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{{a|crime|{{wmc|aleebee.png|“She has no ''[[aleebee]]''.”}}{{small|70}}{{letby dramatis personae}}</div>}}{{drop|S|potted routinely in}} the trenches of the keyboard war that rages on — though I sense it is blowing itself out; only a couple of [[Burmese Jungler]]<nowiki/>s still remain — over Ms. Letby’s conviction, you often see variations on this:
{{freeessay|letby|Letby ineffable truth|{{wmc|aleebee.png|“She has no ''[[aleebee]]''.”}}{{small|70}}{{letby dramatis personae}}</div>}}
 
{{quote|''You were not at the trial''. Unless you sat through ten months of evidence — unless you saw everything the jury saw, and looked into the whites of the defendant’s eyes — you cannot know the facts and cannot have a viable opinion on her innocence.}}
 
Of all the commonplaces advanced to prop up this sagging case, this is surely the weakest.
 
And strangest. Advanced by those who ''also'' were not at the trial and who have, by their own logic, no better idea of how good a spectacle it was, it really amounts to saying:
 
{{quote|“I find the trial’s outcome agreeable and wish to entertain no further debate about it.”}}
====Impermeability====
{{Drop|L|Ike all criminal}} trials in the UK it was conducted according to arcane rules: statute, the common law, the rules of procedure, the law of evidence, and long established (if roundly criticised) principles governing [[expert evidence]].
 
These institutions are meant to vouchsafe justice, and generally do, but they are not infallible. Miscarriages of justice can and do happen. Even outrageous ones.
 
From this tremendous ''melée'' — the [[evidence-in-chief]] and [[cross-examination]], each submission and each fork-tongued duel between barrister and witness — we expect 12 random citizens formed between them an impression sure enough for a guilty verdict — but yet at the same time so mystic and ''ineffable'' that it cannot now be explained or rationalised. The verdict is a brute ontological fact, immune now to mortal analysis.
 
To the question:
 
{{Quote|How on Earth did she get convicted?}}
 
Comes the answer:
 
{{Quote|You had to be there.}}
 
The Holy Spirit was upon these jurors. A guilty soul was justly condemned. Now justice has visited, done its thing and gone again, leaving no trace. None can now make sense of it. We must, instead, obediently abide. 
====What the eye don’t see —====
{{drop|A|curious feature}} of this argument is its dependence on ''what we cannot see''. There is a “truth”, but it is comprised of darkness. We cannot apprehend it, so we cannot challenge it. 
 
But, explicitly, the criminal law does not work like this. Quite the opposite: it is, to a fault, ''rational''. It is unflinchingly evidence-based: evidence is the be-all and end-all. There are strict rules governing what may be admitted. All of it may be interrogated.  Everything that can influence an outcome must lie on the surface. If it cannot be made to float — if it comprises innuendo or prejudice, we must sponge it from the record.
 
In a criminal court, everything is open to audit. Anything that is not is disallowed. A concluded criminal case cannot defy comprehension.
 
''Darkness is not allowed.''
 
Lucy Letby’s trials ran for months. There was a colossal amount of data, that is true, and there is no doubt the jurors’ task was Herculean — beyond any reasonable expectations of twelve ordinary men and women. They should be commended for their work. But this is not to say that the material grounds for their decision cannot be summarised, analysed or criticised.
 
Indeed: that is the very trial process: both prosecution and defence summarise their positions and present them to the jury.
 
So we should ask the question now:
 
{{Quote|''How on Earth did she get convicted?''}}
 
There ought to be a manageable answer. At the time of the original trial, in the public’s mind, it was something like this:
 
{{Quote|
She admitted it on some post-it notes. <br>
She, and no other nurse, was present at every collapse.<br>
There was conclusive evidence that exogenous insulin was deliberately administered to several victims.<br>
There was conclusive evidence that several victims suffered air embolisms.}}
These are good grounds, if true, but they have been under sustained attack since Rachel Aviv’s ''New Yorker'' article in April last year. Not one of these superficially comprehensible grounds for conviction holds water.
 
Now, journalists can overplay their hands. We are in the age of sensational clickbait. One so minded could sift through the record, cherry-picking startling facts from their quotidian contexts to make a sensational story-line, blowing small discrepancies out of all proportion into a wholly misleading headline. This is hardly the ''New Yorker''’s style, of course, but when the reputation of the British criminal justice system is in the, er, dock, it is right to pause for breath.
 
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.
 
