LONDON (Reuters) – A lawyer for nurse Lucy Letby said he would present new evidence on Thursday to the commission which considers miscarriages of justice, saying it undermined the case against the British nurse convicted of murdering seven babies in her care.
Letby was jailed in 2023 for the remainder of her life after being found guilty of murdering the newborns and attempting to murder eight more between June 2015 and June 2016 while working in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital in northern England.
Letby, 35, Britain’s worst serial child killer of modern times, has maintained her innocence throughout but has been refused permission to appeal against her convictions.
However her case has become a cause celebre after medical experts, media and other supporters challenged the prosecution case used to convict her, and said that evidence suggested no babies were murdered.
Her lawyer Mark McDonald said on Wednesday he would hand over an 86-page report by leading medical specialists to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), saying it cast serious doubt on the trial’s key findings about two of the children, known as Babies F and L.
The court’s conclusion that the babies were poisoned using insulin was key to the prosecution proving she had committed murder.
“The fresh evidence I will hand in to the CCRC tomorrow totally undermines the prosecution case at trial,” McDonald said. “This is the largest international review of neonatal medicine ever undertaken, the results of which show Lucy Letby’s convictions are no longer safe.”
The CCRC has said it is assessing Letby’s application but has not given a timeframe for any decision.
Meanwhile police are still investigating Letby and hospital managers, saying her previous appeals about flawed evidence have been rejected. The head of a public inquiry into the deaths has also rejected calls for her investigation to be paused.
(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Gareth Jones)
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