Letby legal team release report showing 'evidence of innocence' (2025)

The 14-strong panel concluded that no criminal offences had been committed by the convicted baby-killer

Lucy Letby's legal team have released a report, written by an international panel of medical experts, which claims to provide evidence of the former neonatal nurse's innocence.

The 14-strong panel provided case summaries on all 17 babies who featured in the convicted child serial killer's 10-month trial in 2023.

The committee of neonatologists and paediatric specialists concluded that no criminal offences had been carried out at the Countess of Chester Hospital in 2015 and 2016 and instead provided alternative causes of deterioration.

They say poor medical care and natural causes were the reasons for babies collapsing at the hospital's neonatal unit.

Among the findings was that baby boy Child C died following ineffective resuscitation from a collapse after an “acute small bowel obstruction” that went unrecognised, rather than from a deliberate administration of air.

Child P, a triplet boy, was also found by the jury to have been fatally injected with air but the panel ruled he died from a collapsed lung that was “suboptimally managed”.

Letby’s experts, who are working pro bono for her defence team, said there was no evidence of air embolism – in which bubbles form and block the blood supply – in Child E, a twin boy, and that bleeding was not caused by inflicted trauma but from either a lack of oxygen pre-birth or a congenital blood vessel condition.

The panel also deduced that insulin-related levels for Child E’s brother, Child F, were within the norm for preterm infants and it did not prove that synthetic insulin was administered.

The same conclusion was reached for Child L, another twin boy that Letby was convicted of attempting to murder by insulin poisoning, and both cases were said to have involved sub-standard medical management of hypoglycaemia.

It added that the biomechanical test used in both cases “can give rise to falsely high insulin results” due to the presence of antibodies which can interfere with the outcome.

The summary of the report argued that the jury was misled in a number of “important areas” including medical and evidential facts during the trial, and that key information on the insulin testing procedure was not submitted.

Letby's barrister, Mark McDonald, claims that the findings of the committee will “completely demolish” the case against her.

While visiting the Birmingham offices of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) this morning, Mr McDonald said the new evidence “blows the case out the water”.

"Today I’ve put in 23 expert reports from 24 experts from across the realm covering eight separate countries," he explained.

"Those expert reports completely demolish the prosecution’s case that was put before the jury.

"It is now hoped that the CCRC will not take long to look at this evidence and refer it back to the Court of Appeal."

He added: "These reports show that no crime was committed… This blows the case out the water.

"I’m absolutely confident that the expert evidence that has appeared post-conviction totally undermines the safety of the conviction.

"I’m very confident that we’re going to get back to the Court of Appeal."

Letby, who is being held in HM Prison Bronzefield, lost two bids last year to challenge her convictions at the Court of Appeal.

One came in May, for seven murders and seven attempted murders, and the other in October, for the attempted murder of a baby girl which she was convicted of by a different jury at a retrial.

Lady Justice Kathryn Thirlwall is due to publish in November the findings from the public inquiry into how the former nurse was able to commit her crimes.