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The British nurse was found guilty last year of murdering seven infants and attempting to kill six others while she was working at the Countess of Chester hospital in north-west England read more
 "UK CPS admits door-swipe data presented in first Lucy Letby trial was incorrect; why it matters")
Courtroom drawing of Lucy Letby who was found guilty of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder six other babies. AP
The United Kingdom’s Crown Prosecution Service has acknowledged that the evidence presented in the first trial of Lucy Letby showing which staff came in and out of the baby unit she worked on was incorrect. The British nurse was found guilty last year of murdering seven infants and attempting to kill six others while she was working at the Countess of Chester hospital in north-west England.
Letby was touted as the worst child serial killer in the country’s history and awarded a whole-life jail sentence. This means that the British nurse will never be released from prison. Last month, the 39-year-old was also found guilty of attempting to murder a two-hour-old baby.
During the retrial, Nick Johnson KC, prosecuting the case told the court that the door-swipe data, showing which nurses and doctors were entering and exiting the intensive care ward, had been “mislabelled”. The Crown Prosecution Service eventually told The Telegraph that the discrepancy discovered was related to one door in the neonatal intensive care unit.
The discrepancy was resolved during the retrial
The prosecution assured that the mistake was resolved and corrected during the retrial. “The CPS can confirm that accurate door-swipe data was presented in the retrial," a spokesperson for the Mersey-Cheshire Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement.
Following the acknowledgement, David Davis, the Conservative MP, wrote to Sarah Hammond, chief crown prosecutor of Mersey-Cheshire CPS, asking her to “urgently make clear” what timing errors were made during the first trial and how they related to the case. “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," Davis averred as he plans to bring a parliamentary debate after the summer recess.
“It is therefore essential that the CPS makes it plain whether those errors occurred throughout any of the evidence of the first trial," the Conservative MP furthered.
Why it matters?
In the initial trial, the prosecution said Dr Ravi Jayaram, a consultant, had discovered Letby standing over Baby K at 3:50 am on 17 February 2016. During that time the baby’s condition was deteriorating and its breathing tube had been dislodged.
In the first trial, the prosecution argued that the door-swipe data showed that the baby’s designated nurse had left the intensive care unit at 3:47 am. However, the data was amended in the retrial to show that the nurse had returned at that time. This means that Letby was not alone.
During the retrial, both the prosecution and the defence admitted their fault and the nurse was eventually convicted of the attempted murder of Baby K. Now a public inquiry led by Lady Justice Kathryn Thirlwall will commence in September which will look into how Letby was able to continue working with babies despite the concerns raised by senior doctors.
With inputs from agencies.
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