The jury who convicted Lucy Letby of poisoning two babies with insulin were ‘misled’ by faulty tests that can produce ‘false’ results, her new barrister claimed today.
Mark McDonald said seven experts had analysed the cases of two twin boys, who Letby was convicted of attempting to murder eight months apart, and concluded the test results were unreliable.
He said they now cast ‘serious doubts’ on her convictions.
Mr McDonald hand-delivered an 86-page report analysing the cases of the children, known as Babies F and L, to the Birmingham offices of the Criminal Cases Review Commission this afternoon in the hope that it will support the case for having her convictions quashed.
Also passed to the CCRC, which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, was a separate report on the full findings of a 14-strong international panel of neonatologists and paediatric specialists who say poor medical care and natural causes, not Letby, were to blame for the collapses or deaths of the 17 babies in her original trial.
Letby, 35, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted at Manchester Crown Court of murdering seven of those children and attempting to murder seven more, with two attempts on one of her victims, at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.
Last month, lawyers for the families of Letby’s victims debunked the international panel’s findings, saying they were flawed, nothing new and simply a ‘re-hash’ of evidence already ventilated in court.
One mother also branded a press conference held by Mr McDonald and Canadian neonatologist Dr Shoo Lee as a ‘misinformed and inaccurate media circus’ which was adding to the families’ distress.
Letby tried to murder Babies F and L by poisoning them with insulin, a drug which mimics the hormone that is produced by the body to lower blood sugar. The drug was kept in an unlocked fridge at the Countess and she was found guilty of adding the medication to the infants’ fluid drips.
Both infants also had brothers who Letby attacked around the same time by injecting air into their bloodstreams. Baby F’s brother, Baby E, was murdered in August 2015 but Baby M, the twin of Baby L, miraculously survived after almost 30 minutes of CPR, in April 2016.
The experts’ findings claim that the jury at Letby’s trial was ‘misled’ because the immunoassay test, carried out by a laboratory in Liverpool, where doctors sent patients’ blood for analysis, ‘did not meet acceptable forensic standards.’
The jury was wrongly told that the test was specific for the identification of insulin alone and could be relied upon, they said. They were not told about the margin for error, nor did any expert give evidence on quality control, the experts claim.
There was also now ‘convincing new evidence’ from ‘multiple sources’ that the test could give ‘falsely high’ insulin results if certain antibodies were present in a patient’s blood, the experts, including two consultant neonatologists, a retired professor in forensic toxicology and a paediatric endocrinologist, said.
According to their report, such antibodies can also be transferred from mother to baby during pregnancy causing hyperinsulinism, a condition caused when the pancreas produces too high levels of insulin leading to hypoglycaemia or low blood sugar once the child is born.
The experts also claim to have found ‘alternative’ medical explanations for both Baby F and Baby L’s low blood sugar. In Baby F’s case, the experts believe he had developed the serious infection, sepsis, and wasn’t getting enough supplementary glucose for several hours because the long line – the tiny catheter used to administer drugs – had ‘tissued’ or failed.
Both babies had restricted growth in the womb, a known risk factor for perinatal stress-induced hyperinsulinism, a type of hyperinsulinism that occurs in newborns because of problems during pregnancy or birth, they claim.
Treatment of their low blood sugar was also mismanaged by doctors at the hospital, the experts said.
Peter Hindmarsh, a consultant and specialist in childhood diabetes at Great Ormond Street Hospital and emeritus professor at University College London (UCL), gave evidence at Letby’s trial that high insulin levels, coupled with low rates of C-peptide, a by-product released when the body produces insulin naturally, which was found in both babies’ blood samples, proved they were poisoned by insulin given exogenously as a drug.
Significantly, Letby also accepted that the babies were poisoned when she gave evidence in the witness box in her defence, although she insisted the insulin had not been administered by her.
But the report authors disagree and claim that Baby F and Baby L’s insulin and C-peptide levels were within the normal range and typical for premature infants.
‘Our inescapable conclusion is that this evidence significantly undermines the validity of the assertions made about the insulin and C-peptide testing presented in court,’ the experts said.
Among other findings of the panel, in the full report also delivered by Mr McDonald today, was that a baby boy, known as Baby C, died following ineffective resuscitation from a collapse after an ‘acute small bowel obstruction’ that went unrecognised, rather than from a deliberate administration of air into his tummy or bloodstream. This theory, however, was discounted by experts for the prosecution at the trial.
Child P, a triplet boy, was also found by the jury to have been fatally injected with air but the panel ruled he died from a collapsed lung that was ‘suboptimally managed’.
Letby’s experts said there was also no evidence of air embolism – in which air bubbles block the blood supply to the heart – in a twin boy, known as Baby E, and that bleeding he suffered was not caused by inflicted trauma but from either a lack of oxygen pre-birth or a congenital blood vessel condition.
Letby has twice tried and failed to appeal her convictions but Mr McDonald said the reports’ findings demonstrate they ‘are no longer safe.’ He has urged the CCRC to refer her case to the Court of Appeal ‘without undue delay.’
Yesterday Detective Superintendent Paul Hughes, the senior police officer investigating Letby, said Cheshire police would cooperate with the CCRC but criticised ‘ill-informed’ and ‘insensitive’ critics questioning her guilt.
In a strongly-worded and unprecedented intervention, he insisted Letby’s case had been ‘rigorously and fairly tested’ by two juries and two sets of appeal court judges after a painstaking and complex six-year police investigation.
The force’s inquiry into Letby, who was quizzed in jail over more supected murders last year, remains ongoing.