Letby: blocking of article defies open justice, MP tells Commons
Ex-minister Sir David Davis criticises court order stopping UK online access to new US article about nurse child killer’s trial last year
A Conservative MP and former minister has criticised the fact that access to an article about the convicted child murderer Lucy Letby is blocked in the UK ‘in defiance of open justice’.
The article, published in The New Yorker magazine questions the evidence used to convict the former nurse of the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of six more.
The order comes ahead of the retrial Letby faces later this year in relation to one charge of attempting to murder a baby girl in February 2016.
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Letby article raises ‘enormous concerns’, MP claims
Sir David Davis called on the government to review the court order that blocks readers in the UK from accessing the article.
Today he told the Commons: ‘Yesterday the New Yorker magazine published a 13,000-word inquiry into the Lucy Letby trial, which raised enormous concerns about both the logic and competence of the statistical evidence that was a central part of that trial.
‘That article was blocked from publication on the UK internet, I understand because of a court order. Now, I’m sure that court order was well intended but it seems to me in defiance of open justice. Will the Lord Chancellor look into this matter and report back to the House?’
In reply, justice secretary Alex Chalk told MPs: ‘Court orders must be obeyed and court orders can be displaced by someone applying to court for them to be removed. So that will need to take place in the normal course of events.
‘I will just simply make a point on the Lucy Letby case – that jury’s verdict must be respected. If there are grounds for an appeal, that should take place in the normal way.’
Attempt to appeal against convictions
In August 2023, Letby, originally from Hereford, was convicted of murders and attempts to murder at Countess of Chester Hospital’s neonatal unit, where she worked as a nurse, between June 2015 and June 2016.
She has submitted a bid to challenge her convictions at the Court of Appeal. If judges decline to permit her appeal, it will mark the end of that process for her.
The jury in Letby’s trial at Manchester Crown Court was unable to reach verdicts on six counts of attempted murder in relation to five children.
Her retrial will be at the same court in June.
A separate court order prohibits reporting of the identities of the dead and surviving children.