The barrister representing convicted baby killer Lucy Letby will tomorrow personally hand-deliver two expert reports he believes will exonerate her to the body investigating whether she has been the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
Mark McDonald said he would be presenting the ‘fresh evidence’ to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, at its headquarters in Birmingham at 12pm.
Compiled by an international panel of 14 experts, the first, 698-page report, claims Letby’s infant victims were not murdered or deliberately harmed but instead collapsed or died due to natural causes or poor hospital care.
It concludes ‘there was no medical evidence to support malfeasance causing death or injury’ for the 17 children involved in Letby’s original trial.
Mr McDonald will also hand over a second, 86-page report, which focuses specifically on two of those 17 infants – two baby boys Letby was accused of trying to poison with insulin, eight months apart, known as Babies F and L.
Both were twins and their brothers were also attacked by Letby, who injected air into their bloodstreams.
Baby F’s brother, Baby E was killed but Baby M, the twin of Baby L, miraculously survived after almost 30 minutes of CPR.
The former neo-natal nurse, 35, was found guilty in August 2023 of murdering seven children and attempting to murder six more at the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neo-natal unit, between June 2015 and June 2016.
The jury failed to reach verdicts or cleared her of attempted murder charges relating to another four children following ten months of hearings at Manchester Crown Court.
She was subsequently convicted of attempting to murder one of those infants, a baby girl known as Baby K, following a retrial, in July last year.
Letby is serving 15 whole life terms and has twice tried and failed to appeal her convictions, meaning her only route to freedom now lies with the CCRC.
They have confirmed they have assigned commissioners to look into Letby’s case but have not put a timescale on how long it will take to evaluate whether it should be referred to the Court of Appeal a third time.
According to Mr McDonald, the second report, which focuses on Babies F and L, has been compiled by seven of the world’s leading experts in insulin testing, paediatric endocrinology and hyperinsulinism, a condition which causes over-production of insulin and persistent low blood sugar.
He said their findings ‘undermine the validity of the assertions’ made about insulin testing at Letby’s original trial and the experts ‘unanimously agree’ the jury was misled on ‘medical and evidential facts’ around the testing, which ‘did not meet forensic standards.’
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 the trial that blood tests from both children proved they had been poisoned with exogenous insulin – insulin not produced naturally by their own bodies.
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.
Mr McDonald said: ‘The fresh evidence I will hand in to the CCRC tomorrow totally undermines the prosecution case at trial.
‘This is the largest international review of neonatal medicine ever undertaken, the results of which show Lucy Letby’s convictions are no longer safe.
‘The conclusions of the report on Babies F and L clearly demonstrate that the case must go back to the Court of Appeal as a matter of urgency. I hope the CCRC will realise this and refer the case without undue delay.
‘Lucy Letby is currently serving 15 whole life terms in prison, when overwhelming independent expert evidence indicates that no babies were murdered.’
Earlier this month barristers representing families of Letby’s victims criticised Mr McDonald’s tactic of calling press conferences, where evidence cannot be as robustly analysed or tested as in a court of law, describing them as publicity stunts designed to help the serial killer ‘control the narrative’ from prison.
Richard Baker KC told the public inquiry investigating Letby’s crimes that she has never explained why she chose not to call such evidence at her original trial and said: ‘The only reason why a defendant would choose not to call their own experts to give evidence is because they know that those experts, if tested in court, would be likely to convict them.
‘A defendant cannot choose not to call their experts at trial and then ask for permission to roll the dice again when the gamble doesn’t pay off.
‘That is the definition of “expert shopping”.’
Mr Baker also debunked much of the evidence presented by Mr McDonald’s expert panel, whose summary reports on the first seven infants were handed to the media at a press conference in February, saying it was flawed, nothing new and simply a re-hash of evidence already ventilated before the jury.
Mr Baker said the panel’s breadth of expertise was narrower than those experts called to give evidence at trial and pointed out that almost all were neonatologists or paediatricians without the specialisms in pathology or radiology or haematology of those who attended Manchester Crown Court.
And he said they didn’t appear to have access to all of the available witness statements, for example from the parents, such as the mother of Baby C or Baby I or Baby E, who witnessed Letby’s strange behaviour.
In Baby E’s case his mother managed to prove with phone records that Letby had altered the medical notes in relation to the timing of the collapse of her son.
Mr Baker concluded that focusing simply on the medical evidence and dismissing other important factors, such as Letby’s strange behaviour when infants collapsed, her ‘confession’ notes, her alteration of medical records, her Facebook searches for parents and the fact that many of the babies killed or harmed also had siblings who were attacked, meant the expert panel risked ignoring the ‘bigger picture.’
‘The families would think it obvious that when trying to consider evidence as a jury might have done, it is important to look at that evidence as a whole, not in silos,’ he said.
For more exclusive, behind the headline’s coverage of the Lucy Letby case, follow the Mail’s No.1 True Crime series, The Trial, wherever you get your podcasts now. Plus, subscribe for exclusive weekly bonus episodes from The Trial+, the Mail’s new members-only series – available now.