Revealed: Lucy Letby was not on duty when many babies went downhill fastest, new audit finds
A new audit of infant deaths at Lucy Letby’s hospital has found that many of the fastest deteriorations occurred when she was off duty, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
It is believed that the mortality data, which has been collected from multiple sources including Freedom of Information requests, shows a wider spike in deaths during the period covered by the police investigation – reinforcing Letby’s argument that the fatalities were caused by wider failings in healthcare. at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
A new legal team, led by Mark McDonald QC, has been instructed to refer Letby’s case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigates possible miscarriages of justice and can refer cases back to the Court of Appeal for consideration.
Letby is serving 15 life sentences after being found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to end the lives of seven between 2015 and 2016. But several respected experts have come forward to express concerns about the reliability of the evidence.
Mr McDonald, who says the case could be the ‘biggest miscarriage of justice in the history of the UK’, also focuses on the role of Dr Dewi Evans, the prosecution’s star witness, whose evidence was crucial to the conviction of Letby.
A new study into baby deaths at the Countess of Chester found many of the fastest deteriorations occurred while Lucy Letby was off duty
Letby is serving 15 life sentences after being found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to end the lives of seven more between 2015 and 2016
The new findings strengthen Letby’s argument that the fatalities were caused by wider failures of care at the Countess of Chester Hospital (pictured)
Last month, following an investigation on Radio 4, Dr Evans changed his mind about how Mrs Letby allegedly killed one of her victims, after it emerged the nurse was not even at the hospital where the baby died at the time seemingly destructive way. An x-ray was taken.
Last week, The Mail on Sunday revealed that a judge in a previous case had rejected evidence from Dr. Evans as ‘worthless’.
And even more questions have been raised about Dr. Evans after an expert he cited in the lawsuit disputed Evans’ interpretation of his work.
Dr. Evans had referred to a 1989 academic article by Dr. Shoo Lee on bloodstream air embolism in babies – a central part of the prosecution’s case that Letby killed by injecting them with air. The article described skin discolouration indicative of air embolism in infants caused by high-pressure ventilation – not at normal pressure, as Letby would have done.
Dr. Lee, who recently retired as one of Canada’s top neonatologists, was not called by Letby’s original defense team at the trial, but told Letby’s call that none of the descriptions of the babies’ skin discolorations matched the kind that characterized air embolism.
He said none of the babies in the trial should have been diagnosed with air embolism because it was “a very rare and specific condition and should not be diagnosed by ruling out other causes of death or collapse and concluding that it was a case of air embolism must be’. embolism because nothing else could be found’.
Letby was working as a nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital in January 2012
Screen capture taken from body worn camera footage released by Cheshire Constabulary of Lucy Letby’s arrest
However, appeal court judges said his evidence was inadmissible because her defense had not called him into the trial.
“No good reason has been shown why the applicant should now be allowed to adduce evidence that could have been obtained and adduced at the appropriate time,” they said.
A total of 24 experts in statistics, forensic science and neonatology have written to the government pointing out a series of worrying anomalies in the case, including the fact that a number of baby deaths on the ward while Letby was not present were excluded from the treatment. prosecutor’s analysis — something her new defense team will try to remedy with the mortality data.
Dr. Evans claims questions were raised about the convictions because the case was “so shocking to come to terms with, and of course denial is one of the ways to deal with shocking news.”