Seven pediatricians and toxicology experts said the ju apprentice was misunderstood by prosecutors who cited unreliable insulin tests at the trial of Lucy Lebby, a nurse who killed seven babies in a UK hospital on Thursday.
The doctors made the allegations in a new report that Mr Lettby's lawyers submitted to the UK Criminal Case Review Board, which is responsible for investigating the possibility of justice miscarriage, as they hope to pursue the full appeal of a 15 life sentence.
Letoby, who worked as a nurse in a hospital's newborn squad in the northern UK, was found guilty in 2023 by intentionally injuring him, killing seven cases, injecting him with air and excessive milk, and injecting air into Gastrent detention or insulin.
In the new report, experts, including forensic toxicologists, professors of forensic medicine, and endocrinologists who wrote multiple peer-reviewed papers on medical testing errors, attacked the validity of the evidence of insulin poisoning used by prosecutors in the trial.
“Our inevitable conclusion is that this evidence significantly undermines the validity of the claims made regarding the testing of insulin and C-peptides presented in the court,” they wrote in a summary of the report provided to reporters by her legal team.
Letoby has always maintained her innocence. Since her two exams, serious questions have been raised about her guilt, including a 13,000-word New Yorker article last May. However, her attorney's efforts to resume the lawsuit with full appeal have been repeatedly denied.
The new report focuses on two babies (Babies F and L) whose blood sugar levels had dropped to low levels but later recovered. Letoby was found guilty of trying to kill two babies by adding insulin to food, causing what is called hypoglycemia.
In the tests, baby insulin had high levels of insulin, but only negligible amounts of C-peptide. Therefore, the prosecutors argued that insulin must have been administered externally.
In the new report, experts present what they describe as “persuading new evidence from multiple sources.” The test results show serious problems, indicating that Letoby poisoned two babies with insulin.
They said the test, called the “Roche immunoassay,” is known to have “erroneously result of high insulin.” They also argued that there are other ways in which infants can administer insulin.
Experts said when evidence was presented to the ju judges about the level of insulin seen in small infants, the prosecutors mentioned the incorrect data.
“Studies of adults and older children were cited as unrelated and limited appropriate information was not mentioned,” they wrote.
They said the test “did not meet acceptable forensic standards,” and in particular, the results of the Roche test should not have been relied upon without being confirmed with more accurate clinical tests.
The Royal Liverpool Hospital Institute, where the tests were conducted, has explicitly warned in online guidance that it is “not suitable” to investigate hypoglycemia produced by insulin injections. “If exogenous insulin administration is suspected as a cause of hypoglycemia, please inform the laboratory so that the sample can be externally referred for analysis.” However, as both babies recovered, the samples were not referred elsewhere.
Experts said prosecutors and police weren't considering other ways the baby had fallen in blood sugar other than foul play.
“There are alternative medical explanations that explain hypoglycemia in both babies, including line failure, sepsis, and perinatal stress-induced hyperinsulinism,” they wrote. “The possibilities for these alternatives were not considered.”
Questions regarding insulin addiction charges have been raised publicly by doctors for months after trial. Thursday's 86-page report is an effort by Letby's lawyer Mark McDonald to present these questions to the committee in a formal way.
“The conclusions in the report on Baby F and L clearly indicate that, as an urgent matter, this case must return to the Court of Appeal,” McDonald said in a statement.
He added: “Lucy Lebby is currently serving 15 lifetime conditions in prison when overwhelming independent expert evidence shows that the baby was not murdered.”
In a statement to a public investigation last month, the lawyer representing a part of the family of a baby who died or was harmed at the Countess of Chester Hospital said “the family has no doubts about Lebby's guilt.”
McDonald also submitted to the Criminal Case Review Board a full 698-page review of the 698-page case by another panel of experts, led by famous Canadian neonatologist Dr. Shoo Lee, who previewed the findings in February. The report concluded that “there was no medical evidence in favor of fraud that caused death or injury in any of the 17 cases of trial.”
