THE convictions of child serial killer Lucy Letby have been branded “one of the major injustices of modern times” as her legal team continued its campaign protesting her innocence.
Her case will now be reviewed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, after Letby’s lawyers made an application to the body on Monday.
Letby, 35, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted at Manchester Crown Court of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others, with two attempts on one of her victims, between June 2015 and June 2016.
The babies were attacked by various means while the defendant worked as a nurse on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
One such method was injecting air into the bloodstream which caused an air embolism that blocked the blood supply and led to sudden and unexpected collapses.
At a press conference on Tuesday, MP Sir David Davis described her convictions as “one of the major injustices of modern times”.
Retired medic Dr Shoo Lee, who co-authored a 1989 academic paper on air embolism in babies, then presented the findings of a panel of 14 experts who said they had compiled an “impartial evidence-based report”.
Lee concluded the 70-minute press conference, including some very detailed medical evidence, by saying: “In summary then, ladies and gentlemen, we did not find murders.
“In all cases, death or injury were due to natural causes or just bad medical care. Lucy was charged with seven murders and seven attempted murders.
“In our opinion, the medical opinion, the medical evidence doesn’t support murder in any of these cases, just natural causes and bad medical care.”
He told the press conference that the panel’s thoughts were with the families of the babies who died.
“We understand their stress and their anguish, and our work is not meant to cause more distress,” he said.
Lee went on to present findings from the panel who looked at all 17 babies Letby is accused of harming, in six different ways.
Lee said he would speak about some of the babies, citing baby one, a pre-term boy who collapsed two days after being born, with skin discolouration noted and who did not respond to resuscitation.
He said the allegation against Letby was that she injected air into his veins causing his collapse and death.
Lee made the distinction between air in veins and air in arteries.
He told the press conference: “In the cases where air was injected in the veins there was no cases of patchy skin discolouration. So the notion that these babies can be diagnosed with air embolism because they collapsed and had these skin dis-colourations has no evidence in fact.”
Lee later moved to baby six, a boy who survived after Lucy Letby injected him with insulin.
He told the press conference the child had been given the “wrong treatment” and he had been medically “mismanaged”, adding his supposed high insulin levels due to injection by Letby had been misinterpreted.
About baby 11, Lee said: “There’s actually no proof that the tube was even dislodged. It was probably in the right place."
Letby lost two bids last year to challenge her convictions at the Court of Appeal – in May for seven murders and seven attempted murders, and in October for the attempted murder of a baby girl which she was convicted of by a different jury at a retrial.
At the first of those appeals, a bid to admit fresh evidence from Lee was rejected as three senior judges concluded there had been no prosecution expert evidence diagnosing air embolus solely on the basis of skin discolouration.
Lee said he has recently updated his academic paper and found no cases of skin discolouration linked to air embolism by the venous system.
In December, Letby’s barrister Mark McDonald said – that separately from the CCRC application – he would also seek permission from the Court of Appeal to apply to reopen her case on the grounds that Dr Dewi Evans, the lead prosecution medical expert at her trial, was “not reliable”.
Retired consultant paediatrician Dr Evans said concerns regarding his evidence were “unsubstantiated, unfounded, inaccurate”.
A CCRC spokesperson said: “We are aware that there has been a great deal of speculation and commentary surrounding Lucy Letby’s case, much of it from parties with only a partial view of the evidence.
“We ask that everyone remembers the families affected by events at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.
“We have received a preliminary application in relation to Ms Letby’s case, and work has begun to assess the application. We anticipate further submissions being made to us.
“It is not for the CCRC to determine innocence or guilt in a case, that’s a matter for the courts.
“It is for the CCRC to find, investigate and if appropriate, refer potential miscarriages of justice to the appellate courts when new evidence or new argument means there is a real possibility that a conviction will not be upheld, or a sentence reduced.
“At this stage it is not possible to determine how long it will take to review this application. A significant volume of complicated evidence was presented to the court in Ms Letby’s trials.
“The CCRC is independent. We do not work for the government, courts, police, the prosecution or for anyone applying for a review of their case. This helps us investigate alleged miscarriages of justice impartially.”
A public inquiry into how the nurse committed her crimes is also under way, and detectives from Cheshire Constabulary are continuing their review of the care of some 4,000 babies admitted to hospital while Letby worked as a neonatal nurse.
