Context
The defence closing speech in the original trial was delivered by Mr Benjamin Myers KC. It addressed each of the prosecution’s principal lines of evidence in sequence. A full-text archive is maintained by lucyletbyinnocence.com; this page summarises the principal arguments.
The shift chart
The defence submitted that the chart shown to the jury was statistically misleading because the events were selected, in part, because Ms Letby was present for them. Defence submissions foreshadowed the formal Royal Statistical Society critiques that followed conviction.
Air embolism
The defence submitted that the skin signs described by the Crown’s expert are non-specific, that the diagnostic framework relied on the Lee & Tanswell 1989 paper without engaging with its scope, and that non-deliberate causes (sepsis, NEC, cardiac decompensation) were consistent with each collapse.
Insulin
The defence submitted that the Royal Liverpool immunoassay was never validated or intended for forensic use, and that no confirmatory mass spectrometry was performed. They drew out that the samples’ laboratory paperwork itself flagged them as “for clinical purposes only”.
The Post-it notes
The defence submitted the full content of the notes — which includes the statements “I haven’t done anything wrong” and “WHY ME?” alongside the phrases the Crown highlighted — and invited the jury to read them as stress-diary material, not a confession.
Unit context
The defence drew attention to the unit’s 2015–16 designation, staffing constraints, plumbing and pharmacy incidents, and to the Datix record that showed a unit under serious strain.
Read alongside
Every evidence issue has its own detail page: shift statistics, air embolism, insulin, the notes, the unit.