Previous Wrong Claims of Injustice AND Lucy Letby.

 I have studied the outcomes of the Lucy Letby case over a lengthy period of time. In the first instance, I fully accepted the guilty verdicts without demur. Since that point, we have seen a great many efforts to have a new trial.

In murder cases from the 50s and 60s, claims of innocence were often deeply suspect as they were used by rabid abolitionists to try to undermine certain death sentences which had been issued. The decisions marked the political stance of the loud voices.

The claims of innocence were all based on deep prejudice against the legal system of that time.

I have personally studied all these major cases and am absolutely convinced that there were no miscarriages of justice; no innocent people executed.

Evans, Hanratty and Ellis were all indubitably guilty. There were minor concerns in the Bentley case - but 'joint enterprise' and his 'buying the bullets for the gun' should have dismissed all actual doubts of guilt. 

In 1997, a police inquiry cast major doubt on Hanratty's guilt. It concluded that he was wrongfully convicted, and the case was sent to the court of appeal. In 2002, the court ruled that subsequent DNA testing of surviving crime scene evidence conclusively proved Hanratty's guilt beyond any doubt. And yet TV programmes such as that made by Fred Dinenage still portray this as a 'miscarriage of justice!'

'The Two Killers of Rillington Place', by John Eddowes, showed us conclusively that the pardon for Evans, some years after his death, was simply wrong.

I was personally present as the scientists who had proved Hanratty's guilt by forensics, in the start of the new century, announced this certainty to myself and a number of my JP colleagues. There was already enough evidence to have hanged him twice over, in any case.

Ruth Ellis gunned down her boyfriend in cold blood in the street but was clearly considered too pretty to hang.

The reasoning behind doubts in the Letby case are not bigoted nor biased nor achieved by wishful thinking - except, possibly in the case of one particular legal bod I have heard speak. The concerns are genuine - and not artificially created.

Most doubts are indeed genuine; there are indeed a number of concerns. But not 

enough.

If however, you consider that in a single case of baby murder - 'beyond reasonable doubt' may well not be achieved by hitting only 95% certainty - then a conviction cannot be made. But how many more dead babies do you need, with the finger pointing at Letby, before the move from 95% + + + do you require to be able to hit 'zero reasonable doubt?'

 Certainly, there are possible doubts in some parts of cases but the thrust of the multiple victims seems to show that 'reasonable doubt' can no longer apply.

I am afraid that a number of genuinely held scientist beliefs may well push us into a new, extremely lengthy trial.

If it has to be - let it be so - but don't hold your breath.