Today we’re publishing two pieces about the Lucy Letby case, one by Frank Haviland arguing that the unspeakable nature of her crimes makes an eloquent case for capital punishment, the other by David Livermore arguing that the uncertainty about her guilt makes an equally eloquent case against.
Lucy Letby: The Case For Capital Punishment
by Frank Haviland
The monstrous case of Lucy Letby reminds us that the devil wears many faces. The particular evil in this instance is that she chose to hijack the compassion afforded by a nurse’s uniform to facilitate her crimes. While abhorrent, this should not surprise us; where else should evil gravitate, if not to those professions which grant immediate access to the vulnerable, the young, and the trusting? The malevolent hide in plain sight within the police force, masquerade as teachers, and perhaps vilest of all, occasionally pose as medical staff too.
Letby was sentenced last week to 14 whole-life jail terms for the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of six others during her time at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016. Although this already makes Letby Britain’s worst infant serial killer, these numbers are conservative. Cheshire Police have confirmed they will be examining the records of 4,000 babies Letby may have come into contact with, alongside fears that she harmed dozens more.
There are an inordinate number of questions raised by the case itself: why is CCTV not mandatory in every ICU in the country, when Britain is the most heavily-surveilled nation in the world, bar China? Why did NHS managers think it acceptable to instruct doctors “not to make a fuss” about babies dying suspiciously? Why were the alarm bells not tolling furiously when insulin was discovered in the bloodstream of victims, at a time when no babies were being prescribed the drug? Notwithstanding the courage of many medical staff in raising concerns, why did they not simply circumvent the chain of command and call the police themselves once it became clear that their managers were unforgivably negligent? And worst of all, what kind of arse-covering sadist delays contacting the police for almost two years, prioritising the hospital’s ‘reputation’ over the lives of new-borns? The nation applauded the NHS during the pandemic; I suspect it won’t do so again in a hurry.
Then, of course, there is the interminable discussion about what ‘drove’ Letby to her crimes – in a desperate bid to exonerate her from their wickedness. I must confess, despite my psychology background, I cannot summon up the requisite curiosity. While others may well stress the importance of preventing future cases of infanticide (a forlorn hope, given the well-documented ability of psychopaths to dodge detection), I find myself supremely indifferent to an exposition of the elements of Letby’s life that might assuage her guilt. Letby is not the victim here.
Instead, I wish to ask an alternate question: does Letby deserve to live? We must recognise, surely, that when it comes to punishment for crimes of this severity the law is wholly inadequate. The ultimate suffering caused by the murder of a child cannot be recompensed, even if the state were so inclined (which of course it is not); a reflection poignantly voiced by the victim impact statement of Baby C’s mother:
There is no sentence that will ever compare to the excruciating agony that we have suffered as a consequence of your actions.
We must also concede that the British justice system is so chronically biased in favour of the perpetrators, as to be morally bankrupt. Early release is the norm, not the exception. British jails now come equipped with gyms, satellite television in cells, and cash bonuses for good behaviour. Life is so cushy in fact, that inmates (sorry, ‘residents’) no longer bother trying to escape.
While knee-jerk reactions are naturally to be avoided, after a suitable interval the debate on capital punishment needs to be reopened. Yes, that would necessitate leaving the ECHR (no bad thing, seeing as the Convention hamstrings Britain in terms of immigration, while remaining an abomination to victims of crime), but I am firmly of the belief that the UK justice system is now lenient to the point of derision, and that such a debate might serve to counter that.
Unlike most controversies, I consider the death penalty genuinely conflicting. The arguments against it are compelling, so let’s examine them. On the morality of state execution, I recognise the point that society ought to conduct itself better than its worst citizens. The trouble is, such an approach leaves us enfeebled to precisely those who seek to take advantage. It is witnessed by wishy-washy laws which have permitted Letby’s refusal to attend her sentencing, when anyone sane would agree she should have been dragged kicking and screaming into the courtroom.
There is also the question of whether capital punishment is genuinely a superior punishment to life imprisonment. Judging from the propensity of serious criminals to take their own lives rather than face perpetual incarceration, a case can clearly be made. This point was also echoed in the victim impact statement made by the mother of babies A and B:
We hope you live a very long life and spend every day suffering for what you’ve done.
