Lawyer for convicted British killer nurse Lucy Letby says new evidence is grounds for appeal
LONDON (AP) — A lawyer for convicted British killer nurse Lucy Letby said Monday that he plans to ask an appeals court to re-examine her convictions after the prosecution's leading expert changed his opinion on how three babies died.
Dr. Dewi Evans's testimony is no longer credible after he reversed his opinion that Letby killed three infants by injecting air down a nasal gastric tube, attorney Mark McDonald said.
“The defense will argue that Dr. Evans is not a reliable expert, and given that he was the lead expert for the prosecution, we say that all the convictions are not safe,” McDonald said.
Letby, 34, is serving multiple life sentences with no chance of release after being convicted of murdering seven babies and trying to murder seven others while working as a neonatal nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital in northwestern England between June 2015 and June 2016.
The Crown Prosecution Service defended the verdicts.
“Two juries and three appeal court judges have reviewed a multitude of different strands of evidence against Lucy Letby,” a CPS spokesperson said in a statement. “In May, the Court of Appeal dismissed Letby’s leave to appeal on all grounds — rejecting her argument that expert prosecution evidence was flawed.”
Prosecutors said at trial that Letby's methods left little trace and included injecting air into their bloodstreams, poisoning them with insulin and interfering with breathing tubes. Prosecutors said she was a “constant malevolent presence" and was alone on duty in the neonatal unit when the children collapsed or died.
Letby, who testified at two trials that she never harmed a child, has stood by her claims of innocence.
Experts said it is unusual to ask the Court of Appeal to reopen its previous decision to reject a case and would require convincing evidence to succeed.
“It is vanishingly rare for a lead expert witness in a criminal case to ‘change his mind’ on key evidence," said defense lawyer Sean Caulfield, who is not involved in the case. “It is also rare for there to be a bid to reopen an appeal after it has already been refused by the Court of Appeal. I have never seen these two things happen in unison during my 20-year plus career. It is quite an astonishing turn of events."
McDonald said 15 medical experts around the world are reviewing trial evidence.
An inquiry currently underway to examine failures by the hospital to recognize why babies were dying and why they took so long to stop Letby opened in September against a backdrop of experts and others who have questioned evidence used against Letby.
A group of scientists, doctors and legal experts that independently reviewed scientific evidence from Letby’s trial warned Britain’s ministers of health and justice that legal systems were “particularly vulnerable to errors” when dealing with technical matters, “especially in cases involving statistical anomalies in health care settings.”
Evans gave his new opinions on the death of infants identified in court as Baby C, Baby I and Baby P in a signed response to a Channel 5 documentary, McDonald said.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Dr. Evans is still going to say that Lucy Letby is guilty and he has a different view or different hypothesis in relation to it," McDonald said. “But the cause of death that was before the Court of Appeal is different now, according to Dr. Evans, and I think that is a profound issue that needs to be relooked at.”
Evans has not yet responded to a request for comment following McDonald's news conference.
Additionally, two neonatologists working with the defense said there were medical reasons Baby C and Baby O became ill and could not be resuscitated, McDonald said.
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