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A former judge at the Supreme Court has said he believes convicted serial baby killer Lucy Letby is ‘probably innocent’.
Jonathan Sumption claimed those questioning her convictions ‘are too numerous and too well qualified to be dismissed as troublemakers’.
He said that although the summing up by the judge in Letby’s trials was ‘impeccable’ and the Court of Appeal ‘meticulously examined the evidence’ prior to dismissing her bids to appeal, there were ‘serious anomalies’ in the case which cast ‘doubt’ on the safety of the jury verdicts.
‘Those who question the verdicts now include many lawyers and scientists,’ said Lord Sumption, who sat on the Supreme Court between 2012 and 2018.
‘Their reasoning is too cogent to be brushed aside. On the material presently available, I believe Lucy Letby was probably innocent.’
Letby, 35, is serving 15 whole life orders for the murder of seven infants and attempted murder of seven more between June 2015 and June 2016 at the Countess of Chester Hospital in Cheshire. But Lord Sumption claimed the case against her was ‘circumstantial’.
He said the prosecution’s theories of how she attacked her victims – injecting air into veins or stomachs, poisoning with insulin, overfeeding milk, inflicting throat trauma or dislodging feeding tubes – ‘seem very speculative’.
Letby (pictured), 35, is serving 15 whole life orders for the murder of seven infants and attempted murder of seven more between June 2015 and June 2016 at the Countess of Chester Hospital in Cheshire
Jonathan Sumption (pictured) claimed those questioning her convictions ‘are too numerous and too well qualified to be dismissed as troublemakers’
Photo issued by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) of a note found in the house of Lucy Letby. The murder-accused nurse said it was ‘sickening’ when she discovered she was being blamed for a number of baby deaths while doing the job she ‘loved’
He also said the hospital had a ‘poor record’, adding: ‘The Royal College of Paediatrics carried out a review into the spike in infant deaths and blamed unacceptable standards of neonatal care in the unit over a substantial period.’
Lord Sumption, a former Tory party adviser, also highlighted an international panel of 14 experts who last month said they had examined the medical notes of the babies and found alternative, natural explanations for their sudden collapses or deaths.
He added: ‘If Letby was wrongly convicted, and there is now a serious case she was, it is horrifying to contemplate this young woman may be locked up without hope until she dies… simply because our system is too rigid to allow a proper review of her case.’
His comments come a week after the conclusion of the Thirlwall Inquiry, the public probe into Letby’s crimes. In closing submissions, lawyers for the victims’ families debunked much of the panel’s report, saying it was flawed and simply a re-hash of evidence already heard at her original Manchester Crown Court trial.
Focusing simply on the medical evidence and dismissing other factors – such as Letby’s ‘confession’ notes, her strange behaviour when the infants collapsed and her alteration of medical notes – meant the inquiry panel risked ignoring the ‘bigger picture’, said Richard Baker KC.
Lawyers for the Royal College, in their closing submissions, accepted that although its report identified staffing shortages, they were not to blame for the spike in deaths. Concerns over infection passing from the unit’s problematic plumbing was also excluded as a potential source of harm to the babies, said Mr Baker.