Then there’s the issue of mental illness. In the case of Letby herself, I am not persuaded to any considerable degree. She took great pains to vary her means of murder in a bid to avoid detection. She managed to regulate her behaviour to the extent that she did not attack willy-nilly, and was never caught in flagrante. If we are to afford her the defence of diminished responsibility on the grounds of psychopathy, why not excuse bank robbers on the grounds of kleptomania? But even if mental illness were to absolve her of responsibility for her crimes, so what? Why should her predilection for infanticide trump the right of the innocent to live, or deny the victims’ parents the right to cherish them? Letby had a choice; her victims didn’t.
By far the most persuasive argument to my mind is the undeniable reality that mistakes are made. This has certainly been the case historically, and is likely to remain so until human error and interference is taken out of the equation entirely. I would therefore propose the following caveats to any future implementation of capital punishment:
- That it could be used only in extremis, for the absolute worst crimes.
- That it could only be used in cases of certainty – where a confession had been given, or where the video evidence was irrefutable.
- That it could only be used at a judge’s discretion, and would require sufficient justification and authorisation.
The morality of such an argument was expressed poignantly by Margaret Thatcher back in 1987:
Exactly such an approach is also favoured by the majority of the British public, for whom the most serious crimes are enough to tip a minority position into a reliable majority. And therein lies the moral case for capital punishment: some crimes are so unforgivable that the majority of decent people will condone it, despite their natural revulsion. The crimes sufficiently odious to achieve this are terrorism, mass murder and the murder of a child. On a personal note, I would add treason to that very short list (by which I mean betrayal of one’s country, thereby incorporating elements of all three).
So, for Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, who decided to decapitate Lee Rigby in broad daylight, I would advocate the death penalty. In the case of Dahbia Benkired, who confessed to the tortuous and sadistic murder and dismemberment of 12-year-old Lola Daviet, I would not hesitate. And for Lucy Letby, where the weight of circumstantial evidence is overwhelming, and whose revulsion at her own crimes was exposed by her handwritten confession “I am evil and I did this”, I believe the threshold has been met.
Let me be clear – I am not making the case for capital punishment on mere financial grounds, on the matter of deterrence, nor to free up valuable prison real estate (although such arguments are not inconsiderable, and need to be heard). No, my opinion is based purely on moral grounds. In denying the most innocent of victims their fundamental right to life, you have forfeited your own. You have stolen the birthdays, the rites of passage, the future generations and the memories – not just from those you killed, but from their families; those who will never escape the prisons you have condemned them to. In so doing, you have destroyed not one, but multiple lives. Society much demand a heavy price for that.
There is a concern here never voiced, which is the danger of the absence of justice. Allowing so vile an act to go largely unpunished speaks to a perverse and morally vacuous society – the consequences of which cannot be desirable. The taxpayer-funded relative comfort and isolation which awaits Letby would be quite welcome to some members of the public, let alone criminals. And while the festering slums employed as prisons by some of our European cousins would be more appropriate for the likes of Letby, she will not be housed there. Letby’s jail apparently features a fashion boutique and the possibility of animal visits – one wonders if the RSPCA will be quicker to object than the NHS were?
By all means make the case against capital punishment (it’s a strong one). But ask yourself this: how are you going to feel when Letby decides to gender transition in order to move to a prison with a bit more of a nightlife? What will your reaction be when the BBC offers her her own podcast, or she lands a 12-part Netflix series and book deal? It hardly bears thinking about, because you can guarantee that someone, somewhere is weighing up precisely that financial opportunity.
The paralysis of uncertainty only afflicts the good, while ideological certitude justifies many acts of wickedness. Britain is currently drowning in a sea of its own misguided compassion. A constant trickle of rapists and criminals posing as asylum seekers are waived through by the Border Force because our leaders aren’t confident enough to simply say ‘No’. Children are routinely mutilated under the guise of inclusivity, because society is no longer willing to protect them. And extradition flights are grounded, as though it were tacitly understood that the human rights of murderers outrank the lives of those they may well go on to kill.
Even though we cannot bring them back, morality demands that the tiny tots murdered in this case be given some semblance of justice. As for the fate of Miss Letby, let us give her the last word:
I am a horrible evil person.