In the wake of the ''New Yorker'' article, senior barristers duly came out to defend the process, pooh-poohing the misguided daubings of this American journalist not steeped like an old tea-bag in the lore of British criminal procedure.<ref>Tim Owen KC and Ken Macdonald KC’s {{pl|https://open.spotify.com/episode/5XpX9FCNY270ErMnoQDYRA| ''Lucy Letby: The Shadow of a Doubt?''}} of 16 August, 2024; Joshua Rozenberg’s {{pl|https://rozenberg.substack.com/p/letby-the-kcs-view|''Letby: The KCs’ view''}}, 19 August 2024.</ref>
 
==== Extraordinary evidence ====
{{Drop|B|ut then the}} extraordinary evidence started rolling in. To their credit, the blustering KCs walked back their early essays.<ref> Tim Owen KC and Ken Macdonald KC’s {{pl|https://open.spotify.com/episode/6RUbeQJjbDPjtoaAvWURRd|Luct Letby Part 2: The Response}} of 24 August 2024 and {{pl|https://open.spotify.com/episode/6X7qLCUX3e8wMvnoC1qftl|Lucy Letby: The Experts Break Cover}} of 12 February 2025.</ref> One even open pondered whether we had another “appalling vista” on our hands.<ref>Joshua Rozenberg’s {{pl|https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/commentary-and-opinion/lucy-letby-another-appalling-vista/5122299.article|Lucy Letby: another ‘appalling vista’}} of 7 February 2025 (a reference to the notorious “Birmingham 6” case).</ref>
 
Statisticians picked up on the [[Texas sharpshooter]] aspects: The New Yorker was right: the spreadsheet was built upon the theory that Ms Letby was the perpetrator. Lawyers questioned the operation of the [[expert evidence]] rules: the weakness under cross-examination of the prosecution witness and the [[Lucy Letby: the missing defence evidence|strange absence of any defence experts]]. Forensic scientists challenged the insulin evidence. Those few with expertise roundly debunked the expert evidence of air embolus.
 
In matters of a great public debate, we are used to experts lining up on either side to make their case but, by and large, that’s not what happened here. The actual crown witnesses stood their ground, doggedly refusing to budge on any of their conclusions, even if their reasoning changed to suit the emerging fact pattern. But no new experts, who were not already involved, stepped forward. This was despite energetic efforts from contrarian news sources — notably Private Eye’ Dr Phil Hammond who repeatedly appealed for experts to corroborate the views presented in evidence to support what would, presumably, be an easy status quo. None did.
 
Now, since the NHS is the largest ''employer'' of medical expertise in the UK and the Crown Prosecution Service the largest ''user'' of professional expert evidence, we might put this down to professional courtesy, or even self-interest: a reluctance to bite the hand that feeds, so to speak, were it not for the fact that medical experts from around the planet were queueing up to ''challenge'' the CPS, free of charge.
 
I have been running an informal log: see the panel. A disconcertingly large number of relevant experts have expressed serious misgivings about the outcome of this trial. Those who support the verdict include two journalists with books to sell about the case, and one tobacco and alcohol lobbyist.
 
Are all these international experts labouring under a delusion? Have they been misled by nefarious interests into expressing formal, reputation-jeopardising public doubt — and in which case, whose, how and most importantly ''why''? Who has anything to gain from meritlessly advancing the interests of a serial killer?
 
Again, the same question: why is it that no-one can explain what is so compelling about this verdict? 
 
“You weren’t there, so you can’t understand” really will not do.
====— the eye can’t critique====
{{Drop|J|ustice has, formally}}, been done. Convictions have been entered; barring the clement machinations of the Criminal Cases Review Commission — don’t hold your breath — appeal pathways have exhausted.
 
But convicted criminals do not go into an oubliette. The justice system is not excused from explaining itself if asked. A citizen who comes along after the verdict has been given should be able to be reasonably satisfied that a convicted criminal has done what the state alleges.
 
A conviction ''cannot'' be some opaque, unspeakable, sacred mystery. That is, after all, the exact ''opposite'' of methodology that led to it. Criminal justice is scrupulously analytical. Every point in the prosecution chain of logic must be proved, and laid out before the court, and the defence, for its unlimited scrutiny. This is not, formally, true of the defence case. The defence news not prove anything.
 
It is often said that burden inverts upon conviction: thereafter the crown no longer needs to prove anything — its burden is satisfied — and the defence must shift heaven and earth. Another question is what burden must be met to even hear an appeal. How much must the defence put up to earn a hearing?
 
