The Mail podcast from
10th July 2023, which I've now transcribed. It contains material about defence expert witnesses not included in any other media articles, in the judge's summing up before the jury retired to deliberate.
www.mailplus.co.uk
Episode 45, The jury retires
In this episode Caroline and Liz explain that the jury has now been sent out to consider their verdicts. They were asked to begin their deliberations after listening to the judge sum up the case for more than four days.
Transcript
"The prosecution and defence have finished outlining their cases and the jury have now been asked to decide whether Lucy Letby is guilty or not guilty of the 22 charges that she faces. I’m
Liz Hull, northern correspondent for the Mail. I will be in court to report on the case as it develops. And I’m
Caroline Cheetham, a broadcast journalist. Every week we’ll examine what’s happened and bring you the details behind the headlines. This is The Trial of Lucy Letby.
LH: So all the evidence in the case has now been heard by the jury. The prosecution and the defence have outlined their cases and we’re now approaching the end of this trial. [explanation given re. anonymity of babies] In this episode we’ll hear the judge, Mr Justice Goss, send the jury out to begin their deliberations.
CC: We’ll bring you his summing up of all the evidence they’ve heard over the past 145 days.
LH: We’ll outline his reminder that although experts were instructed for both the prosecution and the defence, only the prosecution called their experts to give evidence.
CC: And we’ll explain that he urged the jury to make their decisions on the facts and to try to disregard the emotion and personal loss involved in the case.
LH: Welcome to episode 45,
The jury retires.
CC: So we’ve reached a really important stage in the case Liz, because today, in fact just a few hours ago, the jury was finally sent out to deliberate on their verdicts, over nine months after they were sworn in.
LH: Yes last week the eight women and four men of the jury listened intently as the judge, Mr Justice Goss, summarised all the evidence they’ve heard from the prosecution and the defence, since this all began last October.
CC: We said a couple of weeks ago but it’s worth mentioning again, this trial has now been sitting through every season and today was the day that everyone’s been working towards for so long. The day the judge sent the jury out to consider the fundamental issue in the case, whether Lucy Letby, a neonatal nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital, is guilty or innocent of murdering and attempting to murder babies in her care.
LH: And now all everyone else, that’s the barristers and lawyers, police officers, us and all the other journalists, the mums and dads of the babies and Lucy Letby herself, can do is wait. Wait until they reach a decision on each of the 22 charges she faces.
CC: So let’s go back to what the judge, Mr Justice Goss, told the jury before he sent them out. Now he explained that he was going to remind them of what they’d heard from all of the witnesses who came to court to give evidence over the past nine months.
LH: While the prosecution speech from Nick Johnson KC a couple of weeks ago explained why they say Lucy Letby is guilty and Ben Myers KC’s speech examined the opposite, that’s why he says she’s innocent, the summary from the judge is designed to provide them with a more balanced narrative, based on the evidence they’ve heard of what happened on the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital.
CC: So Mr Justice Goss went back to the beginning by giving them a bit of background and context to the case. He explained that it had all been prompted by a significant rise in the numbers of babies suffering serious and unexpected collapses in the hospital’s neonatal unit in 2015 and 2016.
Judge:
The prosecution case is that those collapses were not natural events, but were caused by the defendant Lucy Letby using various means to harm babies, intending they should die. Some died, others were resuscitated or in the case of alleged poisoning by insulin, the source was removed. A number of babies were subjected, the prosecution say, to repeated attempts to kill them. After a year it became clear that, of all the nursing staff and doctors, the defendant and her alone was at work in the unit at relevant times and was sometimes present when unexpected collapses occurred.
LH: The judge said his summing up would not be exhaustive and told the jury it was up to them to decide which were the most relevant and important pieces of evidence when they made their decisions.
CC: And he began by reminding them of some of the detail relating to the neonatal unit and what was going on there at the time they’re concerned with. He said back then the unit was a level 2 centre capable of taking babies born after 27 weeks.
Judge:
up to 2015 the number of deaths on the unit was within the expected number of a unit of its type in the region, which was less than the national average. In 2015 and 2016 the numbers of deaths increased significantly with a marked difference both in the number of deaths and the unusual and unexpected nature of the deaths. The defence contend that this was a consequence of the increased number of neonatal babies being admitted at that time and the higher acuity of those babies. As the number of cases increased the consultants began to “think the unthinkable” as it was described – that these were not naturally occurring sudden collapses but the consequence of deliberate harmful acts.
LH: The judge reminded the jury that Lucy Letby was asked about her relationship with other members of staff who worked on the unit. She confirmed that apart from one of the female consultants who we can’t name for legal reasons but we’ve been calling doctor B, who she didn’t have the best working relationship with, she’d had no problem with any of the doctors and had a normal working relationship with them all.
Judge: ...s
he loved doctor A as a friend, but was not ‘in love’ with him. Later she characterised Dr Stephen Brearey as a *advertiser censored*. After investigations began she said he was one of four consultants, the others being Dr Ravi Jayaram, Dr Gibbs and Dr B, who conspired together to apportion blame on her, she believed to cover the failings of the hospital.
