On Tuesday, an international group of neonatal and pediatric specialists raised serious doubts about the tests used to condemn Lucy Letby, a British nurse who was judged guilty in 2023 for killing seven children at the hospital where she worked and trying to kill more seven.
In a dramatic press conference in London, the president of the panel, dr. Shoo Lee, a Canadian neonatologist, said that a vast independent revision has not found evidence that Mrs. Letby killed or attempted to kill any of the children in her care.
He also highlighted what the panel of 14 members determined were errors in the medical treatment in the unit in which the deaths occurred, at the countess of the Chester hospital, in the north-west of England, in 2015 and 2016 , and serious failures in the management of neonatal conditions. Some of the deaths had been preventable, he said.
But, said dr. Lee, “our conclusion was that there were no medical tests in support of the evildoing that cause injuries in neither of the 17 cases of the trial”, referring to the original accusation of damaging 17 children. He added: “In summary, ladies and gentlemen, we did not find murders”.
The review is significant because it was made by some of the most respected and expert neonatal and pediatric specialists in the world.
The results raise the most serious questions about a horrified case and led Mrs. Letby to be called “The Killer Nurse” by the media and defamed as one of the worst serial killers of children in the modern history of the country. The accusation told the jury in two processes that they had damaged the children through a macabre range of attacks: inject them with air, to widen them too much with milk, instilling air in their gastrointestinal traits and poisoning them with insulin.
However, Mrs. Letby has never been seen to damage a child and has always maintained her innocence. She was sentenced to spend the rest of her life in prison in 2023 and has already been detained for more than four years, after being accused in November 2020.
The results of the review could feed the control of the National State of Great Britain, who fought after years of subfinification and deficiency of staff, also highlighting the weak points in the judicial system when it comes to complex medical cases.
Dr. Lee, who lives in Canada, became aware of the case of Mrs. Letby after her sentence. The accusation, in presenting his case, had made a lot of entrusting on a research document of 1989 that Dr. Lee co -author and his defense team wrote to him to ask if he would have examined the case.
He concluded that the expert witness of the accusation had mistakenly interpreted his research and later proposed to preside over a group of neonatal specialists to provide an impartial analysis of the causes of death or injuries of all children. The experts had access to all available medical records and statements of witnesses relating to children and delivered their pro bono evaluation. Although Mrs. Letby was originally accused of damaging 17 children, two juries eventually considered her guilty in the murder or attempted murder of 14.
The main questions about the case were raised for the first time in a 13,000 words New York article in May last year. Since then, dozens of experts in neonatology and statistics have raised concerns about the evidence and have claimed that there may have been a judicial abortion.
The countess of the Chester hospital, when he contacted the comment on the new accusations, said that the hospital focused on the investigations under the police and on a public investigation relating to the case.
This investigation proceeded on the basis of the fact that Mrs. Letby is guilty, considering questions as if the hospital was unable to protect children from her because of her culture and management.
A Senior doctor told the investigation that at the time of death, the unit, which took care of premature or seriously cursed newborn babies, was “almost to the breaking point” due to the lack of staff. And an evaluation of a previous regulator had warned against a ridiculous chronic personnel and said that the unit was missing resources to take care of children who require rigorous control of infections.
The panel of Dr. Lee included specialists from Great Britain, Canada, Germany, Japan, Sweden and the United States. When they embarked on their investigations, said dr. Lee, they were clear that the relationship would have been published if the results were favorable or unfavorable for Mrs. Letby.
The academic document of Dr. Lee of 1989 examined the air embolisms in the blood flows of the children and have noticed that some children showed signs of skin discoloring – a discovery mentioned by Dr. Dewi Evans, the main witness of the accusation in the event of Letby. Dr. Evans claimed that some of the children who died or deteriorated had shown similar models on their skin and that, therefore, children must have been injected with air by Mrs. Letby.
Dr. Lee has provided evidence in one of the attempts of Mrs. Letby to appeal, telling a hearing that Dr. Evans had misunderstood his discoveries on what could lead to the discolors of the skin and that none of the children should have been diagnosed with aerial embolism. But the court said that his evidence would not be heard, claiming that Mrs. Letby’s defense team should have called Dr. Lee in the original process.
Dr. Evans supported his tests and last weekend he told the London Times that “very worried people are wrong their facts”.
During briefing, Dr. Lee provided a summary of the detailed panel results and highlighted some of the cases. The report underlined the serious pre -existing conditions of some children, since many were born prematurely or with health problems.
In the case of “Baby 1”, which the public ministries claim that he was killed by Mrs. Letby by injecting air into the child’s veins, the panel has established that the cause of death is thrombosis of an existing question.
In the case of “Baby 11”, the accusation claimed that Mrs. Letby had deliberately removed a breathing tube. But the experts said that there were no evidence in support of this statement. Instead they claimed that an initial attempt by a consultant doctor to revive the child had been “traumatic and poorly supervised”, that the wrong equipment had been used and that the doctor “did not understand the foundations” of how mechanical ventilation equipment worked .
“It was just that the consultant did not know what he was doing,” said Dr. Lee in summary.
Dr. Neena Modes, a panel member and a childhood professor at Imperial College London, said that “there was a combination of children delivered in the wrong place, a delayed diagnosis and inappropriate or absent treatment”.
David Davis was also present at Tuesday’s briefing, a conservative legislator who became a champion for the cause of Mrs. Letby, lifting his case in Parliament and asking for a new process.
Mrs. Letby lost two separated attempts last year to appeal to her beliefs. In December, his lawyer, Mark McDonald, said he would ask the appeal court to see them again.
Tuesday said he had also applied for the criminal case review commission, which is responsible for investigations on requests for abortions of justice. He noticed that he had shared the tests with Mrs. Letby and, while refused to share further details on her mood, he said: “He has hope, and that’s all I can say”.
“There are overwhelming evidence that the sentence is not safe,” said McDonald.
The Commission confirmed that it has received a request to examine the case, but it is not clear how long it would take.
“We are aware of the fact that there have been many speculations and comments that surround the case of Lucy Letby, largely from parts with only a partial vision of the tests,” said a spokesman for the body, adding that the families affected by the events should be kept in mind.
It is not for the commission “to determine innocence or fault in one case”, observed the spokesperson. “This is a question for the courts.”