No, Lucy Letby has not been exonerated

We need to talk about Lucy Letby… again. Her new legal team held a lengthy press conference last week, with various medical experts presenting a new report into her case. Dr Shoo Lee – a Canadian retired paediatrician, whose research was cited in Letby’s criminal trial – claimed to have found a number of flaws in the evidence that was used to convict her on 15 separate counts of murder and attempted murder. The 14-strong panel argued that there is ‘no medical evidence’ that Letby murdered any babies. Instead, the panel suggested that those deaths had been caused by hospital mismanagement. Her new lawyer, Mark McDonald, confidently declared that the revelations ‘demolish’ the case against the former nurse.

Dr Dewi Evans, the key prosecution witness, disagrees. In response to last week’s panel, he said that countering Lee’s claims would be easy enough, but he is not keen on ‘participating in “appeal via press conference”’. ‘It’s not how scientific and clinical research is presented’, he said. ‘And it’s not how the formal legal process functions.’ Besides, Evans had never denied that the babies who died had been poorly cared for – indeed, he said as much in his testimony to the court. Nevertheless, the evidence he gathered pointed to ‘malfeasance’ and therefore to Lucy Letby.

Evans is right to criticise the approach of Letby’s backers. It is highly unusual to present findings like this to the press before going to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) first. The role of the CCRC is to investigate whether any new evidence might have changed the decision made by the jury. It can then look at the entire case again, placing the new evidence alongside all the other evidence that arose at trial. It can then refer this new evidence to the Court of Appeal. Needless to say, a two-hour press conference is no substitute for this painstaking legal process. As you might have guessed, the vast amount of evidence that incriminates Letby was simply glossed over.

The findings of this new panel are likely to be highly contested, not least by the experts who gave the evidence in court. For instance, the panel claims that the evidence from insulin tests that was used to convict Letby was flawed. With only a summary of the report available for now, it is not clear how the panel intends to demonstrate this. The insulin tests helped the prosecution prove that some babies were being poisoned and were not simply being neglected. In the original trial, Letby herself accepted that two babies had been poisoned, while denying that she was involved. This matters, because if someone – ie, Lucy Letby – was attempting to kill babies on the ward, then the panel’s arguments about the mismanagement of the hospital become largely irrelevant.

The new report also does nothing to explain away the wider evidence against Letby – such as the fact that she falsified medical documents, was present for all of the relevant deaths and even left a note stating, ‘I killed them on purpose’. The idea that the case against her has somehow been ‘demolished’ by this panel and its report is, at best, premature.

Of course, we should always keep an open mind. We should wait to see what the CCRC and any subsequent tribunals make of the new evidence. No one should dismiss the possibility that someone convicted of a crime may in fact be innocent, no matter how robust the case may seem. That is why the CCRC and the Court of Appeal exist. But Letby’s supporters have not kept an open mind, they insist that they have access to some higher truth that was ignored not only by the juries that convicted her, but also by Letby herself and her original defence team.

The sad fact is that many people have tried to make their name from this tragic case. Obviously, people should be free to offer any opinion they wish on Letby’s trial. But there is something disturbing about the eagerness of many commentators to pronounce her innocent, despite the court cases that have already taken place, and before any proper process has been undertaken that might exonerate her. Their faith in her innocence is completely unshakeable, yet it is based on scant and often contradictory evidence.

Until there is a definitive finding that this new panel has convincingly undermined the evidence that was put before the courts, then we should continue to respect the original convictions. That this new report has made so many waves, and seems to have changed so many minds, says little about the legitimacy or otherwise of Lucy Letby’s conviction. It merely shows the disturbing willingness of so many to believe in her innocence, regardless of what the evidence actually says.

Luke Gittos is a spiked columnist and author. His most recent book is Human Rights – Illusory Freedom: Why We Should Repeal the Human Rights Act, which is published by Zero Books. Order it here.