Letby trials #2 - New strong evidence that Lucy Letby is innocent on at least one count
BBC and TriedByStats both now reporting serious new flaws in Letby trials [5 minute read]
[Defence KC] Mr Myers said: "You just came up with that now to support the allegation [that Letby murdered Baby C]. You are not independent at all."
[Police paid investigator + the key trial witness at prosecution] Dr Evans replied: "Again, that's just insulting."
BBC contemporary trial reporting1.
“I’m innocent.”
Lucy Letby in her most recent public statement, 5th July 2024, as she left the courtroom following receiving another whole life order.
New evidence indicates that Lucy Letby is innocent beyond reasonable doubt on at least one count
Neonatal nurse Lucy Letby was found guilty of 15 counts of murder and attempted murder (7 murder, 8 attempted murder), receiving whole life sentences for each.
Serious doubts have emerged about whether there was ever a crime at all.
There is now public reporting by TriedByStats and Stephanie Hegarty at the BBC, indicating that the pivotal evidence for one of the Lucy Letby murder convictions and whole life sentences is deeply flawed, as she appears to have never met the baby at the time it was obtained2. She had never been on shift with them. This, quite obviously, calls into very serious question whether the conviction it underpins is safe.
Stephanie Hegarty conducted an independent investigation at the BBC which has independently investigated and will be running an independent report on this at 8pm radio 4 [Lucy Letby: the killer questions, live on BBC sounds now as of 6am] which covers more than just this case. TriedByStats wishes to remain anonymous for now but I have spoken with them.
The case of Baby C
The case in question is Baby C.
Baby C was the third baby (they are named sequentially) in the tragic sequence of events at the Countess of Chester hospital.
Baby C was born prematurely 10th June 2015 weighing just 800 grams at 30 weeks, and was kept in the “highest priority” (BBC) nursery number one3,4.
4 days later, on the 14th of June 2015, Baby C tragically died.
8 years later, Lucy Letby was convicted of murdering Baby C via inserting air into the nasogastric tube5.
Baby C was added to the charges late in the case. Previously, external experts had not deemed it suspicious and explicitly said it was natural causes, but the lead prosecution witness and paid police investigator Dewi Evans persisted in exploring it as a murder charge and succeeded on adding it as a charge on the basis of a single radiological scan.
TriedByStats, along with the BBC, is now highlighting serious flaws. Here is the most succint high level summary I can come up with:
Letby’s last shift at the hospital was the 10th of June 2015, ending 8am.
Baby C was born 3pm on 10th of June 2015, 7 hours after Letby’s shift ended.
The scan was taken on the 12th of June 2015. This scan was used to shift the case to a murder conviction.
Letby had not been on shift with the baby by the time that evidence was obtained.
There is a great deal more in the TriedByStats account that to me paints a quite shocking picture of the conduct of this police investigation and trial. I emphasise that I have not seen the raw transcripts for this specific day myself, as they still remain unavailable to the public and highly expensive to obtain.
Yes, Letby was on shift when the baby died, which is why it is part of the “Letby cluster”. But the evidence obtained and argued to show a nefarious attack was obtained at a time when she had never been on shift. It predates her involvement in the baby’s care. So, if Dewi Evans’ claims of Baby C being murdered are valid, there must have been another killer in the ward. They are clearly not valid in my opinion.
This piece of flawed evidence was not only presented to the Jury as the clear proof of guilt, but it was also the piece of evidence which flipped an external expert into agreeing with the main prosecution witness Devi Evans, who was paid by the Cheshire Police having volunteered his services to investigate a ‘cluster’ of deaths consultants at the hospital had noted.
Our court system rightly works on the basis of guilty beyond reasonable doubt. But in this case, I think we can conclude that she can be shown to be innocent beyond reasonable doubt, as it will be quite a stretch to include Letby possessing a time machine in a renewed prosecution case. Note it is not impossible she had attended the ward without technically being on shift with the baby, but there does not appear to be any evidence for this and indeed some evidence actively cuts against it.
I believe, given there is no available record that she had ever even met the baby at this time, and there is no other evidence the baby died through nefarious causes, that we can presume with confidence that Lucy Letby is innocent on this count of murder unless and until new evidence emerges.
The BBC is also raising new concerns on many other fronts too. This substantiates the claim that some of the most compelling problems with this trial are not in the New Yorker piece and were not yet public. There is much more to come and many brilliant armchair detectives at work scrutinising this case.
Further implications
This information now entering the public realm is a particularly important development, as anyone can understand why it calls the baby C conviction into serious doubt.
