Lucy Letby: lawyers seek appeal as witness ‘changes mind’
Letby’s defence team calls for the case to be reopened after lead witness revised his opinion, and says it has new evidence to present to Court of Appeal
Lawyers for former neonatal nurse Lucy Letby will make a fresh bid to challenge her convictions for the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of seven others, on the grounds that the prosecution’s lead medical expert witness at her trial was ‘not reliable’.
Letby’s barrister, Mark McDonald, said he would immediately seek permission from the Court of Appeal to take the ‘exceptional, but necessary’ step to apply to reopen her case.
Expert witness revised his opinion over three of the babies’ deaths
Speaking at a press conference at the Royal Society of Medicine in London on Monday 16 December, Mr McDonald said that ‘remarkably’ Dewi Evans had changed his mind over the mechanism of death of three of the babies Letby was convicted of murdering.
Mr McDonald said: ‘The defence will argue that Dr Evans is not a reliable expert and all the convictions are not safe.’
The defence team has reports from two neonatologists that it claims count as fresh evidence in the cases relating to the children referred to as Baby C and Baby O.
In a statement, doctors Neil Aiton and Silvena Dimitrova said: ‘We have seen no evidence of deliberate harm to these babies by anyone.’
Letby is serving 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted at Manchester Crown Court of the murders and attempted murders, which took place at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.
She has lost two bids this year to challenge her convictions at the Court of Appeal – in May for seven murders and seven attempted murders and in October for the attempted murder of a baby girl, of which she was convicted by a different jury at a retrial.
Letby’s convictions are ‘not safe’, says defence barrister
Mr McDonald told the press conference: ‘Dr Evans had said to the jury that Letby had injected air down a nasal gastric tube and this had led to the death of the three babies.
‘This was repeated to the Court of Appeal, who may have been misled when they ruled on the application for leave against the convictions.
‘Dr Evans has also said that he has revised his opinion in relation to Baby C and has written a new report that he has given to the police months ago. Despite numerous requests, the prosecution has yet to give this report to the defence.
‘The defence 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.’
Dr Evans has been contacted for comment.
In other news