It might not be the letter of the rules, but perhaps it is the spirit: if we cannot clearly and concisely state evidence — that we are reasonably satisfied is correct — that put the defendant behind bars, the state should entertain a review. This would not open floodgates unless the existing set of convictions are not safe.
 
====Defence arguments are clear====
{{Drop|I|n sharp contrast}} to those who would defend the convictions, Ms. Letby’s defence team has been garrulous about their arguments. There have been interminable press conferences. Their arguments — many of them made “in the alternative”, as lawyers like to do, affording themselves multiple, sometimes contradictory, shots at the same target — have been published in tremendous detail. The defence has invited  detailed rebuttal — some have, rather feebly, tried to provide it <ref>Liz Hull’s analysis is {{Pl|https://web.archive.org/web/20250212070002/https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14386175/new-evidence-Lucy-Letby-innocent-LIZ-HULL.html|here}}. Christopher Snowdon’s is {{Pl|https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/02/08/the-devils-advocates/|here}}. The closing submissions on behalf of Family Groups 2 and 3 to the Thirlwall Inquiry — which would not hear any evidence doubting Ms. Letby’s guilt, remember — are {{Pl|https://thirlwall.public-inquiry.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Written-Closing-Submission-of-Family-Group-2-and-3-7-March-2025.pdf|here}}.</ref> — and no small amount of professional criticism, not for being somehow covert, but for being ''too'' ''forthright''. As far as senior members of the bar are concerned, rattling cages in this way is just not cricket.<ref>For example, {{Pl|https://x.com/SCynic1/status/1869010402107117909|Simon Myerson KC}} suggesting Ms Letby’s barrister ought to self-report to his regulator, and {{Pl|https://x.com/AllanCompton7/status/1869020339877085329|Allan Compton KC}} appealing for “calm, mature, considered reflection that is the hallmark of our profession.” But of the respective behaviour patterns, Mark McDonald’s surely is the respectable one. When a woman is in jail for the whole of her natural life on outwardly flimsy pretexts, a ''crie de coeur'' for professional niceties really will not do.</ref> 
 
The same goes for all the “strange band of misfits and ghouls” who have questioned the safety of the conviction. Their arguments are by nature public, detailed — way ''too'' detailed in many cases — specific, articulated, and ''welcoming'' of good-faith challenge. 
 
It has not had much. The credible challenges that have come back have been either ''formal'' in nature— “the rules have been followed, she had her chance, ''alea iacta est''” — or somehow ''mystical'' — there are things about this process that resist intellectual inquiry and must not be disturbed.
 
This is especially perplexing since it is generally the prosecution who must makes the intellectual running. The burden of proof is such that it is the crown, not the defence, that should be best at spelling out the ingredients of its case. That the burden reverses on conviction should not alter this fact
 
For if the evidence was so compelling, and the crown’s case so immaculate, you would think someone would be able to articulate it. There are any number of erudite criticisms of the law, the application of evidence, the use of statistics, of the crown witnesses’ speculative diagnoses, available in the public domain. Bar one cantankerous lobbyist for the alcohol and tobacco industries — whose professional calling is to champion dubious causes —— no one has managed to mount any explanation of the merits of the crown’s case.
 
If you weren’t at the trial you can’t know: “context is everything”, and guilt with events through a combination of interlocking facts. This is a kind of “[[emergence]]” argument. It is routinely run, ironically enough, by people who ''also'' were not at the trial.
 
If this is right then the outcome of no trial can ever be gainsaid, appeals should also be forbidden, and the curial process should be sanctified as some ineffable, inexplicable conveyance of mystical verities by means of ''holy procedure'', to be hereafter obeyed.
 
That is not how things work. Trials are reported, there are sequences, there are critical phases, points of sharp drama and afternoons of procedural guff.
 
