You May Have To Eat Those Words, Thirwell

When the public inquiry into the crimes of the former nurse Lucy Letby opened in Liverpool last month its chair, Lady Justice Thirlwall, dismissed concerns about the safety of the convictions as “noise”. The judge cautioned that questions being raised were increasing the distress of parents whose children had died or been harmed.

Isn't the point of any enquiry to ask questions, though? Otherwise, why are you even holding it? 

Letby was found guilty across two trials of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others at the Countess of Chester hospital (COCH) in 2015 and 2016. Thirlwall pointed out that in May this year, the court of appeal refused Letby permission to appeal, and she said it was not the role of her inquiry to review the convictions.

It's not. She got that right, but you cannot have an enquiry that closes off a line of questioning because of hurty feels, even in 2024. 

Yet questions about the case, and the number of experts raising them, have continued to mount. Letby is being represented by a new barrister, Mark McDonald, and a number of specialists including leading neonatologists – doctors who specialise in treating premature babies – are voluntarily working with him on an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

This should surely be something the enquiry needs to have an eye on, in case it becomes relevant.  

The Guardian has now learned that from an early stage, Cheshire police recognised the case involved statistics – and they had initially engaged Hutton. According to emails seen by the Guardian, in April 2018 an officer on the investigation approached Hutton, who has extensive experience in medical research. Without naming Letby, he asked Hutton whether she could put a figure on how likely it was to be just a coincidence for one member of staff to be on duty “during all the deaths/collapses” in the neonatal unit, “ie 1 in a million etc”. She informed the police that a proper statistical inquiry would not concentrate on one member of staff from the outset, but instead required full research into all possible explanations for any increase in babies collapsing including their medical conditions and prematurity, as well as the performance of the unit. Reviews commissioned by the hospital had found medical explanations for nearly all of the deaths, criticised the standard of care on the unit and noted a lack of senior doctors.

Then how did the police switch to 'There's been a muuuurderrr!' mode? 

Cheshire police then signed a consultancy agreement with Hutton and agreed fees, the documents suggest. The force did not proceed to commission Hutton’s analysis at that time, but contacted her again in 2021 after Letby had been charged. A video call was arranged, but an officer later cancelled the call. “We have had a further meeting this afternoon where we have informed the prosecutors that we were looking at the validity of statistical evidence again in the case,” he wrote in an email. “The prosecutor does not agree with our line of inquiry and has instructed us not to pursue this avenue, any further, at present.”

Aha! Ominously ticking parcel firmly in the CPS's grasp now!   

Neither the initial engagement with Hutton nor the CPS instruction to the police to drop their line of inquiry into the “validity of the statistical evidence in the case” were disclosed to Letby’s defence team, the Guardian understands.

Ouch! That should cost them, shouldn't it? Or are we ignoring disclosure breaches now?