Zebedee MacLachlan 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

So ... the initial decision to withhold the obstetric records in the Letby case was made by lawyers? Were they assisted by a suitably qualified clinician - perhaps an obstetrician - in assessing the records' potential medical significance? The CPS's FOI response provides no evidence that they were. And the prosecution's principal medical expert, Dr Dewi Evans, acknowledged that he had never examined the full obstetric records, yet maintained that they were irrelevant. So who, if anyone, was medically qualified to assess whether those records might reasonably assist the defence?

If the CPS approached the Letby case on the assumption that she had deliberately harmed the infants, their obstetric histories might initially have appeared irrelevant to the prosecution's case. But if the infants deteriorated for other medical reasons, those same histories could have been critical to Letby's defence. The CPS initially withheld the obstetric records. Following a specific defence request in November 2022, it reconsidered and determined that some of the requested material met the disclosure test. So how was the potential medical significance of these records assessed in the first place? Perhaps a further FOI request could establish whether any registered medical practitioner, particularly a qualified obstetrician or neonatologist, was consulted before the initial non-disclosure decision. If so, what were their qualifications, specialty and role? When were they consulted, and which records did they examine? The subsequent change in the disclosure assessment raises a legitimate question about whether the potential relevance of the obstetric histories to alternative clinical explanations was fully appreciated. In an ideal world, the purpose of disclosure is not merely to support the prosecution's explanation, but to ensure that material capable of challenging it is made available to the defence.