You may not have caught last night’s Channel 5 documentary, Lucy Letby: Scapegoat? so I urge you to watch it on catch-up as soon as possible.
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I → catch → up
This young nurse – Lucy is still only 36 – is serving 15 whole-life orders, having been convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others.
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Lucy → serve → others
Six of the babies that Lucy supposedly murdered had previously undergone post-mortem examinations at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital by experienced pathologists.
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Lucy → murder → pathologists
In five cases, the pathologist found one or more ‘natural’ causes of death, while the sixth was ‘unascertained’ but not ‘unnatural’.
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sixth → find → death
But despite those findings, and despite the glaring lack of evidence against her, the case went to trial.
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case → go → trial
Following her stunning conviction three years ago, Lucy has now spent a third of her adult life behind bars, having been remanded in custody back in 2020.
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Lucy → follow → 2020
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is now set to make a decision, expected within the next few weeks, on whether her case can be referred back to the Court of Appeal – after her two previous attempts at appeal were rejected.
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attempts → set → appeal
Independent reports have been submitted by an international panel of 30 expert medics in her defence.
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reports → submit → defence
I was one of the first columnists to suggest in a national newspaper that Lucy might be innocent, setting out the reasons why I thought that could be the case as far back as July 2024, less than a year after her conviction.
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that → suggest → conviction
I did so as a former nurse with personal experience working in a neo-natal unit, and who had myself given birth to two of my three children in Lucy’s hospital, the Countess of Chester.
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who → do → Chester
As a former minister, I had also been responsible for patient safety and maternity and neo-natal care for two years, in that role announcing a number of inquiries into units across the country.
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I → announce → country
Nadine Dorries says she was one of the first columnists to suggest in a national newspaper that Lucy might be innocent
Nadine says those who love Lucy will never fully recover from the horror of what she and they have been through
If the CCRC decides not to refer Lucy’s case back for appeal – thereby refusing the application made by her barrister, Mark McDonald – then she will likely die in prison.
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she → say → prison
Given the strength of public feeling demanding that she be given a retrial and the deep and widespread levels of concern about her conviction, this would be an outrage and an affront to British justice.
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this → give → justice
Plenty of ink and film have been spent on Lucy’s case over the years.
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Plenty → spend → years
The documentary was made by investigative journalist Rob Pattinson – who unlike others making documentaries about Lucy’s case, doesn’t have a book to sell.
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who → make → book
I’d argue that anyone who still maintains that Lucy is guilty after watching this documentary can only be doing so because they have something to lose.
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they → argue → something
Perhaps ironically, Rob initially set out to prove that those – like me and my colleague Peter Hitchens – who have been publicly protesting that Lucy might be innocent were just conspiracy theorists and cranks.
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Lucy → set → me
In Rob’s own words, he wanted to make a documentary that would prove Letby was the ‘wicked monster’ the jury had found her to be.
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her → want → documentary
However, the more he dug, the more he began to question her conviction.
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he → dig → conviction
Soon he found himself wondering whether a profound miscarriage of justice might have taken place.
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miscarriage → find → place
For me, the most fascinating part of the programme was the interview held between Rob, the respected vascular surgeon Dr Colin Ferguson and Dr Dewi Evans, the ‘star’ prosecution witness at Lucy’s trial.
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part → hold → trial
During the trial, Evans convinced the jury Lucy had deliberately injected six or seven babies with air to kill them: so-called ‘air embolism’.
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Lucy → convince → them
(In an extensive search of Lucy’s internet history, there was no evidence she had ever researched this method.)
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she → be → method
In the documentary, Dr Ferguson tells Evans to his face that in every known neonatal death caused by air embolism, post-mortem investigations found air present in the heart.
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investigations → tell → heart
Bubbles of air create a ‘lock’ inside the heart and stop it pumping.
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Bubbles → create → it
Yet there were no such tell-tale signs in the post-mortems of any of the babies Lucy was convicted of killing by this method.
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Lucy → be → method
Evans had himself reviewed all the known cases of air embolism in the medical literature, so he knew air had always been found in the bodies of people who had died that way.
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who → review → people
Yet he claimed bizarrely that in the case of Lucy’s alleged victims, the air had somehow been ‘dissipated over a period of time . . . into other tissues’ in their bodies.
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air → claim → bodies
As Dr Ferguson rightly points out to him, this is impossible.
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this → point → him
Air doesn’t just magically disappear once it’s inside the human body.
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it → disappear → body
Dr Ferguson tells Evans categorically: ‘I know that these babies did not die of air embolism.
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babies → tell → embolism
I know that for certain.’
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I → know → that
Remember: Evans’s ‘evidence’ was probably the most crucial against Lucy – and it helped to put her away for 15 lifetimes.
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it → remember → lifetimes
Yet it seems to rest on a fiction.
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it → seem → fiction
No one ever saw Lucy inject air into her tiny patients, and in fact the evidence suggests she did nothing of the kind.
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she → see → kind
Eventually, Evans petulantly takes off his microphone and walks out of the interview.
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Evans → take → interview
His evidence to the court and jury seems to me have been destroyed – for good – by a proper expert.
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evidence → seem → expert
Dr Dewi Evans convinced the jury Lucy had deliberately injected six or seven babies with air to kill them
Similarly, Lucy was convicted of attempting to kill two babies by injecting them with insulin.
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Lucy → convince → insulin
The only forensic evidence the prosecution actually offered at her trial were the low blood-sugar levels in those two babies: low blood sugar can be a sign of having too much insulin in the body.
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sugar → offer → body
Yet as The Sun newspaper – for which Rob Pattinson writes – reported yesterday, Lucy’s lead accuser Dr Stephen Brearey found 14 normal glucose readings for the first baby around the time of the alleged insulin poisoning, while the second baby could have had an infection, causing low blood sugar.
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baby → write → sugar
…and 13 more, not listed.
The Aporia
