Lucy Letby retrial needed after ‘clear miscarriage of justice’, says David Davis
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MP tells parliament he believes justice has not been done after hearing experts’ concerns over former nurse’s murder convictions. Fundamental flaws in the criminal trial system led to the former nurse Lucy Letby being convicted of murder in a “clear miscarriage of justice”, David Davis has said in parliament.
In a parliamentary debate, the former cabinet minister detailed the mounting concerns of leading experts about the convictions and said there should quickly be a retrial. He said he believed Letby would be cleared in it. Letby was convicted in two trials of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven more in 2015 and 2016 when she worked as a nurse in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester hospital. The court of appeal refused her permission to appeal against the convictions, and a public inquiry led by Lady Justice Thirlwall is taking place on the basis that Letby is guilty.
However, Davis said he had formed the view that justice had not been done after he was approached by many experts expressing concerns, including a past president of the Royal Statistical Society and a past president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. They were, he said, “more knowledgable than the purported experts whose evidence convicted Lucy Letby”.
Davis criticised the opinion given in the trial by the prosecution’s lead medical expert witness, Dr Dewi Evans, that Letby had harmed the babies by injecting air either into their veins – causing air embolism, a lethal condition – or down their nasal feeding tubes into their stomachs. “This supposed evidence is hugely controversial,” Davis said. The medical evidence was crucial to the prosecution case.