Yet I think that for many with the skillset to probe the nuances of the other aspects of the trials of Lucy Letby, there are extensive other severe problems with all of the convictions. In my opinion, all of the main scientific and medical evidence is similarly catastrophically flawed. It is simply more complicated to explain why. Working out how to communicate this clearly is a core task before those of us working to defend the right to a fair trial. The BBC radio documentary by Stephanie Hegarty does an excellent job at this on many fronts.
Assuming you are convinced that this is strong evidence of innocence on this count, as I am, this development unlocks and motivates further questions and issues. I’ll cover a few here.
Firstly, it reveals Lucy Letby’s normal emotional reactions to a death on the ward when the death has occurred tragically but of natural causes. Contemporary messages on the day of this death indicate Letby was distressed by the death. Lucy Letby, 14th June 2015, in text messages with a colleague following the death of baby C, said“I was struggling to accept what happened to [Baby A]. Now we’ve lost [Baby C] overnight & It’s all a bit much….. It’s heartbreaking.”6
This kind of behaviour across other cases was explained by the prosecution and endorsed in the Judge’s sentencing as a cunning ploy by Letby to cover up her alleged crimes. But as now we know that, for at least one baby, she doesn’t appear to have anything at all to be covering up, it calls into question the possibility of whether her distressed emotional reactions in the other cases were also genuine, rather than the work of a genius actress with no prior known talent for acting.
Secondly, Letby looked up Baby C’s family on social media soon after the death7. Such behaviour was presented to the jury as evidence of a serial killer stalking her victims after death for many of the cases. Yet she has done it here too, in a case where she doesn’t appear to have even met the baby when the alleged evidence for murder was obtained.
Given it appears she actually is innocent on this count, and was telling the truth on at least this count, it begins to raise questions about how a) this kind of evidence was used to insinuate that she is guilty and/or b) that the subsequent reactions by Letby to other deaths are in fact completely consistent with her behaviour when a baby dies that she has never intended to harm. The case appears to reveal her normal emotional response when innocent, and it is consistent with the other cases.
It also supports, for at least one baby, the core claims made by the Letby defence KC Ben Myers regarding concerns of how Evans had conducted himself. Evans was accused by the defence of adding the Baby C ‘splinting of the diaphragm’ claim only at trial, and accused of inappropriately over reaching in his conclusions8. Myers KC said in trial to Evans "What you have done in your evidence today [on Baby C] is introduce something new with the purpose of supporting the allegation rather than explaining the facts."9
This was referred to in the 3 judges appeal to appeal ruling in July but it was not upheld as a valid objection, with the judges saying, in a section defending Evans’ expertise, “if he did over step the line in relation to one baby (Baby C in which he gave his opinion on the cause of the baby’s collapse for the first time in his evidence to the Jury), that did not invalidate his evidence generally”10. This is a matter to return to, as the Baby C case now does indeed appear confirmed as indicative of witness overreach as Ben Myers KC claimed at the trial.
Finally, that this scale of error exists on a whole life sentence conviction would appear to raise the plausibility of the broader claim that this trial as a whole is catastrophically flawed, and that the processes that led to it have serious problems.
It is my understanding TriedByStats was the first to spot this issue on Baby C and tipped off the BBC, though the BBC conducted an independent investigation.
TriedByStats has released further information on this particular conviction, some of which is highly disturbing if independently verified and at the very least indicative to me of a deeply flawed criminal investigation. I believe that it requires urgent and careful scrutiny. TriedByStats wishes to remain publicly anonymous for now, but deserves tremendous credit for his work on this case. Thank you TriedByStats.
There is no direct evidence whatsoever that Letby sought to harm any baby, and she maintains her innocence.
A network of people around the world have been working to investigate this case and defend the right to a fair trial. Please consider helping them. More on how to help very soon.
I highly recommend reading TriedByStats’ full account of this here and listening to Stephanie Hegarty’s excellent BBC radio documentary.
[correction on 7th October 2024, an earlier version said 7 murder convictions, 7 attempted murder - the 8th attempted murder was convicted at the Baby K retrial).
A couple of X accounts to follow:
Endnotes
1. BBC, contemporary trial reporting, 1st November 2022.
2. BBC Sounds, Tuesday October 1st 2024, 6am broadcast,
3. BBC, 18th August 2023, which is a summary of the allegations regarding each baby.
4. ITV explainer, 18th August 2023
5. Point 25, July 2024 The three Judges appeal to appeal document (Judiciary.uk)
6. BBC, 18th August 2023, for Letby texts surrounding Baby C’s death.
7. ITV explainer, 18th August 2023
8. BBC, contemporary trial reporting, 1st November 2022.
9. BBC, contemporary trial reporting, 1st November 2022.
10. Point 100, July 2024 the three Judges appeal to appeal document (Judiciary.uk)