Lucy Letby, a nurse in England, was convicted of murdering 7 babies in her care. Coverage of the trial was heavily restricted in the UK, with local media unable to do much but convey the impression of an overwhelming case against her. But the forensic flaws and prosecutorial oddities were widely reported abroad, and a team of scientists (including a researcher whose work was used to convict her) has now released a report saying the babies could not have died by her hand.
Child killer Lucy Letby did not murder any babies, a panel of international medical experts reviewing evidence in her case has claimed. Chairman Dr Shoo Lee told a press conference "in all cases death or injury were due to natural causes or just bad medical care". Letby, who is serving 15 whole life sentences for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others between 2015 and 2016, has already lost two bids to appeal against her convictions. The panel's findings are likely to form part of an application which has been made by her lawyers to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) for her case to be investigated as a potential miscarriage of justice.
A key issue is that the research used at the trial concerned arterial embolisms, but the deaths involved venous embolisms, which have different symptoms and signs. It looks like a real problem for the prosection—and suggests a prosecution obsessed with securing a conviction it knew would be unsafe.
He told judges that the "only sign" of air embolism in preterm newborn babies was of pink blood vessels "superimposed" on a pink or blue body – and that it could not be diagnosed by any other skin discoloration. This was significant because Evans, the lead prosecution expert, and several witnesses had told Letby's original trial that the babies had shown alternative signs of skin "mottling" – which Evans claimed was evidence she had injected them with air. In newly published research, Lee has found no evidence of any skin discoloration in babies who have been accidentally injected with air into the veins.
One uncanny part is British papers are doing the classic Orwellian mid-sentence flip from being at war with baby murderer Letby to being allied with miscarriage of justice victim Letby. They previously condemned not only her, reasonably enough, but anyone who suggested she might be innocent or who discussed the case in terms they didn't consent to. But it seems they all knew this was coming and were preparing for it.