{{sag|Lucy Letby|Lucy Letby: statistics|Lucy Letby: the missing defence evidence}}

Latest revision as of 08:32, 4 April 2025

Crime & Punishment
Lucy Letby Edition

The Jolly Contrarian holds forth™

“She has no aleebee.”
Those Lucy Letby experts in full
Name Profession Field Interest Camp
Dr. Andreas Marnerides Consultant Pathology Expert witness Prosecution[1]
Dr. Owen Arthurs Professor Radiology Expert witness Prosecution[2]
Dr. Sally Kinsey Professor Haematology Expert witness Prosecution[3]
Dr. Peter Hindmarsh Professor Endocrinology Expert witness Prosecution[4]
Dr. Stavros Stivaros Professor Radiology Expert witness Prosecution[5]
Dr. Simon Kenney Consultant Paediatrics Expert witness Prosecution[6]
Dr. Dewi Evans Medical Doctor Paediatrics Expert witness Prosecution
Dr. Sandie Bohin Medical Doctor Paediatrics Expert witness Prosecution
Dr. Shoo Lee Professor Neonatology Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Neena Modi Professor Neonatology Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Geoff Chase Professor Mechanical Engineering Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Jane Hawdon Consultant Neonatology Independent Neutral[8]
Dr. Michael Hall Consultant Neonatology Expert witness[9] Defence[10]
Dr. Roger Norwich Consultant Neonatology Independent Defence[11]
Dr. Eric Eichenwald Professor Paediatrics Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Helmut Hummler Professor Neonatology Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Tetsuya Isayama Professor Neonatology Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Joanne Langley Professor Paediatrics Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Sandra Moore Consultant Neonatology Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Mikael Norman Professor Paediatrics Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Bruno Piedboeuf Professor Neonatology Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Prakeshkumar Shah Professor Paediatrics Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Nalini Singhal Professor Paediatrics Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Erik Skarsgard Professor Paediatrics Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Ann R. Stark Professor Paediatrics Independent Defence [7]
Dr. Helen Shannon Professor Chemical Engineering Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Christian Yates Professor Mathematical Biology Independent Defence
Dr. Alan Wayne Jones Professor Forensic toxicology Independent Defence[12]
Dr. Peter Green Professor Statistics Independent Defence
Dr. Richard Gill Professor Statistics Independent Defence
Dr. Svilena Dimitrova Consultant Neonatology Independent Defence
Dr. Neela Shabde Consultant Paediatrics Independent Defence
Jenny Harris Intensive Care Nurse Neonatology Independent Defence
Dr. Stephen Senn Professor Statistics Independent Defence
Dr. Tariq Ali Consultant Paediatrics Independent Defence
Dr. Philip Dawid Professor Statistics Independent Defence
Dr. Jane Hutton Professor Statistics Independent Defence
Dr. Gillian Tully Professor Forensic Science Independent Defence
Dr. Neil Aiton Consultant Neonatology Independent Defence[12]
Lord Sumption Supreme Court Judge Criminal Law Independent Defence[13]
Dr. Faye Skelton Professor Criminology Independent Defence[14]
Dr. Colin Morley Professor Neonatology Independent Defence[15]
Dr. Richard Taylor Consultant Neonatology Independent Defence[12][16]
Dr. Waney Squier Consultant Pathology Independent Defence[14]
Dr. Matthew Orde Consultant Pathology Independent Defence
Dr. David Wilson Professor Criminology Independent Prosecution[17]
Dr. Keith Frayn Professor Human Metabolism Independent Prosecution[18]
Dr. Normal Fenton Professor Statistics Independent Defence[19]
Dr. Scott McLachlan Lecturer Informatics Independent Defence[19]
Dr. John Ashton Professor Public Health Independent Defence[20]
Dr. David Livermore Professor Medical Microbiology Independent Defence[21]
Dr. John O’Quigley Professor Statistics Independent Defence[22]
Dr. Carola Vinuesa Professor Immunology Independent Defence[23]
Dr. Adel Ismail Consultant Endocrinology Independent Defence[12][24]
Adam King Barrister Criminal Law Independent Defence[25]
Dr. Joseph Wolfsdorf Professor Hypoglycaemia Independent Neutral[26]
Dr. Charles Stanley Professor Paediatrics Independent Defence[12]
Dr. MaAhew Johll Professor Forensic Science Independent Defence[12]
Dr. Hilde Wilkinson-Herbots Associate Professor Statistics Independent Defence[12]

Resources and Navigation

Index: Click ᐅ to expand:
Lucy Letby
Criminal law
Index: Click ᐅ to expand:
Essays

The investigation into the actions of Lucy Letby, the trial process and medical experts continues to face scrutiny and criticism, much of it ill-informed and based on a very partial knowledge of the facts and totality of evidence presented at court and at the Court of Appeal.

This case has been rigorously and fairly tested through two juries and subsequently scrutinised by two sets of appeal court judges. Lucy Letby’s trial was one of the longest-running murder trials in British criminal history with the jury diligently carrying out their deliberations for more than 100 hours.