The world is better off without me.
I don’t deserve to live.
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
This piece was first published in the New Conservative.
Lucy Letby: The Case Against Capital Punishment
by David Livermore
I occasionally appal academic colleagues by supporting the death penalty.
I can see no good reason why the taxpayer should bankroll the lifelong imprisonment of Emma Tustin and Thomas Hughes, who tortured and murdered 6-year old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes during the privacy of the first lockdown. Nor Wayne Couzens, who raped and murdered Sarah Everard during the third lockdown. Given the steady dribble of Met scandals I’m open to drawing up the Force in hollow square and hanging Couzens in the centre, as with Kipling’s Danny Deever. Pour encourager les autres. But I am shocked and dismayed by Frank Haviland’s article advocating the death penalty for Lucy Letby, the Chester nurse convicted of murdering seven infants between mid-2015 and mid-2016 and the attempted murder of six more.
Let us briefly review matters.
Letby was convicted substantially on the basis that she was on-shift when each of the deaths and near-fatal emergencies occurred. No other nurse was so consistently present. When her home was searched the police found handover sheets relating to the dead (and other) infants, interpreting these as ‘souvenirs’. They also found Letby’s handwritten jottings, which included the sentences “I am evil”; “I did this”; “I am a horrible evil person”. She had the unprofessional habit of searching details of her patients’ families on social media.
Letby was under the suspicion of some consultants from mid-2015, but internal reviews plodded slowly and inconclusively. She continued to work. Deaths continued. Despite the suspicions of some paediatricians, she maintained a ‘close friendship’ with one of their number.
Mid-2016 saw three developments. Letby was shifted to a desk job; the unit was downgraded, with the sickest babies treated elsewhere, and a review of the cluster of deaths was commissioned from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH). Deaths declined, with only four between mid-2016 and mid-2018 compared with 15 from mid-2015 to mid-2016.
The RCPCH, reporting early in 2017, highlighted significant gaps in staffing, judging it inadequate for the intensive and high dependency care previously provided. However, they found no obvious common factors among the 13 deaths considered and made no suggestion of foul play. This agreed with earlier post-mortems, performed on all except one of the infants for whose deaths Letby was ultimately charged. The RCPCH makes no mention of allegations against a member of staff. Either its authors heard none or, more likely, there is a second confidential memorandum. If so, it must have exonerated Letby who, around this time, also had a grievance procedure upheld.
Management forced several accusers to apologise to her. They also made it clear that she would be returning to the neonatal ward, but allowed consultants to raise their concerns with the police, who launched their investigation in May 2017. Letby was arrested a year later, in July 2018. Her house was searched, finding the documents later used against her. She was rearrested in 2019 and charged late in 2020. The case came to court two years later and lasted 9 months. All except one of the seven murders and six attempted murder convictions were on 10:1 majority verdicts (one juror had been discharged). Letby was acquitted on two further charges of attempted murder, with the jury unable to reach verdicts on six more.
There are a lot of problems here:
First, there’s the long timeline: the deaths – and first allegations – occurred in the year up to the Brexit Referendum, which seems a lifetime ago, yet no case came to trial until October 2022, seven years later and four years after Letby’s initial arrest.
Second, and linked, the belief that the babies died through murder and not poor care (as Countess of Chester management originally believed) does not arise from contemporaneous post-mortems, nor from the internal and RCPCH reviews of 2015-17. Rather, it comes from much later review by retired paediatrician and ‘professional expert witness’, Dr Dewi Evans, who has been criticised elsewhere. Alleged methods of murder vary among the infants. The prosecution assert that this illustrated Letby’s great cunning, but it might also be because we are not looking at murders. Ms Letby lacked the cunning to destroy potentially incriminating literary ramblings in her own home, despite a year to do so.
Third, the total number of deaths from mid-2015 to mid-2016 is 15, yet Letby was charged with eight, and the judge threw one case out, leaving the seven for which she was convicted. What about the other seven, which the police also initially considered? Even taken alone, they form a statistical excess. A widely published list of deaths and ‘events’, showing Letby present at all, is censored to include only those with which she was charged. How does that notorious chart of names and ‘X’s’ look if all 15 deaths are included?
