I was sure Lucy Letby was guilty… then spent weeks poring over evidence & now I’m convinced NO babies were murdered

SHE’S Britain’s most prolific child killer, serving 15 whole life orders for the sickening murders of seven innocent babies and attempting to kill seven others.

And last week it emerged Lucy Letby could be facing more charges over the deaths of babies at hospitals she worked at.

pixel8000Killer nurse Lucy Letby could face even more charges but some question her guilt[/caption]

Peter JordanSun man Oliver Harvey thinks Letby has been let down by the legal system[/caption]

Letby, 35, is understood to have carried out two work placements at Liverpool Women’s Hospital – where she trained as a student – between October and December 2012, and January and February 2015.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said it had received “a full file of evidence from Cheshire Constabulary asking us to consider further allegations in relation to deaths and non-fatal collapses of babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital and Liverpool Women’s Hospital”.

It comes after three people – who were in senior leadership roles at the Countess of Chester Hospital – were arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter as part of an investigation into the baby deaths.

But while evidence continues to stack up against her, there are also a growing number of people – including some prominent politicians – who have publicly expressed doubts over her guilt.

Yesterday we told how journalist Nigel Bunyan, who attended Lucy Letby’s main trial and the retrial that followed it, is convinced justice was served because Letby is “a nailed-on serial killer of tiny, defenceless babies“.

But The Sun’s Chief Features Writer Oliver Harvey is in the opposite camp, concerned “an innocent young woman has been jailed in one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British legal history”.

Here he puts forward his argument for why he’s convinced Lucy Letby is not guilty of her harrowing crimes, and why a fresh appeal is needed immediately.

STARING at Lucy Letby’s washed out mugshot on the day of her conviction, I believed she was a wicked baby killer.

Justice was done, I assumed, so let this monster rot in hell. Hadn’t the “Angel of Death” even admitted her own guilt in scrawled notes?

Months later, after being commissioned to write an article about Letby ‘truthers’ – the internet army of sleuths pleading her innocence – I did a deep dive into the evidence stacked against her.

Much of it involves complex medical and statistical information. It required strong coffee, a string of late nights and expert advice.

Now, I believe an innocent young woman has been jailed in one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British legal history.

And, in my view, no babies were murdered or harmed at the Countess of Chester Hospital.

Last week prosecutors revealed they were considering fresh charges against Letby – currently rotting in prison as she serves 15 life sentences.

Cheshire Police have been investigating further “deaths and non-fatal collapses of babies”.

PAStaring at Lucy Letby’s washed out mugshot on the day of her conviction, Oliver believed she was a wicked baby killer[/caption]

PAThe writer has since changed his mind after being commissioned to write an article about Letby ‘truthers’[/caption]

So why do I believe Letby – already caged for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others – has been wrongfully convicted?  

And could two jury trials and two Appeal Court hearings really have misread things so badly?

A solemn truth is that English justice – long admired across the world – sometimes gets it wrong.

After nearly 30 years working in Fleet Street, including reporting for a news agency at the Old Bailey and the High Court, I’ve witnessed my share of wrongful convictions firsthand.

I saw the Bridgewater Three – James Robinson and cousins Vincent and Michael Hickey – emerge blinking in the sunlight after 18 years behind bars for a crime they didn’t commit.

Wrongly convicted for murdering 13-year-old paperboy Carl Bridgewater, James spoke of the “long, lonely years that we’ve cried and wept” as “people have looked at us with hate” and “called us child-killers”.

Words delivered with such raw emotion stay with you.

Then there was Angela Cannings, wrongly convicted of murdering two of her babies.

During her 18-months incarceration I got to know her salt-of-the-earth husband Terry.

Visiting him at home in Salisbury, Wiltshire, he told me: “The trial was horrific, I don’t know how Angela coped.

“After she was jailed I just sobbed and sobbed on my sofa.”

Angela’s conviction was overturned by the Appeal Court in 2003 after it emerged medical evidence against her was flawed and that her babies had actually perished from cot death.

