Lucy Letby, the neo-natal nurse now serving 15 whole-life sentences for the murder of seven severely premature babies, and the attempted murder of seven more, has just spent her 36th birthday behind bars.
A few days earlier, Lucy endured her sixth Christmas in a cell.
As many readers will know, I firmly believe she is innocent and that her conviction is a grave miscarriage of justice.
The one glimmer of hope is that Lucy’s new barrister, Mark McDonald, has submitted her case – with fresh evidence – to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which has the power to refer it to the Court of Appeal in the hope of securing a re-trial.
The flimsy evidence against Lucy has been disputed by leading neonatologists, scientists and statisticians not only in the United Kingdom, but around the world. The case presented to the court by the chief witness for the prosecution, Dr Dewi Evans, has disintegrated.
Doubts about the safety of the verdict are now so troubling, I believe 2026 must surely be the year Lucy Letby is finally given hope that her conviction, so utterly contentious, so wholly lacking in substantial proof or evidence, might finally be overturned.
If this does not happen, I believe her imprisonment will be the greatest miscarriage of justice this country has ever witnessed and will call into question the competence and legitimacy of the justice system itself.
Having served as a health minister with responsibility for maternal and neo-natal care, I am only too aware that the care provided in too many British maternity hospitals is dangerously poor and that babies are dying as a consequence. I believe that Lucy has been a convenient scapegoat.
Lucy Letby is serving 15 whole-life sentences for the murder and attempted murder of 14 babies
So, it was perhaps inevitable when, as I looked through my bookcase before Christmas, I was drawn to a battered 50-year-old copy of The Crucible, Arthur Miller’s play about the puritan witch trials of colonial Massachusetts.
Opening the pages, I came immediately to one of the main characters, Goodwife Elizabeth Proctor, a kind, morally upright woman who was accused, tried and convicted of witchcraft. It took my breath away.
Miller’s play shows exactly how baseless rumour becomes panic, then hysteria. It shows how fear can take hold of a community as neighbour turns against life-long neighbour. And it shows how readily a court of law can be swayed by testimony that offers a reassuring explanation for the otherwise inexplicable.
As I read The Crucible again, it struck me that the fate of ‘Goody’ Proctor, accused of witchcraft through nothing more than jealousy and suspicion, holds a disturbing mirror to the trial of Lucy Letby more than three centuries on.
It is Elizabeth Proctor’s personality – known for moral integrity, she is condemned as cold, aloof and distant – that makes her a target. Goody Proctor stands apart from other women.
It is a fact that Lucy Letby, too, was different.
By proxy – through her family, friends and fellow nurses – I think I have come to know her a little. Many of us will have met someone like her.
Lucy is old-fashioned in her views, something of a pedant and a stickler for the rules. It is fair to say she does not fit the template for most young women in their twenties.
The moment Lucy Letby was first arrested in 2018 at her home in Chester
Being a nurse was her vocation, a calling. It was Lucy who was telephoned by other nurses on the unit for advice even when she was off duty, particularly when something had gone wrong.
She would never leave her post until the job was done, day or night, regardless of the time.
Lucy has been described as seeming a little awkward from time to time but her WhatsApp exchanges with other nurses demonstrate she was compassionate.
She was sociable, too. Lucy took salsa classes and enjoyed holidays with family or close friends. She planned to buy a house and one day hoped to fall in love with someone and bring up a family.
But Lucy didn’t go out clubbing, ignored dating apps, didn’t take drugs and certainly did not have a casual attitude towards sex.
At work, she did every single thing by the book – and thereby irritated those who preferred to cut corners. She was disarmingly honest, in fact. Might that have contributed to her downfall?
When an untoward event takes place on a neonatal unit – which cares for babies who are not only severely premature but very poorly – a ‘Datix’ form setting out the circumstances is filed. It is a risk-management system, a way of highlighting concerns as they arise.
And when it came to filing out Datix forms, Lucy was prolific – to the point of obsession.
It seems Lucy insisted every formal process must be followed to the letter and that no amount of pleading by colleagues would change her mind.
She wouldn’t cover-up for others or cut corners. Just like Goody Proctor in The Crucible, ‘Goody’ Letby was never seen to do anything wrong.
In Miller’s play – just as in the horrific real-life events of Salem that inspired it – there is zero proof that Goody Proctor was a witch. How could there be?
But being different from other women works against her in the court room.
Calm and principled when put on trial, Goody Proctor is described as cold and indifferent. She fails to be emotional, to show signs of the hysteria gripping those around her, and that is taken to mean she is unnatural, unloving – and a witch.
I’m in no doubt that something similar has applied to Lucy Letby, both during her trial and since.
Like Goody Proctor, Letby remained calm in the witness box, apparently unmoved by claims she was an angel of death.
Rather, she continued believing in British justice. Lucy was confident in the knowledge that no clear evidence tied her to deaths of those premature babies, and confident that she would be found innocent.
She wasn’t even on duty when one of the babies in question died.
If there was no solid evidence against Lucy, I believe the constant references to her character and demeanour, however tenuous, were given undue weight and relevance in court.
Neither Elizabeth Proctor nor Lucy Letby played to the gallery, neither could or would project fake emotion, and in Lucy’s case I’m sure this told against her.
Strength and integrity were interpreted as coldness and guilt in a way that is both misogynistic and profoundly irrational.
What does Lucy Letby’s case reveal about justice, prejudice, and mistakes in our legal system?
You might not agree with me that Letby is innocent, but surely no one can argue, today, that she has been convicted using the standard of proof our courts demand: that she is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
That test is the cornerstone of British justice and Lucy has the same right to depend upon it as the rest of us.
Miller’s heroine, Goody Proctor, is spared the hangman’s rope because she is pregnant, as was the real Elizabeth Proctor from 1692 who, when the hysteria died down, had her name somewhat cleared.
But neither Elizabeth, real nor fictional, was formally pardoned. Neither received a public apology from the courts that had traduced them.
And that is where we must hope the parallels divide when, or if, Lucy is granted the re-trial she deserves.
Both our courts and the medical profession have much to learn from this terrible injustice. And those lessons cannot be learnt until both institutions publicly admit the dreadful truth that they were wrong.