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“What if Lucy Letby is not guilty?” – PETER HITCHENS asked.
The prisoner
Letby has been in custody since November 2020.
On Monday, she was sentenced to a “whole life order” meaning she will die in prison. She is only the fourth female criminal in British history to have no hope of parole.
Letby is expected to be categorised as a “restricted status” prisoner – the female equivalent of a Category A inmate – which is imposed to minimise the possibility of escape and protect the public from harm.
There are only three prisons in England and Wales where restricted status prisoners are held – HMP Low Newton in Co Durham, HMP Bronzefield in Surrey and HMP New Hall in Yorkshire.
Tom Nicholson, a criminal barrister, told the BBC that whole life term prisoners mean “maximum security conditions, visiting restrictions and restrictions on how they operate in prison.”
From PETER HITCHENS:
Horror can make us blind to doubt. For years I angrily scorned Chris Mullin’s campaign for the release of the Birmingham Six, Irishmen wrongly convicted of the 1974 IRA bombings in that city.
I was so furious about the filthy cruelty of the crime that I could not see straight about the weakness of the prosecution.
I apologise to Mr Mullin, and learned from him that our justice system is not as good as we like to think.
The close family of someone in this position have little choice but to be loyal. Friends, faced with a jury verdict of this kind, could be excused if they resorted to saying, ‘Well, I would not have thought it of her, but…’ These friends say she is not guilty. Listen to them. They may just be right. Now I must tell you that a number of voices, apparently expert, have been raised by lawyers and scientists who are afraid there may have been a miscarriage of justice. I am not qualified to judge them, but if they are right there are flaws in the prosecution of Lucy Letby, in important claims made about the actions she supposedly took. There are also questions about the general state of the unit in which she worked. A body calling itself ‘Science on Trial’ has produced an interesting analysis of the case that I find quite disturbing. Recently, Dr David Livermore, a retired Professor of Medical Microbiology, has also expressed doubts. In an article for the Daily Sceptic website, he says: ‘No one who cares about justice should be comfortable with this case.’
So now I must ask: What if Lucy Letby is not guilty? Actually I very much wish somebody else in the national media would raise this. I have enough enemies as it is. But it looks as if it falls to me. Would it be bearable if her conviction was mistaken? This young woman has been condemned to die in prison. She has, since her conviction, been subjected to some very severe public condemnation. She has had to endure the (wholly justified and understandable) anger and grief of the parents of the babies she has been convicted of killing.
From what I know of our prisons, you would be wrong to imagine that her endless days in custody will be any kind of ‘holiday camp’. Some people, I know well, believe that anyone convicted of such a crime should suffer beyond the ability of a civilised justice system to punish them. Some relish the possibility that the condemned person may be persecuted by his or her fellow inmates. I find this attitude distressing and contrary to Christian teaching, but it is common and those who wish for it will very likely get their way.
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