The Lesson of Lucy Letby is Clear: It Could Happen to You

There can be few criminal cases that have consumed more column inches than the August 2023 conviction of neonatal nurse Lucy Letby, found guilty of the murder and attempted murder of young infants at the Countess of Chester Hospital. But as public feeling continues to shift inexorably against the 15 whole life orders handed out to Letby, the news coverage of her supposed crimes has now turned in on itself almost entirely.

Few that witnessed it will forget the tidal wave of emotive condemnation that greeted Letby’s sentencing. The then 33 year-old was pilloried and castigated, and should hanging, drawing and quartering have been legally permitted that would no doubt have followed.

It can therefore be considered more than symbolic that the media position on this issue has now become the virtual inverse of this. Every major national newspaper has printed multiple stories that are favourable to Letby’s conviction being unsafe and unsatisfactory. And the reason for this is quite simple – no sensible publication would wish to confine itself to being explicitly pro-guilt, as this would be to guilelessly position itself on the wrong side of history.

During the process of writing and researching my recently published book, Reasonable Doubt: Examining the Case of Lucy Letby, I repeatedly requested input from any experts willing to support the prosecution case: any medic or nurse that would stand up for the medical theories that convicted Letby; any statistician that might wish to defend the shift chart data that were centrally relied on in court. Frankly, anyone at all with any credibility, experience or qualifications who would tell me that this conviction was safe and sound.

Despite the fact that I’ve received emails from well over 100 experts during this period, not one came forward as an advocate of guilt. I have spoken to highly qualified and venerable professionals from the fields of neonatology, nursing, paediatrics, obstetrics, vascular surgery, genetics, statistics, and too many more to mention. And all of them have, at the very least, profound concerns about the safety of this conviction. I daresay that the majority believe Letby to be innocent.

My experience was, in fact, extremely similar to that of veteran MP Sir David Davis, who has kindly endorsed my book. When Davis was first approached by experts of elite standing, they all essentially informed him that the evidence pertaining to their discipline was plain wrong. Similarly, Dr Philip Hammond, another generous endorser of my book, has repeatedly used the pages of Private Eye to request correspondence from any expert willing to support the theories of the prosecution. As with myself, Hammond has come up dry; not one qualified person has contacted him.

This complete lack of credible support for the prosecution can be illustratively contrasted with the enormous weight of expert opinion now buttressing an appeal. Aside from the dozens of medics, scientists and nurses already mentioned, there are now over 1,000 healthcare professionals registered with the campaign group Nineteen Nurses. This growing collective has held public events at the University of Manchester and University College London dedicated to exposing the flaws in Letby’s conviction.

And this is before one considers the now 33-strong international panel of experts effectively ready to provide evidence in defence of Letby. This imposing array of experience is likely the greatest concentration of expertise that has ever been assembled globally for any criminal appeal; it is certainly unprecedented in British history.

The British-based members of this panel alone are more than formidable. Dr Marta Cohen has received an array of awards for her work in paediatric and perinatal pathology, while there may be no medic more lauded in the UK than Professor Neena Modi. During her distinguished career, Prof Modi has been president of the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, while currently being the President of the UK Medical Women’s Federation.

In fact, whenever a new member of the panel is announced, it is always a person of the utmost quality. As an example, one of the more prominent artefacts of the court case was a scrawled post-it note recovered from Letby’s home in Chester, which was purported to be confessional. This was the catalysing red flag for myself when I first began to examine the case; it is mind-numbingly obvious that this note does not constitute a confession, and is, instead, the emotional outpourings of a traumatised woman whose life had been systematically gutted. Frankly, one wonders how the Cheshire Constabulary who bumblingly presided over this case ever believed that it was a confession.

But there is no need to take my word for this. Professor Gísli Guðjónsson, an esteemed expert in confessional material previously involved with exonerating both the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four, is so convinced that the confession note has no evidential merit that he has resigned from his position at the National Crime Agency in order to “do justice to this case”. Guðjónsson was “sad” about this decision, but does “not regret it”, recognising what the police decided was confessional is instead self-blame. “That note, in my opinion, has no evidential value,” Guðjónsson told the Sun. “It has personal meaning. It expresses distress. A confession requires explanation. This does not have that. These are spontaneous thoughts from someone being psychologically tormented.”

