Reports ‘undermine' Letby conviction, claims lawyer

Application seeks to have case referred to Court of Appeal

- AMY-CLARE MARTIN

A lawyer for child serial killer Lucy Letby has handed over medical reports to miscarriage of justice investigators as she battles to clear her name.

The former nurse, 35, is serving 15 whole life orders for the murder of seven infants and the attempted murder of seven others between June 2015 and June 2016 at the Countess of Chester Hospital, but has continued to protest her innocence.

Yesterday, her barrister Mark McDonald delivered the full findings of a 14-strong international panel of neonatologists and paediatric specialists to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) headquarters in Birmingham.

The panel, who announced their findings at a press conference in February, say poor medical care and natural causes were the reasons for babies collapsing, concluding: “We did not find any murders.”

However, lawyers for the families of Letby’s victims last month rubbished the international panel’s findings as “full of analytical holes” and “a rehash” of the defence case heard at trial.

Mr McDonald also delivered a separate report from seven medics which claims the results of insulin tests on two infants, which a jury concluded Letby poisoned, were unreliable.

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

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.