Lucy Letby medical expert: people are getting their facts wrong
Lucy Letby medical expert: people are getting their facts wrong
Dr Dewi Evans, whose findings helped to convict the nurse of seven child murders, has been forced to defend himself as doctors question his evidence at the trial
new
The Times
Dr Dewi Evans gave expert witness for the prosecution in the Lucy Letby trial
DIMITRIS LEGAKIS/ATHENA
The lead prosecution expert witness in the trial of Lucy Letby has said he is “very concerned people are getting their facts wrong” as he prepares for fresh criticism of his findings.
The opinion of Dr Dewi Evans, a retired consultant paediatrician, on the cause of death or collapse in 17 babies proved crucial to securing Letby’s convictions for murder and attempted murder.
After his evidence came under renewed attack over the weekend, he stood by the findings, telling The Times: “We’re clinicians, we’re scientists, we stick to facts.”
On Tuesday the “explosive” conclusions reached by a panel of 14 international experts will be released at a press conference in London.
The intervention is led by Dr Shoo Lee, a neonatologist whose 1989 research paper on air embolisms in babies was cited by the prosecution.
It is understood he will reveal that in most of the 17 cases, if not all, they have recorded a different cause of death or collapse from the one given to the jury in Letby’s trial.
On Saturday a report by the veteran investigative journalist David Rose claimed that a number of Evans’s conclusions in meetings with police officers were “strikingly different from those presented in court and yet the jury was never told about them”.
This included Evans’s initial analysis that Letby was not in the hospital when ten of 28 incidents described as “suspicious” took place.
When the case came to trial the jury was shown a chart of Letby’s shift pattern showing her on shift at the time of every incident the prosecution said was suspicious.
Lucy Letby was convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others
CHESHIRE POLICE/THE MEGA AGENCY
The report, published on the UnHerd news website, raised a series of other alleged potential discrepancies revealed in unpublished notes taken by a police officer at the time.
David Davis, the MP who has previously called for a retrial, said the report “clearly exposes the inconsistent, unreliable and conveniently variable opinions of the prosecution’s lead expert witness”. He added that as fresh evidence comes to light, the trial “looks more and more like a serious miscarriage of justice”.
On Sunday, Evans defended himself once more and stood by his findings. “These statistical figures were not part of the prosecution at any time,” he said. “In the whole time I spent with Cheshire police we didn’t discuss statistics.
“We didn’t even consider straightforward statistics such as there are only usually two or three deaths per year normally. The first time I heard [the disputed figures] was from statisticians after reporting restrictions were lifted following conviction at the retrial.”
He continued: “The UnHerd article has loads of errors in it, factual errors and shows the author’s poor understanding of how clinicians reach a diagnosis.”
He suggested the notes with police officers merely reflected his thinking at the time, and that the only conclusions that mattered were those contained in his final reports, and his evidence to the court. “Your evidence evolves as you get more and more information,” he said. “The UnHerd article started off with a fact that was wrong in relation to Baby A, so I’m very concerned that people are getting their facts wrong. We’re clinicians, we’re scientists, we stick to facts.”
At court, the prosecution claimed Letby injected air into infants’ veins to block their blood supply and cause their sudden collapse or death.
Evans referenced Lee’s 1989 academic paper on air embolism in the bloodstream of babies, and said skin discolouration pointed to air embolism as a result of high-pressure ventilation.
Lee told the Sunday Times that, having reviewed the court transcripts, he believed his work was misinterpreted. He told the Court of Appeal that none of the descriptions of the skin discolourations in the Letby case matched those characterising air embolism.
Dr Shoo Lee is preparing to reveal the “explosive” findings of an expert review of 17 cases
JOSHUA BRATT FOR THE TIMES
In response to his comments, Evans said on Sunday: “His paper from 1989 got a lot of publicity, but it was not a major factor in the prosecution case.
“What the prosecution stated was that some of these babies, as part of their collapse, had a skin discolouration, which has been described in Dr Lee’s paper in 1989, but — and it’s an important but — the presence or absence of skin discolourations neither ruled out or confirmed air embolism. It was not necessary.
“It’s a useful paper — I don’t want to do it down — but comparing how babies responded to treatment in the 1980s to how they respond to treatment in 2015, it’s different.
“Complications were far more common when I was looking after babies in the Seventies and Eighties.”
He added of the impending press conference: “If the copies of the reports are sent to me I’m very happy to have a look at them.”
Lucy Letby had an appeal against her first 14 convictions thrown out by the Court of Appeal, and a separate bid to challenge her 15th conviction following a retrial failed in October.
Mark McDonald, Letby’s new barrister, suggested any further challenge would be on the grounds that medical expert evidence at her trial was “not reliable”.
If the “blue ribbon panel” assembled by Shoo is to have an impact, it has to “strike at the fundamental basis on which the verdict was reached”, McDonald told The Times.
Rose said: “I spoke to Mr Evans before preparing my article, and with his agreement submitted a long list of questions specifying all the detail which is set out in the piece. I invited him to make any comments he might wish, and of course would have reproduced them had he given me any response.
“The following day he told me by email he did not wish to comment. The detail in my article is drawn from the record of the shifts Lucy Letby worked during the period when there appeared to be excess deaths at the hospital neonatal unit, and on official police notes of the two-day meeting he held with senior officers from both the police and National Crime Agency. I made this clear to him when we spoke.”
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