Indeed, the extent of Letby’s psychological torment is barely comprehensible, certainly not by most people. This is a woman who has had the entire fabric of her existence shredded; her psychological constitution decimated to such an extent that many worry she will never recover.

Now I can hear the naysayers commenting in response to this – Lucy Letby is a convicted murderer of babies. She deserves everything that’s coming to her. But if, as a society, we are going to condemn someone to the ultimate punishment, namely the absolute destruction of their existence, the complete cessation of their basic liberty, the removal of hope and essentially purpose from their life, we need to be rather certain that we’re correct.

The conversation that I conducted with Dr Shoo Lee just a few months ago must therefore be concerning to every right-thinking person. It was Dr Lee who had first assembled the international panel of experts now ready to give evidence in Letby’s favour, after it became clear to Dr Lee that an academic paper he had authored decades ago had been used centrally, yet erroneously, in the conviction of Letby.

Many would conclude that Dr Lee is the most important neonatologist in the history of Canada, responsible for founding the Canadian Neonatal Network and transforming Canada’s neonatal outcomes into one of the best among OECD countries. It was the international reach of Dr Lee that enabled him to contact leading medics from across the globe and ask if they would examine the neonatal notes associated with the indictment infants from Letby’s case. There was one potential catch for Letby, as Dr Lee explained to me; this examination would occur with the proviso that any data pointing to guilt would be released publicly.

In February 2025, in a memorable press conference, Dr Lee reported the conclusions of the international panel: “We did not find any murders. In all cases, death or injury were due to natural causes or just bad medical care.” Having been fortunate enough to converse with Dr Lee for some time, we were able to cover many aspects of the case, along with the work of the panel. But the headline-generating comment that he provided me, already covered in the Mail on Sunday and Private Eye, was the jaw-dropping remark that “anyone who reads the reports and still thinks that Lucy Letby is guilty should have their head examined”.

This degree of certainty goes well beyond the “reasonable doubt” referenced in the title of my book. And the reasons for these conclusions become more obvious as one investigates further. For example, one of the important components in the picture and outlook of any infant is his or her obstetric and maternity information; critical data that relate to his or her birth. Reflecting the gravity of this, the international panel now includes multiple obstetric experts.

How much maternity and obstetric information was included in the original trial? Almost none. A couple of short agreed evidence statements were read out in court. Dr Andrew Brunton briefly appeared in the witness box on November 7th 2022. That is the entirety of meaningful maternity and obstetric input in a trial that lasted 10 months. This fundamental factor was almost entirely stricken from the court case.

And we know why. When retired paediatrician Dr Dewi Evans communicated with Cheshire Police, at the culmination of its investigation, he advised officers that no maternity information would be required. Despite the fact that the National Crime Agency informed them otherwise, for some reason Cheshire Police investigators listened to Dr Evans and seemingly made no effort to recruit the additional professionals that were recommended as part of a multi-discipline review. They allowed Dr Evans to be the sole director of the medical investigation.

Despite the impression that Cheshire Police has communicated in other media, when Lucy Letby was first arrested only the medical opinion of Dr Evans had been sought. This is worrying, considering that Evans also flagrantly misinterpreted the aforementioned paper of Dr Lee. And when I spoke with Dr Lee, he explained that “the neonatal notes contained very little maternity information, and even missed critical information that would have been necessary for medically managing the babies”. However, this absence of vital data was no barrier for Dr Evans in creating definitive, yet unlikely, conclusions.

When I myself criticised the injection of air theories proposed by Dr Evans – referred to as creating an ‘air embolism’, which would effectively restrict breathing – I shared my analysis with Dr Lee, who agreed with it entirely. Now, if I can identify and understand the problems with this centrally cited hypothesis used in the court case, possessing no medical or scientific background whatsoever, can you imagine what it’s like for leading doctors and professors. Dr Lee indeed described one of the central assertions of Dr Evans, regarding his methodology for diagnosing air embolism, as “totally ludicrous”.