LH: There were seven consultants who worked on the neonatal unit and the children’s ward next door, the judge said. Nurses on the unit were qualified in three different bands. Band 6 were the highest qualified followed by band 5 nurses who were split between those who were qualified to care for intensive care babies and those who were not, and band 4 nurses commonly known as nursery nurses who mainly looked after the special care babies.
CC: he reminded the jury that several nurses had given evidence that the unit was sometimes short-staffed and on occasion they weren’t able to provide one-to-one care to intensive care babies which was in breach of recognised guidelines.
LH: But, the judge said, doctors had refuted any suggestion that staffing levels had compromised the care of any child. And a review carried out by the RCPCH had subsequently found staffing levels were better at the Countess than in all other district hospitals in the Cheshire Mersey area.
Judge:
these units did not have the same mortality problems as the Countess of Chester.
LH: he told the jury it was up to them to decide the relevance of the staffing issues.
Judge:
there is evidence of occasions when, contrary to standards, a nurse on shift was the designated nurse for more than one intensive care baby. There was also occasions when the nursing staff complained about the shift and when care was not as good as it should have been. Of potential relevance is whether any specific or identified failings by any of the clinicians and nursing practitioners was or may have been relevant to any deterioration of babies or any event you are considering. In particular whether a failure of care or mistake was causative to a sudden deterioration of any baby in the case or adversely affected their chances of recovery.
CC: the judge then summarised the prosecution and defence’s position on the two babies, baby F and baby L, who were poisoned with insulin.
Judge:
in the case of two babies there is evidence of unprescribed insulin having been administered when it was wholly inappropriate. They are baby F and baby L each of whom was a twin. In their cases the prosecution invite you to conclude that there can be no doubt that someone intentionally added insulin to nutritional feed and dextrose, that being given to baby F and baby L respectively. And the chances of there being more than one person acting in that way can be entirely discounted. Medical negligence or accident cannot have played any part in these cases, they submit. The defence invite you to question the evidence of the taking of blood samples, and the potential consequences of insulin poisoning and the lack of harm caused. The prosecution say this evidence is of major significance being incontrovertible evidence that someone was deliberately and knowingly doing something completely contrary to normal practice. They say it was very dangerous and must have been done with the intent of endangering the lives of the children. They say this assists and informs you in the cases of the other children who suffered sudden and unexplained collapses from which there was no apparent medical explanation.
LH: the judge said it was the defence case that Lucy Letby was a dedicated, caring and conscientious nurse who never did anything to harm any child.
Judge:
…babies do collapse for no apparent reason and there are potential medical reasons for at least some of the collapses. If there was someone intent on harming children it was not her.
CC: he explained that Lucy Letby had no previous convictions and had never been in trouble with the police before her arrest in July 2018.
LH: he explained she’d always wanted to work with children and selected her A levels so she could study for a degree in nursing. She undertook two work placements at the Countess in 2010 and 2011 while at Chester University, and started work as a band 5 nurse at the Countess in January 2012. Initially she started working with special care babies in nurseries 3 and 4 the judge said but she always strived to go on every course, and in March or April 2015 she completed a six-month course which involved a placement at the Liverpool Women’s hospital that allowed her to care for the sickest babies on the unit.
Judge:
the defendant said that over a 12-month period she cared for hundreds of babies and she never did anything that was meant to hurt any of them. She only ever did her best to care for them. Hurting a baby was completely against everything being a nurse is. She was there to help and to care, not to harm.
LH: the judge reminded the jury that they’d heard from seven expert witnesses for the prosecution including the two paediatricians Dr Dewi Evans and Dr Sandie Bohin.
CC: he also said that although medical experts had been instructed by the defence only experts for the prosecution had given evidence.
Judge:
although you know that experts were instructed on behalf of the defence and there were meetings between experts the only witnesses from whom you have heard were called by the prosecution. As with any witness it is for you to decide whether you accept some or all of the evidence of an expert witness. It is your view as to the significance and reliability of this evidence that is important.
LH: the judge also urged the jury to make their decisions on the facts and to try to disregard emotion and the personal trauma and loss involved in the case.
CC: he then focused his attention on each of the babies and the charges relating to them in the case, recapping what each witness has said when they were called to give evidence about them.
LH: we’ve heard much of this evidence over the course of our previous 44 episodes so we aren’t going to repeat it here again. But explaining what happened to each child took Mr Justice Goss the best part of four days.
LH: finally at two minutes past one, the two jury bailiffs who look after the jury while they are deliberating were officially sworn in and the judge sent the eight women and four men out into their retirement room to begin their deliberations.
Judge:
how you conduct your deliberations is entirely a matter for you. You should of course respect each other’s opinions and value different viewpoints. Everyone should have a chance to speak. You should listen to one another and no one should feel pressure. You are under no pressure of time. Do not make your own enquiries about the case or talk or communicate with anyone in any way except when you are all together as a group of twelve. When you reach your verdicts your foreman should inform the jury bailiff and you will be called back in to court. The clerk of the court will ask the foreman to stand and they will be asked on each count whether you have reached a verdict and then whether you find the defendant guilty or not guilty. That completes my directions and I ask you now to retire and commence your deliberations."