It followed an investigation that had been running for six years – an investigation like no other in scope, complexity and magnitude. It was a detailed and painstaking process by a team of almost 70 police officers and no stone was left unturned.

Preparing for the trial was a mammoth task with 32,000 pages of evidence being gathered and medical records running into thousands of pages being sifted through. Around 2,000 people were spoken to and almost 250 were identified as potential witnesses at trial.

As the case unfolded, multiple medical experts – specialising in areas of paediatric radiology, paediatric pathology, haematology, paediatric neurology and paediatric endocrinology and two main medical experts (consultant paediatricians) – were enlisted to ensure that we carried out as thorough an investigation as possible.

All are highly regarded in their area of expertise and were cross-examined whilst giving their evidence in court.

—Detective Superintendent Paul Hughes, Cheshire Police, 2 April 2025.

Often spotted in the trenches of the keyboard war that rages over Ms. Letby’s conviction — though I sense it is blowing itself out: only a couple of Burmese Junglers still remain — are variations on this argument:

You were not at the trial. Unless you sat through ten months of evidence — unless you saw everything the jury saw, and looked into the whites of the defendant’s eyes — which were yellow, come to think of it — you simply cannot know the facts and cannot form a useful opinion on her guilt. It is beyond you.

Advanced, often, by those who also were not at the trial[27] and who, by their own logic, have no better idea of what went on, it really amounts to saying:

“I find the trial’s outcome agreeable and wish to entertain no further debate about it.”

Impermeability

Like all Anglo saxon criminal trials, Ms. Letby’s was conducted according to arcane rules: common law, statute, the rules of criminal procedure, the law of evidence, and long established (if roundly criticised) principles governing the use of expert witnesses.

These institutions are meant to, and generally do, vouchsafe justice but they are not infallible. Miscarriages of justice happen. Even outrageous ones.

From this tremendous melée — the evidence-in-chief, cross-examination, submission, objection and each fork-tongued duel between barrister and witness — we expect 12 random citizens to form between them an impression sure enough to condemn a defendant — but yet at the same time so mystic and ineffable that it cannot later be explained or rationalised. The verdict passes intractably into the record, a brute ontological fact, immune to mortal analysis.

To the question:

How on Earth did she get convicted?

Comes the answer:

You had to be there.

The Holy Spirit was upon these jurors. A guilty soul was justly condemned. Justice came, did its thing, and went. It left no trace. None can now make sense of it. But still we must, all the same, quietly abide. The senior bar will be most discomported if we do not.

What the eye don’t see —

Acurious feature of this argument is how it depends on what we cannot see. There is a “truth”, but it is comprised of darkness. We cannot apprehend it, so we cannot challenge it.

But, explicitly, the criminal law does not work like this. Quite the opposite: it is, to a fault, rational. It is unflinchingly evidence-based: evidence is the be-all and end-all. There are strict rules governing what may be admitted. All of it may be interrogated. Everything that can influence an outcome must lie on the surface. If it cannot be made to float — if it comprises innuendo or prejudice, we must sponge it from the record.

In a criminal court, everything is open to audit. Anything that is not is disallowed. A concluded criminal case cannot defy comprehension.

Darkness is not allowed.

Lucy Letby’s trials ran for months. There was a colossal amount of data, that is true, and there is no doubt the jurors’ task was Herculean — beyond any reasonable expectations of twelve ordinary men and women. They should be commended for their work. But this is not to say that the material grounds for their decision cannot now be summarised, analysed or criticised.

Indeed: that is the very trial process: both prosecution and defence summarise their positions and present them to the jury at closing.

So if we ask the question now:

How on Earth did she get convicted?

There ought to come back a sensible answer.

At the time of the original trial, in the public’s mind, there was a sensible answer. It went something like this:

Someone deliberately administered insulin.
It was proved that someone deliberately inflicted air emboli.
Ms. Letby was present at every collapse.
No other nurse was present at all of them.
She admitted she killed them on some post-it notes.

These are good grounds, if true, but they have been under sustained attack since Rachel Aviv’s, New Yorker investigation of 13 May 2024.

Not one of these superficially comprehensible grounds for conviction holds water. Yet the refrain rings out:

You had to be there.

Now, journalists can overplay their hands. We are in the age of clickbait. One so minded could sift through the record, cherry-picking startling facts from their quotidian contexts to make a sensational story-line, blowing small discrepancies out of all proportion into a wholly misleading headline. This is hardly the New Yorker’s style, of course, but when the reputation of the British criminal justice system is in the, er, dock, it is right to pause for breath, and say something trite, like:

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.

