
On Tuesday, an international group of 14 neonatal and pediatric specialists raised serious doubts about the tests used to condemn the British nurse Lucy Letby, who was judged guilty in 2023 for killing seven children at the hospital where she worked.
In a dramatic press conference in London, the president of the panel, dr. Shoo Lee, Canadian neonatologist, said that the vast independent review that presided over had not found evidence that Mrs. Letby had killed or attempted to kill any of the children her care.
He also highlighted harmful results that indicate serious errors in medical care in the unit in which deaths and chronic failures occurred in the management of neonatal conditions. He said some of the deaths had been preventable.
“Our conclusion was that there was no medical tests in support of the evildo who cause injuries in neither of the 17 cases of the trial,” said dr. Lee. “In summary, ladies and gentlemen, we did not find murders.”
The review is significant because it was made by some of the most prestigious and respected neonatal and pediatric specialists and pediatric specialists.
The experts were authorized to evaluate all the medical records available relating to children and delivered their pro bono evaluation. The panel underlined the serious pre -existing conditions of some children and, in several cases, specialists found significant errors in the treatment or care of children.
Mrs. Letby, 35, was sentenced to an entire order of life in 2023, which means that she would spend the rest of her life in prison – after being sentenced for killing seven children and attempting to kill seven others in the ‘Neonatal Unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital, in the north -ovesta of England in 2015 and 2016. He has always maintained his innocence.
Dr. Lee guided the independent revision of children’s cases, which involved a group of specialists from countries including Great Britain, Canada, Germany, Japan, Sweden and the United States.
He underlined the independence of the panel, observing that when the experts undertaken their investigations, they were clear that the relationship would have been released if the results were favorable or unfavorable for Mrs. Letby.
They simply focused on presenting an “impartial cause of death -based death,” he said.
The review noted that all the children had died or were damaged due to natural causes or the cause of errors in medical treatment.
Dr. Lee had coiterrate an academic document published in 1989 which examined the air embolisms in the blood flows of the children and noted that some showed signs of skin discoloring. That research was strongly invoked by Dr. Dewi Evans, the main witness of the accusation in the Letby case. Dr. Evans supported in court that some of the children who died or deteriorated showed similar models on their skin.
After the trial, Dr. Lee discovered that his research had been used to condemn Mrs. Letby. He agreed to provide evidence in Mrs. Letby’s appeal, saying to a hearing that Dr. Evans had misinterpreted his discoveries and that none of the children in the process should have been diagnosed with aerial embolism. In the end, the Court of Appeal decided that his evidence would not be heard, claiming that Mrs. Letby’s defense team should have called Dr. Lee in the original process.
The panel examined the case of each child and, during the briefing, highlighted some of the cases and detailed results of the panel.
In the case of “Baby 1”, which the public ministries have been killed by Mrs. Letby by injecting air into the veins of the child, the panel has established that the cause of death is thrombosis of an existing question.
Another child, identified by the panel as “Baby 9”, which the accusation had claimed had died even after Mrs. Letby injected air, was found by the experts “died of respiratory complications” caused by chronic lung diseases, among the Other issues. The panel also discovered that the child’s death was probably preventable and described a series of errors in the treatment.
In the case of “Baby 11”, the accusation claimed that Mrs. Letby had deliberately removed a breathing tube. But the experts said that there were no tests in support of the affirmation that the tube had been removed. Instead, they claimed that an initial attempt by a consultant doctor to revive the child had been “traumatic and poorly supervised”, that the wrong equipment had been used and that the doctor “did not understand the bases” of how the equipment for the mechanical ventilation worked.
“It was just that the consultant did not know what he was doing,” said Dr. Lee summarizing the case.
Dr. Neena Modes, a panel member and a child Neonatology at Imperial College London, said there were “very plausible reasons for the death of these children”.
“There was a combination of children delivered in the wrong place, a delayed diagnosis and inappropriate or absent treatment,” he said. “There are clearly systemic factors in play that we have identified and individual factors that we have identified”.
Mrs. Letby lost two separated attempts last year to appeal to her beliefs.
In December, Mrs. Letby’s lawyer Mark McDonald said he would ask the Court of Appeal to review all his beliefs because Dr. Evans, the witness of the accusation, had changed his mind about how three of the children.
Dr. Evans repeatedly supported his tests and last weekend he told the London Times that “he was very worried that people are wrong their facts”.
The cause of the death of children was questioned by the experts before. In December, the defense team introduced evidence of two neonatologists, Dr. Neil Aiton and Dr. Swolish Dmitrova, specialized in the care of premature children. Those experts concluded that two children that Mrs. Letby had been condemned to murder had not gone well and had died of “identifiable medical reasons”.
The doctors, who consulted the clinical folders of the children, discovered that one, identified as the child C, died after problems with the placenta at the end of pregnancy. They concluded that another, Baby or, died due to issues relating to resuscitation.
McDonald, the lawyer, declared Tuesday that he has applied for the criminal case review commission, which is responsible for investigations on the requests for abortions of justice. He also noticed that he had shared the tests with Mrs. Letby and, while refused to share further details on her mood, he said: “He has hope, and that’s all I can say”.
The criminal case review commission confirmed that it has received a request to examine the case, but it is not clear how long it would take.
“We are aware of the fact that there have been many speculations and comments that surround the case of Lucy Letby, largely from parts with only a partial vision of the tests,” said a spokesman for the review body, adding that the affected families From the events should be kept in mind.
It is not up to the commission “Determineing innocence or fault in one case”, observed the spokesperson, “is a question for the courts”.