Lucy Letby’s lawyer insists case has not been undermined after experts quit

Lucy Letby’s lawyer has insisted her case has not been undermined after two experts quit her defence team, saying some of its arguments have “unresolvable problems”.

The former nurse, who maintains her innocence, is serving 15 whole-life terms for the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of seven others while working on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester hospital.

Engineering expert Helen Shannon and bioengineering professor Geoff Chase withdrew from the team on Monday.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, is considering evidence presented on her behalf by an international panel of medics.

The group argued the babies died or collapsed as a result of poor medical care and natural causes.

Asked by BBC Newsnight whether their withdrawal undermined Letby’s case, lawyer Mark McDonald said he “fundamentally” disagreed.

“They don’t know what I put into the CCRC because I haven’t told them. So how on earth could they make that conclusion?” he said. “But really, it comes back to this. Both sets of experts say that Lucy Letby is innocent.

“One set of experts remains in the CCRC. One set of experts have withdrawn. But they both are of the same position that whatever happened at the trial, what took place at the trial, was wrong, that the jury was misled.”

In a letter to the CCRC and reported by The Guardian, the two experts raised concerns about legal arguments put forward by Letby’s team, adding that it was “placing the long-term interests of Ms Letby at serious, unnecessary and unacceptable risk”.

The pair continued to back their report on Letby’s convictions for attempting to murder two babies with insulin, maintaining it was “very unlikely” they had been poisoned.

The letter added: “Whilst it is entirely legitimate for the defence to advance multiple arguments, some of the other arguments now being put forward we cannot support as scientifically credible and which have, in our view, fundamental unresolvable problems.”

Letby was denied permission to appeal against her convictions in 2024.

The findings of a public inquiry into how she was able to repeatedly kill and harm babies on the hospital’s neonatal unit are due to be published on Tuesday.