Sir David Davis, a former Conservative cabinet minister, has called for baby serial killer nurse Lucy Letby to be retried after claiming the evidence presented in court was insufficient. In a Commons adjournment debate, Sir David compared the Letby case to that of Sally Clark, who was exonerated in 2003 after being wrongly convicted of murdering her children. Sir David alleged that much of the evidence against Letby was based on a “doctor’s gut feeling” and that there was no hard evidence to implicate her in the murders.
Sir David claimed to have based his call for a retrial on the testimony of medical professionals and academic experts. He also alleged that employees of the Countess of Chester Hospital where Letby worked had also contacted him to voice their concerns. However, Sir David acknowledged that much of the evidence confronting Letby had been available at the time of her trial. Despite this, Sir David insisted that the court had failed to present the jury with a full picture of the case, meaning that evidence was overlooked.
Letby is serving a sentence of 15 whole-life orders after being convicted last year of attempting to murder seven infants and succeeding in killing a further seven, with two attempts on one of her victims, between June 2015 and June 2016 at the Countess of Chester Hospital. Her conviction was upheld in May 2021, and she lost a second appeal in October of the same year. Attempts to reach her legal team for comment on Sir David’s call for a retrial have so far been unsuccessful.
Justice Minister Alex Davies-Jones rebuffed Sir David’s request for a retrial by saying that it was inappropriate for the government to interfere in the judicial process or comment on the reliability of evidence or convictions. She did, however, suggest that Letby could apply to the Criminal Cases Review Commission if she believed her conviction was unsafe. The Commission examines criminal cases it believes are or may be miscarriages of justice.
Sir David’s intervention comes in the wake of reports that healthcare professionals are feeling demoralised by the sheer volume of investigations into their practices. Recent statistics from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) showed that the number of alleged assaults on medical workers has risen by 14% over the past year. Healthcare leaders have warned that this increase is due, in part, to staff’s concerns over scrutiny of their actions, leading to overstretched and anxious practitioners. A recent study by the BMA found that 44% of doctors reported experiencing significant distress following a clinical investigation or incident
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