Former Cabinet Minister David Davis is to spearhead a Commons campaign raising questions about the conviction of nurse Lucy Letby as growing numbers of experts express concerns about the case. The ex-Brexit Secretary plans to table a series of questions under Parliamentary privilege amid disquiet within the NHS and the legal profession about the case.
Mail columnists Peter Hitchens and Nadine Dorries have highlighted that Letby was convicted of the murders of seven newborns and the attempted murders of six other infants at the Countess of Chester Hospital, despite the fact that no one saw her kill, or attempt to kill, a baby and there is no forensic evidence to prove her guilt.
One of your other columnists disagrees, though (paywalled).
Some members of the Royal Statistical Society have expressed concerns over the use of statistics to secure a conviction on the basis of probabilities. Its recommendations on using such data in the cases of medical serial killers were not followed here.
Recommendations are just that. They don't have to be followed.
But why would the state and all its operatives conspire to convict a woman of such a heinous crime?
Mr Davis is understood to be concerned about the justice system's institutional reluctance to admit to its own failings, leading innocent people to languish in prison. He said: 'There is a mounting consensus among experts that Lucy Letby's guilt was not established beyond reasonable doubt. I will be using Parliamentary privilege to raise these arguments: we must exclude the possibility that she has effectively been scapegoated for the wider failings in the system.'
Ah! Some might call that 'motive'
'At the very least, this appears to be a mistrial. But the justice system moves slowly when it comes to assessing its own failings, so if she is innocent it could be a decade before she is released. We must try to do much better than that.'
Regular readers will know I don't automatically disbelieve claims of miscarrtiage of justice - in fact there are at least two glaring examples where I believe the convictions to be unsafe. But I'm not convinced this is one to add.
I think these sort of cases have forgotten the meaning of "beyond reasonable doubt". From what I've read Lucy Letby was convicted basically on statistical evidence, with no actual proof other than the deaths happened when she was on duty and therefore she must have done it. "Beyond reasonable doubt" is not "because I said she's guilty". Innocent or guilty the trial raises grave doubts about the validity of the conviction, especially when reviewed against the true definition of beyond reasonable doubt.
ReplyDeleteI think people have placed far too much faith in shows like ‘CSI’ and think that without forensic evidence there’s no crime.
DeleteI don’t think they had any in the Beverley Allitt case either, did they? Yet that surely laid the foundations for this one.