Lucy Letby’s lawyers have announced that they will be seeking permission from the Court of Appeal to ‘immediately review’ all of her convictions and reopen an appeal.
The former neonatal nurse is currently serving a whole-life term in prison for the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of seven others while working in the Countess of Chester Hospital.
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In a press conference this afternoon, lawyer Mark McDonald said the defence was taking the ‘exceptional but necessary decision’ to apply to reopen the appeal of Letby after key prosecution witness Dr Dewi Evans had ‘changed his mind on the cause of death of three of the babies’.
The defence’s previous appeal attempts in May this year were refused.
A primary ground of appeal at the previous hearing related to the ‘admissibility’ of Dr Evans and the defence had argued twice that his evidence should be ‘disregarded’, explained Mr McDonald. However, this had been refused by the trial judge and by the Court of Appeal.
‘Remarkably, Dr Evans has now changed his mind on the cause of deaths on three of the babies, Baby C, Baby I and Baby P,’ Mr McDonald told the press conference.
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‘Dr Evans had said to the jury that Lucy Letby had injected air down a nasal gastric tube and that this had led to the death of the three babies.
‘This was repeated to the Court of Appeal who may have been mislead when they ruled on the applications for leave of conviction in the May of last year.’
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Mr McDonald said that Dr Evans had also ‘revised his opinion in relation to Baby C and has written a new report’ which had not yet been given to the defence.
‘The defence will argue that Dr Evans is not a reliable expert and given that he was the lead expert for the prosecution we say that all the convictions are unsafe,’ Mr McDonald added.
