Fresh Lucy Letby doubts

Britain has a bad record on criminal justice

Note from the author:

Apologies for fewer posts at this time, while I make further updates to my forthcoming biography of Gordon Brown. Thanks to the more than 1,500 readers who have come here since this Substack launched in March. Normal service is likely to resume in May and June.

Lucy Letby’s guilt appears in serious doubt this morning after the emergence of a 2017 email from a prosecution witness which seems to contradict his own claims that Letby did not call for help and was caught 'red-handed' with a baby who subsequently died.

Wikipedia

I don’t pretend to be anything like an expert in the crimes allegedly committed by the former nurse, though I share with many others a healthy scepticism towards the British criminal justice system – a system that’s seen the execution as well as imprisonment of innocent individuals, the countless deaths of black people in police custody without any police accountability, and the high profile conviction, in 1975, of the Birmingham Six so vividly outlined in the book by the former MP and justice campaigner Chris Mullin: Error of Judgement. I’ve also read much of the growing media coverage of doubts over the safety of Letby’s guilty verdict, including the lengthy New Yorker article of May last year which implies that Letby may have been cast as a scapegoat to protect the Countess of Chester hospital’s reputation.

The new email in that case, which was first revealed yesterday by the UnHerd website and makes the splash in today’s Mail on Sunday, is from Dr Ravi Jayaram. He was the only medical witness at Letby's two trials when he claimed that Letby was standing over Baby K's cot as the girl was deteriorating and that she did not call for help.

Dr Jayaram wrote to colleagues at the Countess of Chester Hospital on May 4, 2017, before Letby was investigated by police: 'At time of deterioration ... Staff nurse Letby at incubator and called Dr Jayaram to inform of low saturations.'

He also said then that the baby apparently died from ‘explainable events associated with extreme prematurity.'

This and the fact that Letby called him for help were not among documents that were sent to police.

Instead, Dr Jayaram told police in a witness statement on April 17, 2018: 'It is also the case that Lucy had not called me in to nursery 1 at the point that desaturation had taken place. Quite often a nurse will come looking for a doctor to assist when a baby begins to deteriorate, Lucy didn't.'

At the 2024 trial, he was asked by prosecuting counsel Nick Johnson KC whether he had 'any call for help from Lucy Letby?'. Dr Jayaram responded: 'No, not at all. I was surprised that the alarm was not going off, although my priority was (Baby K) and I didn't question it at the time. In retrospect, I was surprised that help was not called, given (Baby K) was a 25-week gestation baby and her saturations were dropping.'

And at the Thirlwall Inquiry, which is investigating the events at the hospital – on the presumption of Letby's guilt – Dr Jayaram added: 'I lie awake thinking about this ... I should have been braver.'

The MoS also carries a column item about Letby by Peter Hitchens, the paper’s controversial and ultra-conservative commentator, who to be fair deserves credit as one of the first journalists to raise questions over this case. He’s now obtained a brochure for a ‘Communicators’ Course’ which was held in March 2024 for police press officers in at a Lincolnshire hotel. In the programme, there is a blurb describing Shelley Smith, the ‘Senior Communications Officer’ for Cheshire Constabulary and ‘Communications Lead’ for Operation Hummingbird, the police investigation into Letby, which says: ‘Within months of starting with the force she hit the ground running…During her time in the force’s press office Shelley has planned, co-ordinated and delivered communications strategies for multiple murders, serious sexual offences, the force’s first corporate manslaughter prosecution and multiagency working to tackle serious and organised crime.’

The programme adds that Smith ‘was asked to take up a full-time secondment working closely alongside the investigation team developing, implementing and leading on the communications strategy – something that has never been done in Cheshire before.

This encompassed not only media management and stakeholder engagement but detailed logistics/planning pre-trial and at court and, most importantly, providing bespoke media advice and support to the 13 individual families at the heart of this tragic case – under the intense spotlight of the world’s media, unbelievable scrutiny from the public and with the parents of the babies firmly at the forefront of her mind.’

Hitchens asks, ‘what do they mean by “strategy”’? It’s a fair question.

The Lucy Letby story is fast becoming a cause for concern to many fair minded people inside and outside the media. There are many important domestic stories today as the world appears on the brink of economic crisis, from the British Steel question, to whether Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves will heed Gordon Brown’s call for more British re-integration into Europe in the face of Donald Trump’s trade war, to the ongoing, disgraceful race to the bottom over immigration, to the quiet receding of a flawed assisted dying bill and so much more. Less significantly, today sees a periodical bout of spin across several newspapers from the palace over how hard the king is said to be working, following an Italy visit. His wife, Camilla, is quoted as saying ‘Dream on!’ when asked if he will slow down. Of course everyone wishes Charles well after his undoubtedly difficult illness.

But meanwhile, Lucy Letby is currently due to die in prison. The case is especially – unspeakably – painful for the parents and families of the babies who died. For their sake, too, anyone with any doubts about the British criminal justice system should surely press for a retrial so we can know, with more certainty, what really happened.