The unpleasant stench which rises from the unfair and dubious prosecution of the nurse Lucy Letby grows stronger and fouler by the day.
It is as if something horrible was rotting under the national floorboards. It will not go away until the case is reopened and the floorboards are lifted.
People will not enjoy finding out what is festering there. But it has to be done. The country cannot be clean until it is done, and Ms Letby gets the fair trial she was, in my view, denied.
In a week when we celebrated the saving of our national liberty 80 years ago, it is odd that the public and the authorities seem to care so little about the rapid destruction of one of the most important freedoms of all – the right to a fair and impartial trial.
This used genuinely to set us apart from most other countries. Now all kinds of tricks and traps get in the way. For instance, didn’t you think that the police were supposed to investigate crime without fear or favour?
Well, today’s police simply don’t investigate most crimes at all. Perhaps that’s why they now employ spin doctors and hold press conferences, to boast about how they have supposedly solved the few crimes they do bother with.
And last week I discovered that Cheshire Police have held not just one, but two secret press conferences for chosen media about the Letby case.
Pictures emerged on social media last week showing Detective Chief Inspector Nicola Evans and other senior officers on the Letby case at a secret press conferences for chosen media as the trial was in progress
The first, which I’ve mentioned before here, was just before Ms Letby’s first trial. Months later, I am still trying to get them to tell me what happened there. The fact that they won’t suggests to me that they know deep down that such behaviour is quite improper.
But then I learned they had held another secret gathering, right slap in the middle of the Letby trial.
Pictures of it emerged on social media last week. I am not sure why they were taken, but the very respectable Press Association (PA), the agency which took them, says clearly that the event was a press conference at Manchester Hall, a grand wedding venue a short walk from Manchester Crown Court.
Crucially, PA’s caption notes that the event was ahead of the verdict.
Records of police spending published by Cheshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner also show a fee of £2,000 for hire of this hall on June 30, 2023, stumped up by you, the taxpayer.
The trial was still very much in progress at the time. Ms Letby’s original barrister, Ben Myers KC, was just making his final speech for the defence.
The judge, Mr Justice Goss, had not yet begun his summing up.
Did he know that, less than a mile away from his courtroom, this event was in progress? What would he have done if he had?
Crucially, the jury did not go out to consider their verdicts till July 10.
Some of the pictures show Detective Chief Inspector Nicola Evans and Detective Superintendent Paul Hughes, senior officers in the Letby case, grinning happily at the assembled reporters.
After Lucy Letby’s conviction in August 2023, she was swiftly subjected to a retrial on one count of attempted murder. At that stage, a ferocious court order prevented public discussion of any part of the case for months on end
Ms Evans’s jolly, smiling face at the untelevised press briefing is in sharp contrast to her sombre, woeful appearance, dressed in funeral black, on August 18, 2023, when the final verdicts were announced. Before the TV cameras, she then appeared to be close to tears.
Now, I do not know exactly what was said at this mid-trial briefing. Cheshire Police last week ignored my request for these details.
In fact, they ignored all the following questions submitted to them in good time, at 10.37am on Thursday, May 8.
1. Was the trial judge informed of this press conference?
2. Was the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) informed of this press conference?
3. Were Ms Letby’s defence team informed of this press conference?
4. In all cases, if so, when were they informed?
5. Why did the CPS, with whom you held a joint briefing before the trial, not take part?
6. What was the purpose of the press conference?
7. On what conditions were members of the media invited?
8. May I please see a transcript or recording of it?
I also asked the CPS why a representative had not been there, but they simply stopped answering my questions, so I don’t know if they knew, and decided not to take part, or were not told.
All these questions should be easy for the police to answer. But all they would do was to try to justify the event, quoting some document from the ‘College of Policing’, which as far as I know does not make the law of England.
This says of such briefings that they ‘are embargoed media briefings that take place after a trial has started but before a verdict is given.
‘It should be made clear to the media that any information supplied that may prejudice a trial must not be printed or broadcast until the end of a trial and only then in the event of a guilty verdict.’
Deputy senior investigating officer Nicola Evans (centre), with Pascale Jones of the Crown Prosecution Service (left) and Janet Moore, police family liaison officer, read a statement outside Manchester Crown Court after nurse Lucy Letby was found guilty of murdering seven babies
Why ‘only then in the event of a guilty verdict’? Doesn’t this phrase make it clear that such events are held to prepare the press for such a verdict? Can we really believe that they don’t then influence coverage of the case?
Compare and contrast. After Ms Letby’s conviction in August 2023, she was swiftly subjected to a retrial on one count of attempted murder. At that stage, a ferocious court order prevented public discussion of any part of the case for months on end.
When the American New Yorker magazine published a long article casting doubt on her guilt, unsuccessful efforts were made to keep the article from reaching this country.
If I had, during this period, held a press conference on the case, swearing all those present to secrecy but suggesting Ms Letby’s conviction was unsafe, and the judge had found out about it, I think I would have been in deep trouble.
Interestingly this document adds ‘all media briefings provided for broadcast or publication before the conclusion of a trial, including interviews with officers, must be impartial and must not comment or speculate on whether or not a defendant is guilty’
How can they be impartial? Surely the holding of the press conference implied a belief in her guilt?
I suspect that, had she been acquitted, most of the things discussed at this event would have had to go into the dustbin.
The only story would have been Ms Letby and her parents, their faces full of relief after years of frightful strain, fending off questions and walking away into obscurity.
