What we know about Lucy Letby murder appeal after new evidence revealed

A press conference on Tuesday set out 'new medical evidence' about the case.

Lucy Letby, Undated handout issued by Cheshire Constabulary of nurse Lucy Letby. The British neonatal nurse has been found guilty of killing seven babies and trying to kill six others. Lucy Letby was charged with murder in the deaths of five baby boys and two girls, and the attempted murder of five boys and five girls, when she worked at the Countess of Chester Hospital in northwest England between 2015 and 2016. (Handout Image: Cheshire Constabulary)
Neonatal nurse is serving a whole-life term for the murder of seven babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital. (Alamy)

The mother of a baby who Lucy Letby was convicted of attempting to murder has described the campaign to free her as “upsetting” and “disrespectful”.

Letby, 35, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others, with two attempts on one of her victims, between June 2015 and June 2016.

On Tuesday a panel of 14 experts from six countries said they had reviewed the evidence of Letby's case and concluded they have found "no medical evidence" that she murdered seven babies while working as a neonatal nurse.

But the mother of a baby boy who Letby was convicted of attempting to murder said the press conference was nothing more than a “publicity stunt”.

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She told MailOnline: “Every aspect of what they are doing is so disrespectful, it is very upsetting. They said the parents want to know the truth, but we’ve had the truth.

“We believe in the British justice system, we believe the jury made the right decision. We already have the truth and this panel of so-called experts don’t speak for us.”

Letby’s legal team continues to protest her innocence and on Tuesday organised the press conference, chaired by Tory MP David Davis, where it described Letby's conviction as “one of the major injustices of modern times”.

Dr Shoo Lee, a retired neonatologist from Canada who says his research was mispresented during Letby's trial revealed "significant new medical evidence" at the conference.

Having worked through the evidence with an international panel of neonatal experts, he told the conference in London: “We did not find any murders. In all cases, death or injury were due to natural causes or just bad medical care.”

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In particular, Dr Lee said the experts, who examined post-mortems and other evidence, found no evidence of the key murder-method put forward by the prosecution – that Letby injected babies with air to cause fatal air embolism.

Dr Lee pointed towards a series of problems at the Countess of Chester Hospital where Letby worked, including delays of diagnosis and treatment, poor supervision of junior doctors, work overload and a lack of trust between medical professionals.

Here, Yahoo News takes a look at the evidence found by this panel and what it could mean for Letby's future.

The conference centred on evidence presented by retired neonatologist Dr Lee, who recently told the Sunday Times that research he carried out 30 years ago was misused to convict Letby.

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Dr Lee was the top paediatrician at Mount Sinai Hospital in Canada for over a decade and founded the Canadian Neonatal Network, which includes 27 hospitals and 16 universities.

During Letby's trial, a 1989 academic paper written by Dr Lee was referenced in court by the prosecution's expert witness, retired consultant paediatrician Dr Dewi Evans.

The paper, which looked into air embolism in the bloodstream of babies, was used to support the prosecution's argument that Letby had killed the babies by injecting them with air.

At the conference, however, Dr Lee questioned the diagnosis solely on the basis of skin discolouration, claiming that a paper he published in 2024 said there was no cases of skin discolouration linked to air embolism by the venous system.

Retired medic Dr Shoo Lee, during a press conference at 1 Great George Street, central London, to announce
Retired medic Dr Shoo Lee said his panel found no evidence of air embolism in any of the cases. (Alamy)

Dr Lee said that he had travelled to London at his own expense and that the panel of experts had agreed to publish their findings even if their evidence did not work in favour of Letby.

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In a damning assessment of the care provided at the Countess of Chester Hospital, he said: "I would say that if this was a hospital in Canada, it would be shut down – it wouldn't be happening."

Summarising the panel's findings, Lee cited incomplete medical treatment, failure to consider medical histories, disregard for warnings about infections, misdiagnosis of babies, caring for very poorly babies beyond their medical competencies, delays in treatment of acutely poorly babies, poor medical skills in certain procedures and poor supervision of more junior medics and a lack of understanding of some basic procedures.

He also referred to poor management of common medical conditions and lack of knowledge about commonly used equipment in the hospital unit, adding: “There was a lack of teamwork and trust between the health professions.”

Dr Lee also said there was evidence of inadequate numbers of staff, a lack of training, workload overload, and some poorly babies should have been treated at a “higher level” unit or hospital.

Dr Lee started with "Baby one", a pre-term boy who collapsed two days after being born, who did not respond to resuscitation and showed skin discolouration.

Letby was accused of injecting air into his veins, causing his collapse and death. Lee said the prosecution had used his 1989 paper as evidence, but told the conference he had made a distinction between air in the veins and arteries.

"In the cases where air was injected in the veins, there was no cases of patchy skin discolouration. So, the notion that these babies can be diagnosed with air embolism because they collapsed and had these skin dis-colourations has no evidence in fact," he said.

Dr Lee said the same applied to Baby four, who "suddenly collapsed" with patchy discolouration of the skin on their third day of life.

He suggested the mother should have received intrapartum antibiotics before giving birth, and that there were "important delays in the admission, diagnosis and treatment of the baby" after they were born, including a delay in recognising "respiratory distress".

