THE INTERVIEW: The Sark doctor looking to get Lucy Letby a “fair trial”

Is Lucy Letby innocent? 

Private Eye, the New York Times, the Daily Mail, the Guardian. These are just a few of the mainstream media organisations reporting on a growing group of medical professionals who don’t believe Letby’s guilt was proved beyond reasonable doubt.

For some, it may be hard to stomach, but the movement is gathering steam, most recently with the revelation that Conservative MP David Davis is spearheading a campaign to raise questions within parliament. 

It’s the kind of controversial rabbit hole of a story that needs to be explored soberly and professionally, with respect for the families who lost children, and with an understanding that most of us aren’t lawyers, statisticians, doctors, or more importantly, nurses. 

It’s the kind of story that is already being covered extensively by the nationals, so it may seem unusual for a Channel Islands publication, Express, to take up. 

It began with an email invitation to speak to Dr Roger Norwich, a medico-legal expert, registered with the General Medical Council, who just so happens to live in Sark.

Dr Norwich has put in two complaints to the GMC about two expert witnesses utilised in the Letby trial who he argues were pushing a theory on the jury with shoddy evidence. 

More widely, he is involved with a group of people who are developing something akin to the Innocence Project or Appeal, specifically aimed at discrediting the evidence used to convict Lucy Letby. He believes it was shaky at best and “nonsense” at worst. He says the case was a “witch trial” and “scientifically, does not stack up”. 

The claim seems unbelievable, and deeply concerning, both if true and if not. The idea that this could be a miscarriage of justice is inconceivable, while the idea that dozens of people like Dr Norwich are willing to pick apart the conviction of the UK’s most infamous serial killer, of babies, is equally difficult to accept, let alone get on board with. 

Express met Dr Norwich in Sark, to better understand why he was putting his reputation on the line for a woman dubbed ‘the UK’s most notorious serial killer’ by vast swathes of the British public.

The trial

Firstly, it’s worth revisiting the facts as they stand.  

Lucy Letby is a former neonatal nurse who used to work at the Countess of Chester Hospital.  

Concerns were raised due to a high number of infant deaths that happened during her time on an intensive care unit. This led to an internal review and the eventual involvement of the police. 

An investigation called Operation Hummingbird was undertaken and Letby was arrested in July 2018 on suspicion of the murder and attempted murder of 17 babies. 

A highly publicised trial – during which a Guernsey paediatrician was called to be an expert witness – took place in 2023 and Letby was eventually found guilty of seven counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder. She was said to have killed them via several methods, including the injection of air and insulin. 

The most compelling evidence used to convince the jury was her presence at 25 suspicious incidents, eyewitness testimony from people who saw her near injured babies, falsified patient records that removed her from the scene of dying babies, and handwritten notes discovered at her home, which included statements such as; “I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them”. 

It was also explained that some of the babies had been found to have been poisoned with insulin, and several expert witnesses were called in to give credence to the claims that others could’ve had air injected into their veins. 

Letby denied all the charges. The defence argued that Letby was essentially working in a neonatal unit under significant staff pressures, where babies did indeed die and she just happened to be there. An unbelievable victim of circumstance. 

She was sentenced to life behind bars with a whole life order, meaning she’ll never be eligible for parole. 

An additional retrial earlier this year saw Letby convicted of an eighth count of attempted murder and given another whole life order. 

“It was really… very strange”

In Doctor Norwich’s view, “there was no evidence against her at all”.

“Nobody ever saw her do anything. You know… everything was circumstantial, but the circumstance was largely dreamed up by the people giving the evidence,” he claims.

I arrived in Sark with a determination not to not be led astray, noting that I had not attended the trial, and neither had Dr Norwich. With an open mind I spoke to Dr Norwich about his claims and the group of experts he has joined.

“[This] began by reading newspaper reports, and pieces of evidence that were published in the various media in the UK, and I was shocked and amazed by some of the content. It appeared to me that some of the medical evidence that was being given was completely outside the normal range of opinion by normal doctors. 

“Eventually I met somebody who was involved in trying to bring a few professionals together and I was asked if I’d be willing to put my medical knowledge [to use]. 

“In the 80s and early 90s I had developed an interest in medicolegal medicine, and I became the CEO of a company called Medico Legal Consultancy, which at the time… was probably the biggest medical legal practice.” 

He went on to explain to me that medicolegal is the arena where medicine and the law overlap “and I became pretty expert in dealing with those kinds of issues”. 

Dr Norwich believes that some of the main prosecution witnesses in the Letby trial were “fantasising over the diagnosis” when it came to the suggestion of air embolisms as evidence. 

“[They’d] worked out some theory which I didn’t think was sustainable at all. That you could make a diagnosis by exclusion of other issues is an approach that’s just not acceptable to people in the mainstream of that kind of medicine.  

