International healthcare-serial-killer acquittals — Daniela Poggiali and others
The prosecution’s claim: The Crown's healthcare-serial-killer framing was presented as supported by the broader pattern of similar cases.
Prosecution claim
The Crown's healthcare-serial-killer framing was presented as supported by the broader pattern of similar cases.
Counter-evidence
International healthcare-serial-killer cases include several high-profile acquittals where initial convictions or charges were overturned on the same methodological grounds at issue in the Letby case. Daniela Poggiali (Italy) was convicted in 2016 of murdering a patient and then acquitted in 2021 by the Italian Supreme Court after the statistical and toxicological evidence was found unreliable. Similar overturnings have occurred elsewhere following independent expert review of pattern-evidence and biochemical-test methodology. The international comparator base is therefore not unidirectionally supportive of the Crown's framing — it includes a clear precedent set of cases where the same methodology, when independently reviewed, did not survive.
Key point: The healthcare-serial-killer comparator base is not one-sided. It includes high-profile acquittals — Poggiali in Italy in 2021 — where the same statistical and biochemical-test methodology used to secure conviction did not survive independent review.
What the jury heard
The Crown's framing referenced the Beverley Allitt comparator and the broader healthcare-serial-killer category. The international acquittal record was not given equal weight.
What the Panel says
The Panel does not opine on legal comparators. The international acquittal record sits within the broader wrongful-conviction-comparables analysis at /analysis/wrongful-conviction-comparables.
What independent experts add
- Lucia de Berk (Netherlands), exonerated 2010, is the most well-known international parallel and is covered in detail at /people/lucia-de-berk and /analysis/lucia-de-berk-parallel.
- Our /analysis/international-comparators page covers the broader international comparator base.