They certainly do.

In the wake of the New Yorker article, senior barristers duly came out to defend their way of life, pooh-poohing the misguided daubings of this American journalist not steeped like an old tea-bag in the lore of British criminal procedure.[28]

Extraordinary evidence

But then the extraordinary evidence started rolling in. To their credit, the blustering KCs walked back their early essays.[29] One, having at first declared himself satisfied with the conviction, openly pondered whether we had another “appalling vista” on our hands.[30]

Statisticians picked up on the Texas sharpshooter aspects: The New Yorker was right: the spreadsheet was built upon the theory that Ms Letby was the perpetrator. Lawyers questioned the operation of the expert evidence rules: the weakness under cross-examination of the prosecution witness and the strange absence of any defence experts. Forensic scientists challenged the insulin evidence. Those few with expertise in the field roundly debunked the expert evidence of air embolus.

A degree of frantic dissembling came back over the trenches — the case didn’t hinge on statistics or the evidence of a single expert, it was claimed — but these deflections came largely from journalists, not credentialised experts. No one engaged with the meat of the criticisms being aired against the convictions.

In matters of a great public debate, we are used to experts lining up on either side to make their case but, by and large, that’s not what happened here. The actual crown witnesses stood their ground, doggedly refusing to budge on any of their conclusions, even if their reasoning changed to suit the emerging fact pattern. But no new experts, who were not already involved, stepped forward. This was despite energetic efforts from contrarian news sources — notably Private Eye’ Dr Phil Hammond who repeatedly appealed for experts to corroborate the views presented in evidence to support what would, presumably, be an easy status quo. None did.

Now, since the NHS is the largest employer of medical expertise in the UK and the Crown Prosecution Service the largest user of professional expert evidence, we might put this down to professional courtesy, or even self-interest — a reluctance to bite the hand that feeds, so to speak — were it not for the fact that medical experts from around the planet were queueing up to challenge the CPS and NHA narrative, free of charge. No one was lining up to support it.

I have been running an informal log: see the panel. Over fifty well-recognised experts in their respective fields of neonatology, endocrinology, statistics, forensics and law have expressed misgivings about the outcome of this trial. Outside actual witnesses, just two have publicly supportted the verdict a criminologist and a retired professor of human metabolism plus a couple of journalists with books to sell, and an impish alcohol and tobacco lobbyist.

Are all these international experts labouring under a delusion? Have they been misled by nefarious interests into expressing formal, reputation-jeopardising public doubt — and in which case, whose, how and most importantly why? Who has anything to gain from meritlessly advancing the interests of a serial killer?

Again, the same question: why is it that no-one can explain what is so compelling about this verdict?

“You weren’t there, so you can’t understand” really will not do.

— the eye can’t critique

Justice has, formally, been done. Convictions have been entered; barring the clement machinations of the Criminal Cases Review Commission — don’t hold your breath — appeal pathways are shut.

But convicted criminals do not go into an oubliette. Once they are sent down, the justice system is not excused from explaining itself. After the verdict, any citizen who asks should get a straight answer: how was the system satisfied the criminal did what the Crown alleged?

We should have no truck with:

“Well, it is complicated: you really needed to be there.”

A criminal conviction cannot be some opaque, unspeakable, sacred mystery. It is the exact opposite of that: criminal justice is scrupulously analytical. The prosecution must painstakingly prove out every point in its chain of logic. It must all be disclosed in advance, laid out before the court, and opened to the defence, for its unlimited scrutiny. [31]

It is often said that the burden of proof inverts upon conviction: the Crown’s burden is satisfied. It no longer needs to prove anything. Now the defence must satisfy a burden. To overturn a conviction, one must shift heaven and earth.

This asks more that just a better job of stating your case: the law requires new evidence, not reasonably available at trial, that shines a new light. It will not do that you didn’t introduce evidence first time around: you must show that you couldn’t have. In this way, a defendant is beholden to her counsel’s competence and strategy, but there are sound policy reasons for this: the law must dispense certainty. A vital aspect of criminal justice is finality.

But where that might create a manifestly perverse result, there is a residual discretion to look again. It is a discretion the Court of Appeal is notoriously reluctant to use: the idea that the sound operation of criminal procedure, in a high-profile case like this, could produce a manifestly perverse result is a “vista” too appalling to countenance. Senior Barristers will recoil in sanctimonious horror at the suggestion the British justice could fail that badly. Only a fool could be so cavalier as to think differently.

