PETER HITCHENS: Lucy Letby could also be harmless
Can there be any grief greater than that of a parent who has lost a child? They live in a world quite outside the experience of the happy multitude. Who can express it? Who can say anything to soften it?
William Shakespeare, writing his play King John at about the time his beloved son Hamnet died at the age of 11, wrote these words: ‘Grief fills the room up of my absent child, lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, remembers me of all his gracious parts’. I suspect he was writing of himself, and these may be the most powerful lines he ever penned.
So let nobody take it lightly. I certainly do not. And if I could find a way of campaigning for the courts to re-examine the case of Lucy Letby without in any way affecting or distressing the parents of the babies in the case, I would do so.
As far as I am concerned, those parents have an absolute right to say what they wish about it, and we must listen to them. Even so, is it really the case that our society cannot and will not undertake any actions which may cause sorrow to the innocent and the bereaved?
Lucy Letby was found guilty of the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of seven more
I do not doubt that, when the Cheshire Police started to investigate the case, they too wished they could do their jobs without hurting those parents. It must have been terrible to approach the mothers and fathers of children already lost or severely damaged, and to say to them: ‘It is possible these things were done deliberately by an evil person.’ But where there is serious suspicion of murder, the police must investigate, and – rightly – nobody has criticised them for doing so. In my view, it is exactly the same when there is a serious suspicion of injustice.
Unlike most people in the British establishment classes, I believe in the severe punishment of crime. And so I must believe equally strongly that we should be as sure as we can be that we have the right person. I am not alone in this, though when I first voiced my doubts, soon after the end of the first Letby trial in 2023, there were not many of us. Since then several others – experts on statistics, experts on medicine, experts on the state of the NHS – have joined in saying that all may not be well. There is now so much of this material that a small book could be written on the subject. The fact that Ms Letby has been convicted, and that the Appeal Court has – so far – refused her permission to appeal does not in fact mean the case is closed. There are recent instances of innocent people being convicted, and of the Appeal Court refusing to let them appeal – to begin with.
Most in the Letby campaign have argued politely and reasonably, and within the rules. I myself am wholly against turning this into an angry or bitter protest. I think those who prosecuted Ms Letby and gave evidence against her did so in good faith. I respect the work of the journalists, such as my Daily Mail colleague Liz Hull, who have concluded that Ms Letby is guilty and defend their position. I always keep my mind open to the possibility that they may be right, and I may be wrong. How can I debate about this, if my mind is closed to the arguments of my opponents?
Those who prosecuted Ms Letby and gave evidence against her did so in good faith, writes Peter Hitchens
I rather expect the same in return. But in the past few days, the debate has taken a worrying direction. First, the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, said on LBC radio on Sunday that the campaign to re-examine the Letby case was ‘crass and insensitive’, adding that the grief of the parents was ‘unimaginable’.
He argued: ‘There is no purpose to a media campaign. It is for the courts to decide on the basis of evidence, and I would just remind people that we always presume innocence until people have been found guilty. Lucy Letby has been found guilty, on multiple counts, of serious crimes with multiple whole life sentences. And until the courts find a reason to suggest otherwise, we should continue to regard her as a convicted killer.’
You might get the impression from Mr Streeting’s words that those who doubt the verdict wish to free her instantly from prison in some way. But we all understand quite well that only the courts can do this. And we have noticed, as everyone must have, that in matters such as the Post Office scandal, it is only public campaigning that eventually brings the courts round. The defiant sub-postmaster Alan Bates would not now be a knight, and the wrongs of the Horizon IT disaster would not be being put right, if everyone had stayed quiet.
The CPS has admitted that crucial ‘door swipe’ evidence in the first trial – supposedly showing who was and was not present at a key event – was not just wrong but actually showed the opposite of what happened. Pictured: Former nurse Letby holds a baby
Yet Lady Justice Thirlwall, as she opened the inquiry into events at the Countess of Chester hospital on Tuesday, actually condemned the ‘noise’ made by the sceptics. She also deployed the parents’ grief to strengthen her case, saying rather fiercely: ‘At last the parents had finality, or so it seemed. But it was not to be. In the months that followed there has been a huge outpouring of comment from a variety of quarters on the validity of the convictions.
‘As far as I am aware it has come entirely from people who were not at the trial. Parts of the evidence have been selected and there has been criticism of the defence at the trial. All of this noise has caused enormous additional distress to the parents who have already suffered far too much. It is not for me to set about reviewing the convictions. The Court of Appeal has done that with a very clear result. The convictions stand.’
What an odd statement. Once again, it uses the distraught parents as a kind of shield for the verdict. The single most potent critic of Letby’s conviction, Rachel Aviv of the New Yorker, was not at the trial but obtained and read a transcript of it.
A number of things are not in doubt, one being that the defence fielded no expert witnesses on medical matters. Another is that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has admitted that crucial ‘door swipe’ evidence in the first trial – supposedly showing who was and was not present at a key event – was not just wrong but actually showed the opposite of what happened. People had entered, rather than left.
As far as I can discover, the Court of Appeal, when it rejected Ms Letby’s plea, was not aware of the CPS bungle.
There is something dispiriting, after all the lessons we have received on the fallibility of juries and courts, in a Cabinet minister and a senior judge shutting their minds in this way. The Thirlwall inquiry itself is closed to any explanation apart from the official one. It is worse still to see figures of authority in a free country inveighing against legitimate protest and free debate.
As Shakespeare also wrote: ‘Mercy… is enthronèd in the hearts of kings. It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God’s when mercy seasons justice.’ And in this case, mercy might consist mainly of keeping an open mind.