ReutersAngela Cannings was wrongly convicted of killing her children and freed by the court of appeal[/caption]

The Bridgewater Three were wrong convicted of murderPA:Press Association

It’s a pertinent example of how police, prosecutors and juries can get it wrong when dealing with complex medical issues.

I believe evidence used to convict Letby was also catastrophically flawed and doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

A central plank of the prosecution case – placed before the jury at the beginning of Letby’s first 10-month trial – was an apparently damning shift rota.

The chart showed a cluster of 25 suspicious baby deaths and collapses matched against the shift rota of the 38 nurses who worked on the unit.

Only Letby was at the scene for every death and collapse.

Yet the jury wasn’t told about six other baby deaths in the period for which she faced no charges.

Statisticians also say the chart covers far too narrow a period of time.

Professor Richard Gill, whose expertise is medical statistics, told me the spreadsheet was “ludicrous” and that he believes Letby is innocent.

Fatal flaws

MP David Davis has come out in support of Letby as has retired medic Dr Shoo LeeBen Whitley/PA Wire

PADr Dewi testified that Letby had injected insulian or air into bloodstreams or feeding tubes[/caption]

When a case has been built around what the professor says are flawed statistics, then I believe the whole evidential edifice starts to crumble.

So what about the science?

Expert witness Dr Dewi Evans said that on the majority of occasions babies were killed or harmed, Letby injected air or insulin into their bloodstreams or feeding tubes.

A string of respected neonatologists called Dr Evans’s theory that Letby injected air into babies via their nasal feeding tubes as “implausible” and “ridiculous”.

Dr Evans had cited a 1989 academic paper which said skin discolourations occur with air bubbles in blood vessels, and he believed this was evident in several of the babies.

But the paper’s co-author, Dr Shoo Lee says none of the descriptions of the babies’ skin blemishes given by witnesses matched those that he had noted.

In February, Dr Lee chaired a panel of 14 leading international experts who had examined 17 cases at the heart of Letby’s prosecution.

Their conclusion?

“We did not find any murders. In all cases, death or injury were due to natural causes or just bad medical care,” he revealed.

Remember Letby – who has always pleaded her innocence – was never seen injecting a baby or harming them in any way.

Police found no internet searches for her alleged murder techniques while no motive or psychological profile of a serial killer was ever presented to the court.

And Letby’s so-called confessions notes – in which she’d written, “I’m evil I did this” – were scrawls produced on the advice of counsellors to help the nurse deal with extreme stress.

The ramblings also included: “WHY ME? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

They were written as part of her therapy after she was removed from her nursing duties following a cluster of baby deaths.

Used as a ‘gotcha’ moment at her first trial, the “I’m evil I did this”  sentiment may simply have been her insecurity at so many babies dying on her ward.

Letby also kept 257 confidential shift handover sheets from the ward under her bed. Twenty-one of the documents related to 13 children prosecutors said she had harmed.

Campaigner and former Cabinet Minister David Davis told me: “If you didn’t know that she was accused of murder, you’d just think she was being excessively conscientious.”

Revelations that she searched bereaved families on Facebook perhaps shows she was concerned for those grieving.

It certainly doesn’t amount to evidence she was a baby killer.

The Countess of Chester – which treated critically ill and very premature babies clinging to life – was plagued by staff shortages and a superbug, while a leading medic described its neonatal unit as “out of its depth”.

With so many clustered baby deaths, I believe blame was subconsciously shifted to a convenient scapegoat – the young, female, guileless nurse Lucy Letby.

The prospect of fresh charges and a trial may actually work in her favour. A better marshalled defence could call on a wealth of expert witnesses deployed to debunk bad science and iffy statistics. 

That Letby’s case is likely to rumble on for years is heartbreaking for the bereaved families.

A fresh appeal is needed immediately. The threshold for criminal conviction – being beyond reasonable doubt – hasn’t, in my opinion, been close to being reached.

Justice may be blind, but it is not infallible.  

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