The flawed data was discovered during a retrial (Picture: PA)
The Crown Prosecution Service has admitted evidence used to convict Lucy Letby in her trial was flawed.
The 33-year-old was handed a whole life sentence for what the judge called her ‘cruel, calculated and cynical campaign of murder’ on the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neonatal unit.
She’s serving 14 entire life sentences, but at a retrial at Manchester Crown Court last month which found her guilty of another attempted murder, door-swipe data used as evidence in the original trial was revealed to have been ‘mislabelled’.
Prosecutor Nick Johnson KC explained the data showing which nurses and doctors were entering and exiting the intensive care ward was not accurate.
The CPS later admitted this evidence was flawed, but said it had been ‘corrected’ for the retrial.
A spokesperson for the Mersey-Cheshire Crown Prosecution Service said: ‘The CPS can confirm that accurate door-swipe data was presented in the retrial.’
Lucy was arrested and later found guilty of multiple murders (Picture: PA)
But MPs have now asked CPS to clear up exactly what timing errors were made.
David Davis wrote to Sarah Hammond, the chief crown prosecutor of Mersey-Cheshire, asking for this to be made known.
He said: ‘The door-swipe data is clearly vital to knowing which nurse was where at one point in time, and this in turn was vital to the prosecution’s case in the first trial.
‘It is therefore essential that the CPS makes it plain whether those errors occurred throughout any of the evidence of the first trial.’
In Letby’s first trial, the prosecution claimed consultant Dr Ravi Jayaram ‘discovered Letby standing over Baby K at 3.50am on 17 February 2016.’
The baby was deteriorating had its breathing tube had been dislodged. Door swipe data presented in the trial found the baby’s nurse had left the intensive care unit at 3.47am – but she had actually returned at that time, meaning Letby wasn’t alone.
The prosecution and defence both accepted this was a mistake in the retrial, and Letby was later convicted of the attempted murder of Baby K.
During the retrial, the prosecution and the defence accepted that it was a genuine mistake, and the nurse was convicted of the attempted murder of Baby K.
The Department of Health has said that an independent inquiry will be held into Letby’s case, and will examine ‘the circumstances surrounding the deaths and incidents – including how concerns raised by clinicians were dealt with’.
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