{"id":705470,"date":"2026-07-22T15:46:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T15:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/705470\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T15:46:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T15:46:12","slug":"seized-maternity-notes-not-given-to-lucy-letby-defence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/705470\/","title":{"rendered":"Seized maternity notes not given to Lucy Letby defence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maternity notes for the babies Lucy Letby has been convicted of murdering were not made available to her defence ahead of her trial, the BBC has learned.<\/p>\n

The neonatal nurse was convicted of murdering and attempting to murder 14 babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital in 2015 and 2016.<\/p>\n

File on 4 Investigates has discovered<\/a> that maternity notes for the babies in the case – which include details of the mother’s pregnancy, labour and birth – were seized by Cheshire Police. But they were not reviewed by the prosecution’s chief medical expert or disclosed to Letby’s defence.<\/p>\n

The Crown Prosecution Service said Letby was convicted following two jury trials and that the Court of Appeal dismissed her argument that prosecution evidence was flawed.<\/p>\n

Letby, originally of Hereford, is currently serving 15 whole life terms.<\/p>\n

Since her trial, and subsequent retrial on one case, there have been concerns raised about some of the evidence presented to the jury.<\/p>\n

One concern is that the maternity history of the babies in the case was not adequately considered.<\/p>\n

Experts told the BBC that it is critical to fully assess the pregnancy, labour and delivery of a baby when determining why they collapsed and died.<\/p>\n

Dr Dewi Evans, the chief medical witness for the prosecution, said the full maternity notes were not relevant to the case.<\/p>\n

“I never saw any obstetric notes and I have no idea what happened to them,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think that maternity care was a particular issue in the Letby case. I think most of the babies I dealt with were born in acceptable condition.”<\/p>\n

Evans said he did see brief maternity summaries – “usually a couple of paragraphs” – attached to each baby’s neonatal notes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maternity notes for the babies Lucy Letby has been convicted of murdering were not made available to her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":705471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-705470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/705471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}