Fourth, there is no smoking gun. All the evidence is circumstantial. No colleague stood up to say “I saw Lucy injecting air or insulin” or give an excessive volume of milk, which are alleged murder methods. Some nursing colleagues are standing by Ms Letby, despite the opprobrium that comes from defending any pariah.
Fifth, those ‘confessional’ notes. Photographs have been published repeatedly, often with words or phrases highlighted. What doesn’t appear are full transcriptions. Perhaps because the notes are incoherent. One moment she writes “I am evil; I did this” the next that “I did nothing wrong”. She overwrites text and squeezes words into the margins. The notes indubitably reveal a troubled woman beating herself up. But for what? Murder? Negligence? Failing to save an infant having a crisis? When did she write them? Contemporaneously with the deaths? After transfer to the desk job? After suspension? Before her first arrest? After? If they are confessions, why plead ‘Not Guilty’? If she planned to lie about her guilt, why keep them? Heaven knows, she had long enough to destroy them. It’s easy to over-read when you’re full of suspicion. Here’s an example: following the publication of fragments of Letby’s diary, along with assertions from the police that she used the sinister code ‘LO’ for days when she killed, nurse upon nurse has lined up in the Daily Mail comments to point out that it’s LD, not LO, and that it’s nurses’ widely-used shorthand for ‘Long Day’, meaning a 12-hour shift.
Sixth, although deaths declined after Letby ceased to work clinically this might be because – at the same time – the unit ceased to take the sickest and most premature babies.
Last, although the prosecution said that this was not a statistical prosecution, it smells like one, stemming from an unexpected cluster of deaths and Letby’s association with them. Such clusters demand investigation. But it’s easy to be fooled into finding significance when there is none. The trap is to calculate the unlikelihood of a cluster at one time in one hospital, rather across all hospitals over a period. Think of it like this: if I take a well-shuffled pack of cards and deal off the top four, my chance of four aces is 1 in 270,725 (4/52 x 3/51 x 2/50 x 1/49). If, however, a thousand people do it daily for a year, then there’s a 75% chance someone pulls the four-ace hand (1 – [1 – reciprocal 270275]365000). Given enough opportunities someone is lucky. Or very unlucky.
The Royal Statistical Society has been sufficiently exercised on these points to write cautionary guidance on statistically-based prosecution of healthcare professionals. One lead author, Professor Richard Gill of Leiden, has been a stern critic of the Letby convictions, and is joined in this by Prof Norman Fenton of Queen Mary, London, another distinguished statistician familiar to readers of this website for his analyses of Covid vaccine efficacy.
Gill’s interest was prompted by the case of Lucia de Berk, a Dutch nurse convicted of murdering five infants in 2001. She was a hard worker, taking extra duties and although no one saw her do harm the deaths all occurred on her shifts. The odds against this were calculated as 1 in 342 million. Her diary mentioned “giving in to her impulse” which she said meant reading tarot cards, but the prosecution interpreted it as a compunction to kill. Once convicted, the papers dubbed her the “angel of death”. Her sentence – life imprisonment – was increased to life imprisonment without parole when she was convicted of further murders, again ‘Because she was there’. After a failed appeal in 2008, de Berk suffered a serious stroke. But in 2010, partly on Gill’s evidence that the odds of such a series of deaths occurring by chance for one nurse among the many employed in the Netherlands were around 1 in 25, she was exonerated and paid substantial damages.
It is fortunate that she wasn’t hanged. No?
Admittedly, de Berk’s innocence does not prove Letby’s, however much the cases rhyme. Ms Letby may have committed terrible crimes. I cannot prove her innocent and a jury found her guilty, though one juror dissented. If she is guilty, I have no problem with the death penalty. But these convictions look shaky. We may not even be looking at crimes at all, just tragic happenstance within the bounds of statistical chance, or a poorly-performing NHS unit together with a mediocre nurse given to self-flagellatory literary ramblings. NHS neonatal units with high mortality and no suggestion of foul play are not unknown, as in Nottingham.
The state’s propensity to hang the wrong people – as with Timothy Evans, convicted of Christie’s murders – brought the death penalty into disrepute in the 1950s, leading to its suspension.
Arguing for its return based on Letby’s case is deeply unwise.
David M. Livermore is a former Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of East Anglia.
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