“It was really… very strange.” 

Some of the evidence raised in the trial remained persuasive, and I put the insulin poisoning to Dr Norwich to get his thoughts. 

“The argument was that, when some blood tests had been done, they found a discrepancy between the amount of insulin that was in a blood sample that been taken and the amount of c-peptide which is another chemical related to insulin production.  

“And they used the ratio of insulin to c-peptide to accuse her and convict her of poisoning these children. However, the reality is that the test that was used was completely irrelevant. 

“A) it was not done under forensic circumstances, and B) the manufacturer’s instructions regarding insulin and c-peptide measurement specifically state that this test should not be used forensically as it is of no value.” 

During the trial the jury was told that no infants were being prescribed insulin at the time of Letby’s alleged poisoning of the babies. It was a point of confusion Letby herself commented on. 

When his attention was drawn to the coincidence of her being at every single suspicious event, and that Letby herself wrote several ‘confessions’ which were discovered at her house, he responded: “It was an example of using statistics to prove something that you’ve already thought up. We’ve got professorial statisticians who’ve seen this and been through it, and they say it’s complete rubbish.” 

A staff rota was shown during the trial, placing Letby at every single suspicious child death or near death. It was a stark piece of evidence, that has since been the focal point of much discussion, with some in Dr Norwich’s camp arguing that it was misleading. 

And as far as the handwritten notes? Dr Norwich argues that Letby had been under considerable pressure from the police and had become “gradually mentally disturbed”. 

Dr Norwich’s alternative suggestion is that the babies at the Countess died due to “medical negligence and infection”. 

“What we do know is that there have been a lot of episodes of sewage coming up in the sluices and sinks in the unit. So obviously, there are a lot of potential for germs getting into the air and moving around,” he said. 

“We know that in 2012, the government had sent a directive out to all hospitals concerning Pseudomonas infection, and this had been because there had begun to be clusters of infection, some of which could cause deaths in hospitals.  

“So, we believe that there was a lot of infection in the hospital, and that not enough was done to make sure that the babies were in a safe environment.” 

The NHS threshold for cases of Pseudomonas is nine per year, with a most recent report from the Countess of Chester hospital indicating cases in 2023 were below this threshold. 

A conspiracy or not? 

Dr Norwich is convincing and much of the coverage questioning Lucy’s innocence is compelling. An article by the New Yorker in particular makes for uncomfortable reading, as it pulls apart the entire saga strand by strand.

However it’s important to note that most of us did not attend the trial, or have been privvy to all the evidence provided to the witnesses and jury.

It’s no surprise then, that the claim of Letby’s innocence has generated controversy. It also follows several high-profile incidents of people promoting alternative versions of the truth, many of which involve sensitive topics and controversial proposals. 

Just look at the episode where US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones managed to convince millions that the Sandy Hook shootings were fake. 

Or the ongoing trial in the UK of Richard Hall, who is being sued by two survivors of the Manchester bombing attack for harassment, after Mr Hall wrote a book suggesting the attack was fake and the claimants are actors. 

While I’m not suggesting that Dr Norwich has an agenda, the point remains. The truth is far more malleable than it used to be. 

On the other hand, it’s also worth pointing out that miscarriages of justice unfortunately happen all the time, and there are dozens of modern day examples of people spending decades in jail after being wrongly convicted. 

What happens now? 

“My goal is to see that she gets fair trial as I don’t believe she’s had a fair trial at this point,” Dr Norwich tells me. 

“I believe she’s innocent… it’s a lot like the post office scandal, in that I believe there’s been a lot of malfeasance both medically and administratively by the hospital in not providing a safe environment for these children.

“This case is now receiving serious attention from politicians both in the House of Commons and the House of Lords who now looking in detail at what has happened and we are in discussion with them. 

Dr Norwich is certainly invested. During my time talking to him he had visited the UK several times to visit the group of  “leading consultant neonatologists, statisticians and bio-scientists” and discuss their plans to get Lucy exonerated. He said they hadn’t actually spoken to her, but she was aware they existed.

“I think we will eventually be successful, but it’s going to take a long time, because we will do everything we can to get this through to the Criminal Cases Review Committee.” 

The CCRC is the body responsible for investigating alleged miscarriages of justice and its Dr Norwich’s aim to get it involved. For the CCRC to be able to revert the case back to the Court of Appeal, new evidence would need to be uncovered, or expert witnesses to be discredited. 

Will this happen? Letby has almost exhausted all her own lines of appeal and the CCRC does seem to be the final option. Whether Dr Norwich and his group will help her is yet to be seen, and how they’ll do that is even more unclear. Whether it’s the right thing to do? Only time will tell.

Pictured top: Credit – Cheshire Constabulary.