Cheshire Police investigation conduct concerns
The prosecution’s claim: Cheshire Police conducted Operation Hummingbird as a professional and thorough investigation of the neonatal deaths at the Countess of Chester Hospital, properly scoping all potential causes before focusing on Lucy Letby as a suspect.
Prosecution claim
Cheshire Police conducted Operation Hummingbird as a professional and thorough investigation of the neonatal deaths at the Countess of Chester Hospital, properly scoping all potential causes before focusing on Lucy Letby as a suspect.
Counter-evidence
Multiple documented procedural concerns have been raised about Operation Hummingbird's conduct. The December 2025 Hummingbird whistleblower report, a 150-page account based on first-hand knowledge of the investigation, documents suspect-first scoping decisions that meant non-person causes of the cluster were not systematically investigated in parallel. The March 2018 Hutton statistical analysis — the engagement of Prof. Jane Hutton by Cheshire Police to conduct independent statistical analysis of the cluster — was subsequently blocked by the CPS, a documented refusal to use independent statistical methodology. An eight-month delay between the formal escalation by consultants and the police referral has been documented and discussed at the Thirlwall Inquiry. The expert witnesses instructed by the Crown — Evans and Bohin — were drawn from a narrow pool that did not include forensic pathologists with neonatal expertise or neutral neonatologists from outside the pre-existing referral network. Independent forensic pathologists and neutral neonatology experts were not instructed.
Key point: The Hummingbird whistleblower report documents a suspect-first investigation architecture that did not systematically consider non-person causes of the cluster — a structural failure consistent with the pattern identified in the Lucia de Berk and Sally Clark cases.
What the jury heard
The jury was not told that Prof. Jane Hutton had been instructed and then blocked, nor were they told about the eight-month escalation-to-referral delay in the context of a suspect-first scoping argument. The investigation was presented as a thorough and professional police inquiry that reached the suspect through evidence rather than through pre-commitment.
What the Panel says
The Panel confined its review to medical evidence and did not opine directly on police conduct. Its medical conclusions — that no case requires a deliberate-harm explanation — are however directly relevant to the investigation-conduct question: if the medical evidence does not require deliberate harm, then an investigation that treated deliberate harm as its primary hypothesis from an early stage was operating on a false premise.
What independent experts add
- The Hummingbird whistleblower report (December 2025) is a 150-page first-hand account documenting the suspect-first scoping of Operation Hummingbird from its May 2017 opening.
- The eight-month delay between formal consultant escalation and police referral has been examined at the Thirlwall Inquiry and raises questions about institutional gatekeeping of the referral decision.
- The blocking of Prof. Hutton's statistical analysis is structurally parallel to the CPS conduct criticised in the Royal Statistical Society's commentary on the Sally Clark case.
- Expert-witness instruction gaps — the absence of forensic pathologists and neutral neonatologists from outside Evans's referral network — are a documented feature of the prosecution's expert architecture.
- The CCRC review process is in a position to examine the full police investigation file, including the Hutton instruction and CPS block, which were not before the trial jury.