The evidence given by the expert witnesses who worked for the prosecution in Lucy Letby’s trial has come under the spotlight after globally renowned medical experts concluded that no murders took place at all.
A panel of 14 experts – including 10 neonatologists, a paediatric surgeon, a paediatric infectious disease specialist, a senior neonatal intensive care nurse, and one other paediatric specialist “from highly prestigious institutions in six countries around the world” – have reviewed all of the evidence in the case against the former nurse who was accused of harming multiple babies during 2015 and 2016 at the Countess of Chester Hospital in England.
The International Expert Panel’s Summary Report, published yesterday, concluded that all of the infants who died or suffered injuries did so because of natural causes or errors in medical care.
That conflicts with the evidence offered by prosecution witnesses Dr Dewi Evans and Dr Sandie Bohin during Letby’s 2023 trial, who said the babies’ injuries were deliberately caused.
The findings of the International Expert Panel have “vindicated” a number of other medical professionals who have long held concerns over the decision to prosecute and subsequently convict Lucy Letby.
That includes Dr Roger Norwich, a medico-legal expert registered with the General Medical Council, who lives in Sark.
Dr Norwich spoke to Express from London after he had attended yesterday’s press conference.
“I and some other doctors, probably eight or 10 months ago were investigating the medical reports that had been prepared by various experts, and we disagreed with them,” he said.
“We went public on that somewhere around May or June last year, and the reaction from people that we knew in the medical profession was, ‘are you sure you want to go near that?’ And you know, having done a lot of work on it, yes, we were sure that we wanted to go near it.
“Of course, we then had push back from some of the people who had given evidence in the court case, but we stood by what we said, and now with the report from the international reviewers, we feel fully vindicated, because these are world class neonatologists who are by and large in current practice, and whose opinions are second to none. We feel we were right, and now we’ve got official backing of that case.
“They’re not just saying that Lucy Letby was wrongly convicted of the murders of these infants. They’ve actually said that they don’t believe that the babies were murdered.”
In feeling vindicated over his views concerning Letby, shared with many other medical professionals, Dr Norwich has said the time is now right for her case to be reviewed.
He said that includes looking at the evidence given for the prosecution by Guernsey-based paediatric consultant Dr Bohin and others.
“I think questions need to be asked of all the expert witnesses, because really, we have been saying for a long time that the diagnoses that were come to by all the various experts just didn’t make any sense, and rather than come up with some very weird and wonderful diagnoses, it was pretty obvious, what had you know really been going on, and how these babies came to be sick and to get sicker, some of them.”
The expert witnesses for the prosecution – Dr Bohin and Dr Evans – said there was proof in some cases that Letby had injected her tiny victims with air, identified through skin discolouration on some of the infants.
This was said to be backed up through a 1989 text authored by Dr Shoo Lee.
When Dr Lee was notified of this, after Letby’s case had concluded, he became concerned that his past research had been misused.
As one of the medical professionals involved in the International Expert Panel he has stated that skin discolouration is not a symptom of air embolism.
Having reviewed all of the evidence, Dr Lee and the other specialists on the Independent Expert Panel are all in agreement that none of the babies were murdered or harmed intentionally, and that their injuries and deaths were caused by natural causes or errors in medical care.
Dr Norwich said this has long been the view of many other medical experts who have followed the case closely.
“Our position has always been that there were probably no murders at all, but there was probably bad practice in the unit where these poor babies died,” he said.
“Inevitably, in these units, you are going to have babies who do die because they’re sick. And you can never tell which babies will do well and which won’t. But inevitably, some will do very well and some, unfortunately, will succumb to whatever the underlying condition is.
Dr Norwich shared his sympathy for the parents of all of the infants who suffered injuries or died – but he believes they should know the truth of what really happened.
“We have absolutely every sympathy for the poor parents of these babies, because they, we believe, have been led on a merry dance as a result of this prosecution. And really, it would have been much better if there had been a proper, formal investigation, medically of what was going on in that unit and the deficiencies that have been identified by the experts at this point could have been identified then, because the same evidence would have been available. And we think it’s very, very unfortunate that certain actions and certain people led towards Lucy being accused of hurting all these babies.”
The Independent Expert Panel’s Summary Report was presented at a press conference yesterday, where Dr Lee said members of the panel were not paid and didn’t receive any benefits for their work.
Sark-based Dr Norwich said this is in contrast to the paid work carried out by medical professionals who give evidence for the prosecution in criminal cases.
“I was watching the trial as it went on, and as I was hearing evidence that was being given, I was becoming more and more disturbed by what was being said, because it did not seem right. And then I began to talk to some other doctors who also agreed, and they all thought, as I did, that some of the diagnoses were absolutely extraordinary, and that really there was no evidence basis for them, although we know that various experts were pushing back and saying, ‘it’s all very well, but you’ve not seen the medical records’, but of course, we have now, and having seen the medical records, we know that what we were saying on the basis of just seeing the court transcripts was pretty accurate.
“Obviously, these current experts who have now given their opinion really backed us up. You have to remember that people like Professor Neena Modi, who is a past president of the Royal College of Paediatric and Child Health, was one of the experts. So if we’re comparing these experts with the experts who actually gave paid evidence through trial, then I don’t really think there is much comparison.”
Dr Norwich told Express that the way medical evidence is given in court should change, because of the level of knowledge and expertise needed to understand some very complex situations.
“I really think that we need to look into how medical evidence is given in court. From this case (it shows) that the courts are unable to deal with complex medical and technical cases on the basis of the adversarial system that there is now, and it seems to be important that there is a major reform of how these types of cases are dealt with.
“The truth is that instead of calling the police, the doctors who were running the department should have engaged various other health authorities and further engaged with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health to try and find out what was going on, whether it was their practice that was causing the problem, or what was causing it.
“It seems to me and to many other people that it was a gross overreaction to call the police because the police are not the best qualified to undertake examination of medical records, and we can see by the fact that the experts that they chose seem to have completely let them down absolutely.”