These words echoed the opinions of other neonatologists regarding the other pet theory of Dr Evans: Lucy Letby injecting air via a breathing tube to ‘splint’ the diaphragm of infants. Incredibly, this fanciful hypothesis has apparently been jettisoned post-trial by Evans, after it was described as “rubbish”, “ridiculous”, “implausible” and “fantastical” in an article published by the Guardian. Yet Lucy Letby faces life sentences in relation to that theory.

The same applies to the supposedly smoking gun insulin cases. Having consulted with multiple experts, the poisoning hypothesis that was forwarded so forcefully in court stands up to no scrutiny. There are enormous problems with the reliability of results and the logistically impossible way that insulin was supposedly administered. There is no physical proof of any poisoning; indeed, the prosecution never attempted to provide any. And we now know that the apparently unusual results are actually commonplace in young infants of similar gestation, weight and background to those resident at the Countess of Chester Hospital.

In the course of researching and writing my book, I interviewed over 60 experts, but many other relevant medics and scientists also assisted me with fact-checking, not all of whom have been named. I am nonetheless enormously grateful to them for their time and expertise, as they were instructed to dissect the text as forensically as possible, and not spare my feelings while pointing out any errors.

It was therefore not surprising to me that when we shared the text with all of the major protagonists, both individuals and institutions, associated with the prosecution case, the overwhelming majority declined to comment. Everything written in the book is documented, with over 850 references made publicly available, or else it is backed up by expert opinion of the highest quality. My publisher did hear back from one individual, we were indeed very grateful for his written response, but it essentially made no meaningful difference to the final text.

My book is published at a time when an unsavoury maternity scandal looms imposingly over the country. It was only weeks ago that Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust was found to have a catalogue of problems which chillingly mirrored the exact issues that we now know were prevalent at the Countess of Chester. This is, of course, not the first example of dismal maternity care resulting in loss of life; it was recently reported that the NHS spends more money settling negligence claims related to maternity than on care itself.

How do we know about these problems? Because the Thirlwall Inquiry, initiated to investigate the situation at the Countess of Chester, but instructed to assume Letby’s guilt, has repeatedly, almost relentlessly, revealed them in its publicly available documents. This is all critical information that shines an utterly contrasting light on events at the Countess of Chester. And it was never heard by court nor jury.

Meanwhile, parents whose children were treated at the Countess of Chester are now beginning to come forward indicating that Lucy Letby was dedicated and professional; that she cared about their babies deeply; and that, in the memorable case of Carl and Clare Bolton, she saved the life of their daughter – not once, but twice.

At the heart of the Lucy Letby case is institutional failing. It is an NHS system that must do better. A neonatal unit that was crumbling, now demolished entirely, with serious sanitary issues (as discussed by Professor David Livermore both in my book and this publication). A police investigation that was rife with confirmation bias and atrocious decision-making. And a criminal justice system that is complacent, elitist, antiquated and, ultimately, unfit for purpose. I sincerely believe that not a single person in this country should rest until there has been significant reform of the major institutions that decide whether we, as citizens, are either free or not free.

If recent high-profile miscarriages of justice do not convince you of that, please consider the following. At a specially convened meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Miscarriages of Justice, those assembled were told that it is estimated that between 2,000 and 10,000 innocent people are currently imprisoned in this country. Having recently become more acquainted with the system, I suspect that this number is much closer to 10,000 than 2,000.

The case of Lucy Letby is one such chronically unsafe conviction. Every serious and qualified person who has examined the case has drawn this conclusion. The science is already settled; it is now simply a matter of convincing the judges of an obstinate judiciary must do the decent thing. They must accept that the system failed, that the incarceration of Lucy Letby is a national embarrassment, and it is one that must be addressed rapidly before this no-longer young woman’s life is annihilated completely. This case must be re-examined, and re-examined rapidly.

I wrote my book on Lucy Letby to help raise public awareness of this, to tell the tale of what went badly wrong in this case, and hopefully have a similar impact to the work of Chris Mullin, whose book was instrumental in the exoneration of the Birmingham Six. But I also wrote it to emphasise something regarding the wrongful conviction and incarceration of Lucy Letby that I want everyone who reads this article to understand.

This could happen to you.

Reasonable Doubt: Examining the Case of Lucy Letby by Christopher Morris is out now.