A panel of worldwide medical consultants has claimed to have “important new proof” which casts doubt about serial killer Lucy Letby’s convictions.
Letby, now 35, is serving 15 complete life sentences for murdering seven infants and trying to homicide seven others – together with one she attacked twice.
The entire offences occurred between June 2015 and June 2016 whereas Letby was working on the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neonatal unit.
The 14-member panel, which introduced its findings at a press convention in central London, attributed some deaths to pure causes and a few to substandard care.
Letby misplaced two bids final 12 months to problem her convictions on the Courtroom of Enchantment.
MP Sir David Davis, who has been helping Letby’s authorized staff, described her convictions as “one of many main injustices of contemporary occasions”.
Chair of the panel, retired medic Dr Shoo Lee, who co-authored a 1989 tutorial paper on air embolism in infants, mentioned 14 consultants had compiled an “neutral evidence-based report”.
Presenting the panel’s case, he added that their ideas had been with the households of the infants who had died
“We perceive their stress and their anguish, and our work is just not meant to trigger extra misery,” he mentioned.
“Relatively, it’s meant to provide them consolation and assurance in figuring out the reality about what actually occurred.”
Dr Lee was additionally crucial of the care supplied at Countess of Chester Hospital.
He mentioned: “We didn’t discover any murders. In all circumstances, loss of life or harm had been resulting from pure causes or simply unhealthy medical care.”
Earlier, the Legal Circumstances Assessment Fee (CCRC) mentioned Letby’s legal professionals had utilized to the fee to research her case as a possible miscarriage of justice, the organisation mentioned.
The CCRC confirmed it had “acquired a preliminary software in relation to Ms Letby’s case, and work has begun to evaluate the appliance”.
A CCRC spokesperson mentioned: “We’re conscious that there was an excessive amount of hypothesis and commentary surrounding Lucy Letby’s case, a lot of it from events with solely a partial view of the proof.
“We ask that everybody remembers the households affected by occasions on the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.”
The spokesperson mentioned it was not the CCRC’s job to “decide innocence or guilt in a case”, and mentioned that it was a “matter for the courts”.
The physique mentioned it will now assess the appliance and decide whether or not there was new proof which introduced an inexpensive likelihood of a conviction being overturned.
Talking on the convention, Dr Lee described the panel because the “dream-team” in neonatology and mentioned “you’ll not discover a higher certified panel on the earth”.
In Letby’s trial the prosecution referred to proof a 1989 report by Dr Lee to argue that one of many strategies utilized by Letby was introducing air to the infant’s our bodies both by way of intravenous traces or through a naso-gastric tube.
One of many points Dr Lee mentioned the panel had discovered was that pores and skin discoloration famous on a number of the infants was, he claimed, wrongly attributed to air embolus by the prosecution.
In Might 2024 Letby appealed her convictions for seven murders and 7 tried murders, and in October for one tried homicide of a child lady which she was convicted of by a unique jury at a retrial.
On the first of these appeals, her defence argued recent proof from Dr Lee meant the convictions had been unsafe.
Nonetheless these arguments had been rejected as three senior judges concluded there had been no prosecution knowledgeable proof diagnosing air embolus solely on the idea of pores and skin discolouration.