How the Clark / Cannings / de Berk / Anthony precedents apply operationally
The prosecution’s claim: The Clark, Cannings, Anthony and de Berk miscarriage-of-justice cases concerned specific sets of facts different from the Letby case. The precedents are not controlling on Letby on their specific facts.
Prosecution claim
The Clark, Cannings, Anthony and de Berk miscarriage-of-justice cases concerned specific sets of facts different from the Letby case. The precedents are not controlling on Letby on their specific facts.
Counter-evidence
The precedents apply not on their specific facts but on the legal principles they established. The Royal Statistical Society's post-Clark framework (2001) is the canonical UK reference on statistical evidence in criminal trials — applicable to any statistical-evidence case, including the Letby shift-rota chart. The Cannings principle (2003) is the operative Court of Appeal test on disputed medical expert evidence — applicable to the Letby expert-disagreement record. The de Berk statistical critique framework (Dutch Supreme Court 2010) is internationally available analytical scaffolding — applied to Letby by Prof. Richard Gill himself. The Anthony CCRC-referral precedent (2005) establishes the procedural route the Letby application is following. Each of these precedents operates at the level of principle, not specific fact — which is how legal precedent works.
Key point: Precedents apply at the level of principle. The Cannings principle says a conviction on disputed medical expert evidence is unsafe. The Letby expert record is a record of disputed medical expert evidence. The principle therefore applies.
What the jury heard
The jury does not receive legal precedent; that is a matter for the judge's directions and for appellate review. The precedent-application question is therefore a CCRC / Court of Appeal question, not a jury question.
What the Panel says
The Panel addresses the medical-evidence content. The legal-precedent application is a separate layer that flows from the Panel's medical findings: if the medical evidence is disputed at the level the Panel documents, the Cannings principle is engaged.
What independent experts add
- Clark established the RSS statistical framework.
- Cannings established the disputed-medical-evidence principle.
- Anthony established the CCRC-referral procedural route.
- de Berk established the international statistical-critique framework (Gill).
- Sally Clark's case drove the 2003 Attorney General's review of 297 similar convictions.
- Together, the precedents form a framework for reviewing post-conviction expert-evidence cases.
- The Letby October 2025 supplementary CCRC submissions operationalises this framework.