Mike Lynch and I were ready to investigate the Lucy Letby trial
Mike Lynch and I were ready to investigate the Lucy Letby trial
The former cabinet minister writes that he was days away from meeting the entrepreneur when he died in the Mediterranean
David Davis
The Sunday Times
The tragic death of Mike Lynch marks the end of an incredible life and the loss of a man whose name became synonymous with battling the injustices of the UK-US extradition treaty.
Mike, a British entrepreneur who co-founded the company Autonomy, was well-known in the tech world having been a key player in the flourishing tech scene around Cambridge in the 1990s. But his legacy is now inextricably linked to his 12-year battle against extradition to the United States.
Mike’s ordeal began when Hewlett-Packard (HP) bought Autonomy in 2011 for $11 billion (£8.3 billion).
It should have been the pinnacle of his career, but the deal went bad. A change of leadership at HP ended with the new management wrongly accusing him of inflating Autonomy’s financials. This led to a decade-long legal battle that was only ended in June this year, when a Californian jury found him not guilty on every count.
We should all understand that fighting the case was an act of heroism by Mike. Had he lost, he was looking at 25 years in a US high-security prison and the very real prospect he would never again be a free man, whereas had he given in and pleaded guilty he would probably have got a couple of years in an open prison. And based on all the previous similar cases the odds were between 50 to 1 and 200 to 1 against him.
But, after a 12-week long trial, and 13 months under house arrest, Mike was acquitted by a jury on all counts. At that point the enormous stress that he and his family had suffered became visible. Mike, and his wife, broke down in tears when the “not guilty” verdict was read out. Indeed most of his defence team was in tears.
Mike Lynch walks into court in San Francisco in March this year during his fight to clear his name
MICHAEL LIEDTKE/AP
The case clearly demonstrated how ridiculous the UK–US extradition treaty has become. Any sale to an American company is plainly seen by the American Department of Justice to fall under American rules and regulations, no matter where in the world it is. That is just wrong. The UK is not a colony of the US.
The UK-US extradition treaty, established in 2003, supposedly aimed to streamline the process of bringing terrorists to justice after the 9/11 attacks. It was done with the best of intentions, the act of an ally to help America in its desperate battle against terrorism.
Instead, it created a situation where British citizens like Mike involved in commercial disputes — not terrorist offences — could be easily extradited to the US without the need for prima facie evidence of guilt, placing them inside a so-called justice system that is stacked against them.
Many, including myself, have argued that the treaty unfairly favours the US. It allows American authorities to pursue British nationals aggressively, not in the pursuit of justice, but often in the interests of American corporations. Thus in Mike’s case the highly politicised American prosecutorial system acted like an arm of corporate America, in this case Hewlett-Packard. The American case was so flimsy that an American jury threw out all 15 charges, and an initially hostile judge completely changed his stance. When I asked Mike why he thought he had won, he said simply, “I was lucky enough to get an honest jury who saw how bogus the case was.”
Mike’s case exposed the serious flaws in the treaty. Between 2009 and 2022, UK courts granted 85 per cent of US extradition requests, while the US approved just 56 per cent of UK requests.
Three times as many UK citizens were sent to the US as travelled the other way. This was demonstrated starkly in 2019 when the American government official Anne Sacoolas drove her car on the wrong side of the road, knocking down and killing motorcyclist Harry Dunn. She fled the country, and although she admitted to causing death by careless driving, the American government refused to extradite her back to face justice.
Those of us who supported Mike argued that if he faced trial at all, he should have been tried in the UK, where the alleged crimes occurred and where most of the evidence and witnesses were located. At least then he would not have sacrificed a great deal of what were to be the last 12 years of his life in a desperate fight against extradition, and then separated from most of his family, friends and loved ones for the last year.
The toll on Mike was immense, but so was the relief when he was acquitted in June. That’s what makes last week’s cruel turn of events ever more tragic.
When he returned to the UK and we had lunch to celebrate his victory, Mike spoke of the “Saint Peter questions” — what he would say to Saint Peter at the pearly gates, when asked “How well have you spent your life?” He intended to have a good answer to that question when describing the remainder of his life’s work.
So Mike was committed to fighting for those who might face similar injustices to those he had to tolerate in the last decade. He planned to establish a UK equivalent to the Innocence Project, a US non-profit organisation that works to exonerate those who have suffered miscarriages of justice. He raised the case of the Lucy Letby trial as one that had already caught his attention. Mike was a world-class expert on probability theory, and saw straight through the statistical weaknesses that underpinned the Letby prosecution. One of our first projects was going to be investigating that trial properly. We were due to meet on Thursday, August 22, to discuss the plans. But on Monday, just as I was planning to send him a text to confirm the lunch, devastating news was breaking about his superyacht sinking during stormy weather near Palermo in Italy.
Mike’s tragic death is a stark reminder of the human cost of legal systems that, while designed to uphold justice, can themselves become instruments of profound injustice.
When Mike was acquitted, his first instinct was to call me shortly after the verdict came through and tell me that “we had to deal with this terrible treaty”. He didn’t want to see anyone else go through what he had gone through.
His death is a dreadful personal tragedy for his family and friends; but it is a also huge loss for society as a whole.
Reflecting on his legacy, it’s clear that his fight was about more than his freedom — it was about challenging a system that desperately needs reform in the interests of natural justice. I intend to keep up that fight, in his name, until British citizens are treated on an equal basis to American citizens, and we stop innocent people’s lives being ruined by the unpleasant amalgam of politics, commercial interest, and rough justice that the current treaty delivers. That means a new treaty, and soon. A treaty that is confined to crimes of terrorism and violence, and that cannot be repurposed just to extend the arm of the American Department of Justice into the government of countries, like Britain, that are supposed to be their allies and friends.
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