If I was convinced of Lucy Letby’s guilt, I’d have no qualms about her punishment. She’d deserve everything she got – 15 whole life sentences – for her cold-hearted crimes against tiny, defenceless babies and the immense suffering inflicted on their parents.
But like a growing number of people – eminent doctors, nurses, scientists, statisticians, legal experts, politicians and campaigning journalists like my colleague Peter Hitchens – I have serious doubts about the safety of Letby’s conviction on all charges.
Now those doubts are strengthening after barrister Mark McDonald, who heads up Letby’s new legal team, announced that, in an unprecedented step, he was asking the Court of Appeal to review all her convictions.
He said he had ‘significant’ new evidence that the convictions were not safe because the chief prosecution witness, Dr Dewi Evans, had ‘remarkably changed his mind’ over the mechanism of death in three of the seven babies – Babies C, I and P – murdered in the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.
He was not, McDonald said, a ‘reliable witness’. (For his part, Dr Evans believes that his changing his mind would have had little effect on the verdict.)
Mr McDonald also revealed that Dr Evans had written a further report about Baby C which was now with the Letby prosecution team. Despite numerous requests they were refusing to share the report.
He added that during the original trial the judge had disregarded questions from the defence about Dr Evans’ reliability and rejected calls for him to be removed from the case.
Last month, on these pages, I questioned Dr Evan’s ‘reliability’ myself. At that point, I was the only person (as far as I am aware) in the mainstream media to have challenged his role as an expert witness, although it has been an ongoing debate in various online legal and medical forums for some time.
Neonatal nurse Lucy Letby has been sentenced to stay in prison until she dies – but more questions are being raised about the safety of her conviction
Dr Dewi Evans rejected the term ‘expert witness’, preferring to be described as an ‘independent medical witness’
People asked me, why did I do it? Why stick my neck out and question a clinician, with a 30-year track record in clinical negligence and child safeguarding in criminal and civil cases, who was appointed to the Letby case first by Cheshire police, and then as expert witness by the Crown Prosecution Service?
My answer was that according to my research and close reading of court transcripts from the 2023 trial, Dr Evans was no expert. He even admitted it when questioned by the defence.
He rejected the term ‘expert witness’, preferring to be described as an ‘independent medical witness’ whose opinion was ‘based on being a doctor’.
He agreed he’d never worked exclusively in neonatology (the care of premature and newborn infants). Until 2009, this 74-year-old grandfather had been a consultant paediatrician at the Singleton Hospital in Swansea with a speciality in endocrinology and childhood diabetes.
Dr Evans has since told the Mail that his ‘clinical [hands-on] neonatal practice was from the mid-1970s until 2007’. The ‘expert witness’ in the Letby case hadn’t actually been responsible for the care of a neonate for 16 years.
It’s no wonder he didn’t recognise a monitor – handed to him during the trial – used to track a baby’s vital signs.
I wouldn’t have done either, based on my experience as a nurse in a neonatal unit in Liverpool back in the 1980s. You simply cannot compare the care given to a neonate back then with what technology and improved knowledge have made possible now.
So given Dr Evans was not a specialist neonatologist with experience of a 21st century neonatal unit, I asked if he was the best choice as chief witness for the prosecution in these clinically complex cases?
He has certainly made the most of his 15 minutes of fame in the aftermath of the Letby trial, appearing regularly on TV, radio and podcasts to talk about the case. Then again, he has a business to promote.
Since his retirement from clinical work 15 years ago, he has built on his role as an ‘expert’ witness via his business, Dewi Evans Paediatric Consulting.
It’s fair to say that his contributions have not been without controversy.
As my colleague Glen Owen reported in The Mail on Sunday recently, in another case in 2022 a judge described Dr Evans’ evidence as ‘worthless’ and said he’d made ‘no effort to provide a balanced opinion’. (Dr Evans says he stands by his report in this case).
As for the Letby case, Dr Evans actively sought out a role when he heard about the high number of baby deaths at the Chester hospital, writing to a contact at the National Crime Agency that it was ‘my kind of case’. Letby’s barrister at the trial even accused him of ‘touting for the job’ according to transcripts.
He spent seven – presumably lucrative – years working for Cheshire Police reviewing the clinical notes of all 30 babies who died or suffered unexplained collapses on the unit where Lucy Letby worked, before being appointed by the CPS.
At the very least, I would argue that Dr Dewi Evans brings into question the role of expert witnesses in our court system, and we should be examining how they are appointed and reform the practice if needed.
There are other questions to be answered. In July, 24 real(in my view) experts from a range of disciplines signed a private letter to Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, raising concerns about ‘possible negligent deaths that were presumed to be murders’ on the neonatal unit where Letby worked.
Which leads me to Dr Richard Taylor, a neonatologist and one of more than 50 experts now re-examining – pro bono – the prosecution’s case.
At Monday’s press conference he spoke about Baby O, one of the babies Letby was convicted of murdering. After studying all available records, he said the team concluded the infant died after a series of medical errors including a needle accidentally inserted into the baby’s liver, causing bleeding that staff trying to resuscitate him were unaware of.
With each passing month, new concerns about the trial are raised. I believe that Lucy Letby, now 34, may be innocent.
Justice demands that she be given a fresh chance to prove it – and that surely begins with proper scrutiny of the chief witness for the prosecution.
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