life imprisonment
Lucy Letby: The New Evidence
Given that I reported on the conviction for murder of neontal nurse Lucy Letby when it happened, I feel morally obliged to also draw attention to the serious questions now being raised about her guilt or innocence. Questions which have grown from whispers on social media platforms to issues being considered by the highest legal circles in the land.
I’m sure you’ll remember the haunting pictures and harrowing stories of unexpected deaths in a Neonatal Unit and the ‘evidence’ that pointed to Lucy Letby being the one constant factor in each case. And who could feel unmoved by the despair and distress of the parents coming to terms with the notion that their tiny infants had been murdered; murdered by someone they trusted to protect and care for them. Or indeed who could forget the finality of that prison door slamming behind a woman in her 30s for the rest of her life, a woman who had supposedly chosen a career of care and compassion.
For some time the papers have been drip feeding information that puts a giant questionmark over the case. And recently Channel Five aired a sobering programme presenting the accumulating evidence that seems to cast grave doubt on the safety of that judgement. Lucy Letby: The New Evidence, brings together the testimony of a number of acredited experts and important information that appears to say that the case against her was almost entirely circumstantial; that evidence presented was misleading, wrongly interpreted or not scientifically based. Even the rota placing Lucy at the centre, and the doorswipe data, that seemed compelling at the time, are not sound, we’re told. A deadly superbug was around in the hospital at the time; there were santitation issues; her nursing colleagues were warned not to witness for her; no medical experts were brought in for the defence …
The Crown Prosecution Service have admitted post-conviction that the evidence brought during the trial was untrustworthy. And now major investigations are ongoing to unpack the whole story. Is the nurse I reported as a murderer, in fact innocent? I devoutly hope that in time the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth will be revealed.
Innocent until proven guilty
Imagine you are sitting in court … a stern faced judge is condemning the young man in the dock to life imprisonment, to serve a minimum of 30 years. He’s only in his 30s. He’ll be almost 70 when – if – he is ever released. Horrendous. And that young man is … your son. Already the hate mail is arriving, your own private life is becoming public, you are personally reviled and shunned … for giving birth to a monster.
Now imagine that you are totally, utterly convinced that your boy is innocent of the alleged crime. You know him, his nature, his attitudes. He’s chosen nursing as his career; he’s spent his life caring for people; he’s incapable of hurting anyone. And yet … the evidence is spelled out by the lawyers and police: what he said; what he did; the links between him and so many deaths in mysterious circumstances. The prosecution describe him as a ‘thoroughly evil and dangerous man … arrogant and manipulative’ – a fiend who deliberately and maliciously injected insulin into elderly patients in his care. The press liken him to Harold Shipman, but in this case he’s been stopped in his tracks after just four murders, possibly five. The jury with no vested interest either way, listen carefully, objectively, to the evidence, and they conclude that he is guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
You watch your boy being taken away to serve this terrible sentence, your precious son locked away with criminals, his life and future in tatters.
Small wonder that you don’t accept this verdict … that you seek an alternative explanation. There must be one. Years pass. Eventually there’s a new investigation. The enquiry reveals that there is no direct forensic evidence connecting your son to any of those deaths; that there was no trace of insulin in any of the patients allegedly murdered; that tests used in evidence were invalid; that mathematical calculations reveal it is unfeasible and unrealistic that the level of insulin needed to effect these deaths could have been injected; that naturally-occurring hypoglycaemia happens more often than was thought in the frail elderly non-diabetic sick patient; that eminent experts do not believe there were any murders committed at all. Indeed, new data suggest that these four women died from a condition called insulin auto immune syndrome.
It looks as if your boy has spent six years waiting for his case to come to court, a further six years in prison, for a crime he did not commit. That he has lost his career, his good name, his freedom, and yet he has done nothing wrong. That he only came to attention because he predicted the death of an old lady (something nurses often do), and he just happened to be on duty when these four people died.
A novel I’ve dreamed up? No – although I’d have been jolly pleased with the plotting if I had made it up! No, it was a case discussed on BBC 1 on Monday evening: The Innocent Serial Killer? At once fascinating, frightening and disturbing. Scottish nurse Colin Norris was arrested in 2002. His case came to court in 2008. He is still in prison. His mother has actually lived through this nightmare scenario I’ve just described. She’s living it still.
The results of the BBC investigation were mesmerizing. I found myself identifying with everyone concerned – as a patient, as a grieving relative, as a nurse, as a mother, as a juror, as a writer. And I was appalled. I wanted to march into Durham prison and demand his instant release at least until his case is reheard. OK, I don’t know him; I can’t vouch for him personally; and this programme was presenting a certain line in evidence; but there does seem to be more than enough doubt over this conviction to suggest a possible – maybe even probable – miscarriage of justice, and don’t we Brits pride ourselves on our scrupulously fair innocent-until-proven-guilty system? Besides, there but for the grace of God go I. I’ve predicted deaths. I’ve been on duty when a spate of deaths has occurred. I’ve joked about jinxing the ward. It’s what nurses do. It’s how they survive in a workplace where the grim reaper stalks the corridors.
Stranger than fiction indeed and much much more tense and terrifying.