But our learned friends’ haughty disdain cannot obscure the fact that recently, the British justice system has failed this badly.[32]

All the same, the defence must make a compelling case. Whereas the prosecution may now make wan allusions to the unknowable genius of a bygone trial, if it wants any traction the defence arguments at this stage need to be detailed, specific and compelling.

They are.

Defence arguments are clear

In sharp contrast to those who would defend the convictions, Ms. Letby’s defence team has been garrulous. There have been interminable press conferences. Their arguments — many of them made “in the alternative”, as lawyers like to do, affording themselves multiple, sometimes contradictory, shots at the same target — have been published in tremendous detail.[33] The defence has invited detailed rebuttal — some have, rather feebly, tried to provide it [34] — and no small amount of professional criticism, not for being somehow covert, but for being too forthright. As far as senior members of the bar are concerned, rattling cages in this way is just not cricket.[35]

The same goes for all the “strange band of misfits and ghouls” who have questioned the safety of the conviction. Their arguments are, by nature,public, detailed — way too detailed in many cases — specific, articulated, and anxious for attention: that is so say, welcoming of good-faith challenge.

There has not had much. Credible challenges that have come back have been either formal in nature: “the rules have been followed, she had her chance, alea iacta est,” and so on — or somehow mystical: there are things that resist intellectual inquiry and must not be disturbed. Some things should not be said. Some questions should not be asked.

This is especially perplexing since, generally, it is the prosecution who must make the intellectual running. The burden of proof is such that the Crown, not the defence, should be better placed to spell out the ingredients of its case. That the burden reverses on conviction should not alter this fact.

For if the evidence was so compelling, and the Crown’s case so immaculate, you would think, someone would be able to articulate it.

There are any number of erudite criticisms of the law, the application of evidence, the use of statistics, of the crown witnesses’ speculative diagnoses, available in the public domain. Where is the patient exposition of the Crown position: sure: the Crown Prosecution service might not be minded to provide it, but someone?

If you weren’t at the trial, you can’t know: “context is everything”, and guilt with events through a combination of interlocking facts. This is a kind of “emergence” argument. It is routinely run, ironically enough, by people who also were not at the trial.

If this is right then the outcome of no trial can ever be gainsaid, appeals should also be forbidden, and the curial process should be sanctified as some ineffable, inexplicable conveyance of mystical verities by means of holy procedure, to be hereafter obeyed.

That is not how things work. Trials are reported, there are sequences, there are critical phases, points of sharp drama and afternoons of procedural guff.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Lucy Letby Trial recap, Chester Standard, July 3, 2023.
  2. ↑ Lucy Letby Trial recap, Chester Standard, July 6, 2023: “Professor Owen Arthurs viewed radiographic images for Child M and said they could not support or refute an air embolus.”
  3. ↑ Lucy Letby: Baby's catastrophic bleed not spontaneous, trial told, BBC, November 29, 2022. Per this report, Dr. Kinsey accepted in cross-examination that her findings did not assist with the cause of death, and that she had limited familiarity with air embolus.
  4. ↑ Baby had dangerously low blood sugar levels over three days, Letby trial told, The Standard, 24 February 2023.
  5. ↑ Lucy Letby Trial recap, Chester Standard, July 6, 2023: “Paediatric neuroradiologist Dr Stavros Stivaros provided agreed evidence in which he said Child M had shown signs of brain damage, likely caused by the collapse on April 9, 2016.”
  6. ↑ This may seem controversial, but in all the reports online there is no indication of what evidence he gave. It is not reported or mentioned in judgments or summing up. I am assuming, therefore, it was uncontroversial evidence, that may have admitted by consent as a witness statement and not cross-examined. Happy to be corrected.
  7. ↑ Jump up to: 7.00 7.01 7.02 7.03 7.04 7.05 7.06 7.07 7.08 7.09 7.10 7.11 7.12 7.13 7.14 Member of International Expert Panel
  8. ↑ Specialist doctor ‘felt misled’ about suspicion over baby deaths, Lucy Letby inquiry hears, ITV, 12 November 2024. Dr. Hawdon’s contemporaneous review concluded that the deaths of Babies A, I, O and P – were “unexpected and unexplained.” Her evidence to the Thirlwall Inquiry was that she may have taken a different approach to her review if she knew of the consultants’ suspicions of murder.
  9. ↑ Not called.
  10. ↑ My evidence might have changed killer nurse Lucy Letby's trial Express, August 26, 2024.
  11. ↑ Lucy Letby: killer or coincidence? Why some experts question the evidence Guardian 9 Jul 2024.
  12. ↑ Jump up to: 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6 Summary of Joint Expert Witness Report on Baby F and L.
  13. ↑ Why I believe Lucy Letby is probably innocent Sunday Times, March 30 2025.
  14. ↑ Jump up to: 14.0 14.1 Lucy Letby: The New Evidence, Channel 5, September 2024.
  15. ↑ File on Four, BBC, 1 October 2024
  16. ↑ Lucy Letby Expert ‘changes mind’ over how babies died, The Times, December 16 2024
  17. ↑ Accept that Lucy Letby is a killer, no matter how “nice” she seems, The Herald, 24 March 2025. (Dr. Wilson is often cited as being pro-prosecution, but his views seem more nuanced than that. For example, his article closes as follows:

