A new report by neonatal and toxicology experts casts doubt on the validity of the test results that were pivotal to the prosecution’s case.
A half-dozen pediatric doctors and toxicology experts said on Thursday that jurors were misled by prosecutors who cited unreliable insulin tests during the trial of Lucy Letby, a nurse convicted of murdering seven babies at a British hospital.
The doctors made their assertions in a new report that Ms. Letby’s lawyer submitted to Britain’s Criminal Cases Review Commission, which is responsible for investigating possible miscarriages of justice, in the hopes of being allowed to pursue a full appeal of her 15 life sentences.
Ms. Letby, who worked as a nurse in a neonatal unit at a hospital in northern England, was found guilty in 2023 of deliberately harming — and in seven cases, murdering — babies by injecting them with air, overfeeding them with milk, infusing air into their gastrointestinal tracts or poisoning them with insulin.
In the new report, the six experts, who include a forensic toxicologist, a professor of forensic science and an endocrinologist who has written multiple peer-reviewed papers on medical test errors, attacked the validity of the evidence of insulin poisoning used by the prosecution at trial.
“Our inescapable conclusion is that this evidence significantly undermines the validity of the assertions made about the insulin and C-peptide testing presented in Court,” they wrote in a summary of the report provided to reporters by her legal team.
Ms. Letby has always maintained her innocence. Since her two trials, serious questions have been raised about her guilt, including in a 13,000-word New Yorker article last May. But efforts by her lawyers to reopen the case with a full appeal have been repeatedly denied.