Dr Lee said the baby died from systemic sepsis, pneumonia and disseminated intravascular coagulation - a rare condition that causes blood clotting.

TORONTO, ON- FEBRUARY 12:  Dr. Shoo Lee, Pediatrician in Chief, takes media on a tour of the new state-of-the-art Newton Glassman Charitable Foundation Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Mt. Sinai Hospital Hospital. The unit opens later this month.        (Bernard Weil/Toronto Star via Getty Images)
Dr Shoo Lee took little notice of the Letby case, until he learned a piece of his research had been used as a key piece of evidence. (Getty Images)

The death of Baby nine, a girl born with severely pre-term chronic lung disease who needed to be resuscitated during her care, was "preventable", said Dr Lee.

Letby had been accused of injecting air into the child through a nasal-gastric tube into her stomach causing respiratory arrest, heart failure and death. She was also accused of turning off a monitor alerting medics if the baby stopped breathing for longer than B seconds.

But Dr Lee said the alarm was not switched off and the baby was “gasping” for air. He said medics failed to respond timely to a bacterial infection with antibiotics, and he concluded the child died from respiratory complications.

In the case of baby 11, who was born pre-term and resuscitated at birth, Dr Lee said doctors took three “traumatic” attempts to insert an endotracheal tube (placed into the windpipe through the mouth or nose), alleging that the consultant performing the procedure "didn’t know what he was doing”.

The consultant involved alleged that there had been a "deliberate dislodgement" of the tube because the bagging failed to move the chest and carbon dioxide was not detected, and that incubator alarms were deliberately turned off.

But Dr Lee said there was a 94% leak of air with only 6% going into the baby’s lungs because the wrong-sized intubation tube was used. He added: "That’s kind of like using a straw and blowing through a garden hose and hoping that you can inflate something at the end of the garden hose," he said.

Sir David Davis MP and Retired medic Dr Shoo Lee, during a press conference at 1 Great George Street, central London, to announce
Tory Sir David Davis MP, who chaired the conference, pictured with Dr Shoo Lee. (Alamy)

Dr Lee then moved to Baby six, a boy who survived after Letby was said to have injected him with insulin.

He told the conference the child had been given the “wrong treatment” and he had been medically “mismanaged”, adding his supposed high insulin levels due to injection by Letby had been misinterpreted.

Dr Lee then looked at the case of Baby 15, the second of pre-term triplets born by emergency caesarean, who according to a post-mortem showed a ruptured haematoma of the liver, with prosecutors alleging at Letby’s trial that he suffered blunt trauma to the abdomen.

“Later the accusation was then changed to say that in fact, there was deliberate injection of air into his intravenous system to cause air embolism, collapse and death."

Dr Lee said, adding that he believed the haemorrhage was caused during birth as another triplet suffered the same issue, suggesting it was "highly likely" this was the result of "extremely rapid delivery" – a "well-recognised cause of birth injury".

Finally, Lee looked at the case of baby seven, who he said was born very premature and had a lot of “chronic problems”. At 14 weeks old, the baby suddenly became very unwell, prompting allegations that Letby had overfed the baby.

Lee said his team found evidence suggesting the baby was suffering from a viral infection, suggesting this was the reason for their "vomiting and clinical deterioration", adding: "There is no evidence to support an injection into the stomach of overfeeding.”

Lucy Letby's case is to be reviewed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, after Letby’s lawyers made an application to the body on Monday.

The former nurse, lost two bids last year to challenge her convictions at the Court of Appeal – in May for seven murders and seven attempted murders, and in October for the attempted murder of a baby girl which she was convicted of by a different jury at a retrial.

Barrister Mark McDonald, during a press conference at 1 Great George Street, central London, to announce
Barrister Mark McDonald said if the panel are correct, Letby is 'currently sitting in prison for the rest of her life for a crime that just never happened'. (Alamy)

Asked by journalists what happens next, Davis said he would "find it hard to understand" how the case would not be referred back to the Court of Appeal "on the basis of what we've heard today".

Letby's barrister, Mark McDonald said his team would be back in the appeal court "very soon", adding: “There is overwhelming evidence that the conviction is unsafe.

"And if Dr Shoo Lee and the panel are correct, no crime was committed. And if no crime was committed, that means a 34-year-old woman is currently sitting in prison for the rest of her life for a crime that just never happened.”

A spokesperson for the CCRC said: "We have received a preliminary application in relation to Ms Letby’s case, and work has begun to assess the application. We anticipate further submissions being made to us. It is not for the CCRC to determine innocence or guilt in a case, that’s a matter for the courts.

“It is for the CCRC to find, investigate and if appropriate, refer potential miscarriages of justice to the appellate courts when new evidence or new argument means there is a real possibility that a conviction will not be upheld, or a sentence reduced.

“At this stage it is not possible to determine how long it will take to review this application. A significant volume of complicated evidence was presented to the court in Ms Letby’s trials.

“The CCRC is independent. We do not work for the government, courts, police, the prosecution or for anyone applying for a review of their case. This helps us investigate alleged miscarriages of justice impartially.”

A public inquiry into how the nurse committed her crimes is also under way, and detectives from Cheshire Constabulary are continuing their review of the care of some 4,000 babies admitted to hospital while Letby worked as a neonatal nurse.

Watch: Lucy Letby convictions branded ‘one of major injustices of modern times’