Letby case ‘has echoes’ of wrongly accused Canadian nurse, says expert
The Lucy Letby case bears striking similarities to a Canadian nurse wrongly accused of poisoning babies, an eminent neonatologist has said.
Dr Desmond Bohn, who spent 35 years as a paediatric intensive care specialist, was working at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto when nurse Susan Nelles was blamed for the deaths of four infants in her care.
Between June 1980 and March 1981, there was an alarming increase in cardiac deaths on two neonatal wards at the hospital.
Post mortems showed that the babies had unusually high levels of digoxin in their blood, a drug commonly used to slow heart rate and increase circulation.
Dr Bohn, who retired as Chief of the Department of Critical Care Medicine in 2011, said: “The Lucy Letby case has echoes of a similar series of unexplained deaths we had in our hospital while I was there involving infants with congenital heart disease.”
As in Letby’s case, shift patterns linked Nelles to the deaths which stopped immediately after she was arrested.
However the timing coincided with the hospital placing new restrictions on access to digoxin and bringing in updated care protocols.
The case was later thrown out before it reached trial and the nurse awarded an out-of-court settlement of $190,000 after bringing a case of malicious prosecution.
Dr Bohn added: “(There was a) similar poorly conducted investigation and a rush to find a guilty party. The case was thrown out at a preliminary hearing. Rightly so.
“All the patients were receiving the cardiac drug digoxin but it is rarely used nowadays.
“The problem was that the window between efficacy and toxicity is very narrow. They measured post mortem digoxin levels which were elevated and concluded that there had been deliberate poisoning.
“This was a flawed approach because what constituted therapeutic levels had never been established in forensic medicine.
“Nevertheless, murder was suspected and a nurse named was identified as the culprit using the same flawed statistical methodology as in the Letby case.”
In 1993, more than a decade after Nelles was accused of murder, a report blamed the chemical MBT, used to toughen syringes and medical tubing, for the deaths of these babies.
It also concluded that tests used to measure digoxin in the early 1980s gave falsely high readings which could not be relied upon.
Nelles continued to work as a nurse in Kingston Ontario and in 1999, was awarded an honorary doctorate in law from Queen’s University for work promoting integrity in nursing.
‘Highly likely that there has been a grave miscarriage of justice’
Speaking about Letby’s trial, Dr Bohn added: “They need a statistical expert to give evidence at trials like these.
“It would seem that Chester Hospital was poorly run and short of staff. Premature babies like these are very fragile.
“I think it is highly likely that there has been a grave miscarriage of justice here. The legal system has painted itself into a corner and I don’t see a way out.”
Letby has been refused the right to appeal, but the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) said that she, or her representatives, could bring the matter to them for review.
A CCRC spokesman told The Telegraph: “We have not received an application for Lucy Letby.
“Applications to the CCRC can be made by anyone who believes they have been wrongly convicted or sentenced, or by their representatives.”
