A panel of 14 international experts has disputed the medical evidence used to convict British nurse Lucy Letby of murdering seven newborns and trying to kill seven others. The expert group, led by retired neonatologist Dr. Shoo Lee from Canada, found no sign of a crime and concluded that natural causes or bad medical care led to the demise of each of the newborns.
Dr. Lee stated, “In summary, then, ladies and gentlemen, we did not find any murders.” This conclusion contradicts the conviction of Letby, who is serving multiple life sentences with no chance of release.
Defense lawyer Mark McDonald said there was now “overwhelming evidence” that Letby was wrongly convicted, as the medical evidence presented to the jury has been demolished. The Crown Prosecution Service had no comment on the new medical panel’s conclusions.
The expert group reviewed the medical records of 17 babies Letby was accused of harming and found staffing levels inadequate at the hospital, along with serious problems such as unskilled resuscitation and slow response times to acutely ill babies.
Dr. Lee said that if this were a hospital in Canada, it would be shut down due to these findings. The panel’s conclusions challenge those of the prosecution’s key expert witness, Dr. Dewi Evans, who was later found to have changed his conclusion on how three of the babies died.
The medical panel concluded that embolism could not be the cause of death in the cases where Letby was accused of injecting air into the babies’ bloodstreams or stomachs. Instead, they suggested natural causes or bad medical care led to each baby’s demise.
In one case, the panel found that a viral infection caused a baby to become sick, and later recovered after being administered antibiotics. This finding contradicts the prosecution’s claims that Letby had overfed the child, leading to its death.
The new conclusions have raised hopes for an appeal among Letby’s lawyers, who have asked the Criminal Case Review Commission to examine her conviction.
Source: https://apnews.com/article/lucy-letby-babies-murder-evidence-c9f554f3f06358c195fa722acf5e7541