    “I’m still left wondering that if her case had been heard in Scotland would the prosecution have been dismissed as ‘not proven’?”

  18. ↑ The actual evidence against Lucy Letby, The Times, February 5, 2025.
  19. ↑ Jump up to: 19.0 19.1 Is Lucy Letby guilty? Professor Norman Fenton interviews Law Health Tech from Twitter and Substack
  20. ↑ Former Cumbrian director of health voices concerns over Letby trial, Cumberland News and Star, March 31, 2025.
  21. ↑ Lucy Letby Must Be Allowed an Appeal, The Daily Sceptic, 11 September 2023
  22. ↑ Suspected serial killers and unsuspected statistical blunders Sage, 1 April 2024.
  23. ↑ Sample post on X.com, December 30, 2024
  24. ↑ Lucy Letby: Experts tell BBC about medical evidence concerns BBC, 1 October 2024.
  25. ↑ The flaws in the Lucy Letby case, Unherd, July 24, 2024.
  26. ↑ Lucy Letby: Serial killer or a miscarriage of justice? Daily Telegraph, July 9, 2024. There is some suggestion that Professor Wolfsdorf walked this back in Judith Moritz’ book, but it is not well reported. Moritz quotes Wolfsdorf as saying:

    “All I can confidently state is the insulin: C-peptide molar ratio ... is consistent with factitious [deliberately introduced] hypoglycaemia.”

    As regular readers know, “consistent with” is often used for heavy lifting, and Ms. Moritz asks a lot of it here, concluding — these are her, and not Professor Wolfsdorf’s, words — that:

    “In other words, the surest conclusion we can draw from Baby L’s test result is that he was poisoned with insulin.”

  27. ↑ And a fortiori by those who were: here is Liz Hull:

    But such evidence, by its very nature, is difficult to assimilate, which meant much of it did not make it in to the pages of newspapers — including those now questioning Letby’s guilt.

  28. ↑ Tim Owen KC and Ken Macdonald KC’s Lucy Letby: The Shadow of a Doubt? of 16 August, 2024; Joshua Rozenberg’s Letby: The KCs’ view, 19 August 2024.
  29. ↑ Tim Owen KC and Ken Macdonald KC’s Luct Letby Part 2: The Response of 24 August 2024 and Lucy Letby: The Experts Break Cover of 12 February 2025.
  30. ↑ Joshua Rozenberg’s Lucy Letby: another ‘appalling vista’ of 7 February 2025 (a reference to the notorious “Birmingham 6” case).
  31. ↑ Note well: this is not, formally, true of the defence case. The burden of proof is on the Crown: the defence need not prove anything.
  32. ↑ The Post Office Horizon scandal, Andrew Malkinson. LIBOR rigging, to name but three.
  33. ↑ Here is the forty page summary of the findings of the “International Panel of Experts” chaired by Professor Shoo Lee.
  34. ↑ Liz Hull’s analysis is here. Christopher Snowdon’s is here. The closing submissions on behalf of Family Groups 2 and 3 to the Thirlwall Inquiry — which would not hear any evidence doubting Ms. Letby’s guilt, remember — are here.
  35. ↑ For example, Simon Myerson KC suggesting Ms Letby’s barrister ought to self-report to his regulator, and Allan Compton KC appealing for “calm, mature, considered reflection that is the hallmark of our profession.” But of the respective behaviour patterns, Mark McDonald’s surely is the respectable one. When a woman is in jail for the whole of her natural life on outwardly flimsy pretexts, a crie de coeur for professional niceties really will not do.
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