearing.

The family court judge commended Hindmarsh as a “world leader in his field” and thanked him for “expert evidence of exceptional quality”.

The report argues that because the jury were not presented with alternative explanations for the blood test results they were left “with only one possible conclusion: that these babies must have been given exogenous insulin”. The reports authors do not address why Letby’s defence team did not oppose Hindmarsh’s conclusions.

The experts allege that their own analysis shows both Baby F and Baby L had good reasons to develop their symptoms and criticise Hindmarsh for not making the court aware of this.

Baby F is likely to have suffered from sepsis, and the significance of this was not conveyed to the jury at trial by Hindmarsh, the experts say.

Baby L, meanwhile, had severe foetal growth restriction and decreased amniotic fluid in the womb, leading to early delivery at 33 weeks. The report argues there were very good reasons why he had a common neonatal condition where a newborn temporarily produces too much insulin after birth complications. 

The authors also questioned whether the two mothers may have received a nutritional supplement during fertility treatment which could cause newborns to show fictitiously high levels of insulin.

Letby’s barrister, Mark McDonald, said: “Professor Hindmarsh’s evidence occupied a position of exceptional importance at the trial and was the cornerstone from which the prosecution invited the jury to infer criminal intent on all the allegations. The detailed report submitted last week identifies several arguable errors in his evidence.” McDonald said that if the CCRC were to find there were details on important aspects of insulin and biochemical analysis that the jury should have been told about “then all the convictions are unsafe”.

Since her conviction, leading medical experts from the UK and around the world have questioned the evidence given by the prosecution at trial.

Last year an independently convened panel of 14 experts found no evidence of murders or intentional harm, arguing her conviction was unsafe.

A retired neonatologist named Mike Hall was hired by the defence as an expert witness but was not called at trial. At a meeting of the experts in August 2022, Hall decided to “defer to the expertise of Hindmarsh” on both babies F and L.

The CCRC is still deliberating on the case. The first Letby trial took ten months and the volume of material to consider is substantial.

A spokeswoman for the Medical Defence Union confirmed that Hindmarsh had no comment.""

The entire story can be read at:

https://x.com/richardhor54460/status/2070975089244618877?s=12

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. 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. 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;