Speaker 1: Before we begin, Please be aware this episode contains discussions
Speaker 1: around infant deaths and other difficult topics. Please take care
Speaker 1: while listening. The movement of the court can feel like theater.
Speaker 1: Everyone a member of a caste who knows their roles.
Speaker 1: Stand when the judge comes in, speak from the witness box,
Speaker 1: swear to tell the truth. The prosecution is bound to
Speaker 1: share their evidence with the defense, and the defense team
Speaker 1: prepares ahead of time how best to defend their clients.
Speaker 1: Reporters who cover court for a living know this rhythm
Speaker 1: in their bones.
Speaker 2: I name every day a couple of other people there
Speaker 2: every day.
Speaker 1: Kim Pilling, a reporter with the Press Association in the UK,
Speaker 1: has been a news reporter for more than three decades,
Speaker 1: twenty years as a court reporter and ten months months
Speaker 1: of those covering the Lucy let Be case every single day, so.
Speaker 2: We knew it was going to be a very lengthy trial,
Speaker 2: full of complexities and lots of complex medical evidence surrounding that.
Speaker 2: An effect was seventeen trials in one Really each day
Speaker 2: we were full on, so to speak. There was a
Speaker 2: lot of information being put out each day.
Speaker 3: It was done at a very brisk pace.
Speaker 1: I remember sitting through days and days of medical testimony.
Speaker 1: During my own trial, it was hard for me to follow,
Speaker 1: and I can't imagine what it was like for the jury.
Speaker 1: But my life depended upon people understanding this evidence.
Speaker 2: The prosecution case closes, defense case starts, and she's cool
Speaker 2: to give evidence.
Speaker 1: One spring day in twenty twenty three, after the Crown
Speaker 1: ended its case, the doors of the court were opened
Speaker 1: for the first time that morning.
Speaker 3: When we came into court, she was already sat down.
Speaker 1: For months. All anyone saw of Lucy let Be was
Speaker 1: from what the Brits call the doc It's essentially a
Speaker 1: glassed in box for prisoners to sit in during their trial.
Speaker 1: From the public gallery, you see Lucy from the side,
Speaker 1: facing the judge, who sits on his dais at the
Speaker 1: front of the courtroom. But on this May morning, Lucy
Speaker 1: was waiting for everyone to arrive from a different vantage
Speaker 1: point at the front of the court, facing out from
Speaker 1: the witness box, before any.
Speaker 3: Of the lawyers came into the room, any of the
Speaker 3: families came into the room.
Speaker 1: Since her arrest and through what was to be one
Speaker 1: of Britain's longest trials in history, Lucy let Bee had
Speaker 1: lost the power to tell her own story. Now, sitting
Speaker 1: there in the witness box, Lucy was about to try
Speaker 1: to get that power back. Everyone knew it would be
Speaker 1: a gamble. I'm Amanda Knox and from Vespucci and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: This is doubt the Case of Lucy. Let be Episode five.
Speaker 3: The Defense.
Speaker 1: It is not a given that a defendant will testify
Speaker 1: in their own trial. It's a tricky decision, and in England,
Speaker 1: unlike in America, a failure to testify can actually be
Speaker 1: held against a defendant. In my own trial, my lawyers
Speaker 1: and I both wanted me to testify because we understood
Speaker 1: that the prosecution's case relied so heavily on character assassination,
Speaker 1: and the best antidote to that was for the jury
Speaker 1: to see the real me. But there's a huge risk
Speaker 1: in testifying. It's perfectly normal to get details wrong or
Speaker 1: confuse the order of events when recalling something that happened
Speaker 1: a long time ago. But every factual mistake in your
Speaker 1: testimony is an opportunity for the prosecution to call you
Speaker 1: a liar. And if you say I don't remember, as
Speaker 1: my lawyers recommended I do, that can look evasive because
Speaker 1: people expect you to remember everything, and when it came
Speaker 1: to Lucy's cross examination, she often couldn't remember the details
Speaker 1: and said so on the record.
Speaker 2: The defendants don't always give evidences. You don't have to
Speaker 2: give evidence.
Speaker 1: In an English courtroom, it's common for a witness that
Speaker 1: is also a prisoner to be escorted from the dock
Speaker 1: to the witness stand.
Speaker 2: They walk across the courtroom in front of the public
Speaker 2: gallery where I'm shat, and then you go across the
Speaker 2: witness box, sit down, face the jury, prison guard behind you.
Speaker 1: But for the two weeks Lucy testified in her own defense,
Speaker 1: each morning she would be there ready sitting in the
Speaker 1: witness box before anyone else came into the courtroom.
Speaker 2: I think she preferred to be sat in place before
Speaker 2: the jury came in, so we didn't have this performance
Speaker 2: of her being led across each each day from the
Speaker 2: dock to the witness box.
Speaker 4: This let be, would you give the court your full name?
Speaker 3: Please?
Speaker 5: Yes, Lucy let Be?
Speaker 4: And what's your date of birth? Miss let Be?
Speaker 5: Fourth of January nineteen ninety.
Speaker 1: There are no recordings in a UK court, so we've
Speaker 1: had actors read from the trial transcripts.
Speaker 4: When was it that you first knew you wanted to
Speaker 4: be a nurse.
Speaker 1: The first five days Lucy spent answering questions from her
Speaker 1: defense lawyer.
Speaker 5: I've always wanted to work with children, but it was
Speaker 5: towards the end of secondary school that I thought I
Speaker 5: wanted to do nursing, and then picked a level subjects
Speaker 5: that would best support that career.
Speaker 1: After months of evidence being presented against her, it was
Speaker 1: finally Lucy's turn to answer for herself.
Speaker 4: Over the period of twenty fifteen to twenty sixteen, we
Speaker 4: know you were looking at a number of babies in
Speaker 4: this indictment, and you understand that, don't you. Yes, there's
Speaker 4: seventeen of them. Yes, But could you put a figure
Speaker 4: on the number of babies you cared for over that
Speaker 4: twelve month period?
Speaker 5: Probably hundreds hundreds? Yes?
Speaker 4: And did you care for them?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 4: Did you ever do anything that was meant to hurt
Speaker 4: any of them?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 5: I only ever did my best to care for them.
Speaker 4: Did you ever want to hurt any baby you looked after?
Speaker 5: No, that's completely against everything that being a nurse is.
Speaker 5: I'm there to help and to care, not to harm.
Speaker 1: Everything about Lucy let Be was scrutinized during her time
Speaker 1: on the stand. From what she wore, she was.
Speaker 3: So dark blue black, you know, she quite no bright colors.
Speaker 1: To how she spoke, she was.
Speaker 2: Very directave clear answers, didn't deviate from the question, but
Speaker 2: again not particularly expressive.
Speaker 1: And of course how she looked.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you didn't know she was a nurse,
Speaker 2: you might think she was a librarian, something like that.
Speaker 3: You know, quite mousey. Maybe that's been a kid.
Speaker 1: This intense gaze on your every move and utterance is exhausting.
Speaker 1: When it came to the coverage of my trial, I
Speaker 1: was in an unwinnable situation. If I smiled at my
Speaker 1: family in the courtroom, a small gesture to let them
Speaker 1: know I was surviving, I was a media whore hungry
Speaker 1: for the spotlight. If I cried, they were crocodile tears
Speaker 1: and I was being manipulative. It was soul destroying. In
Speaker 1: September of twenty twenty four, Lucy let Be got a
Speaker 1: new lawyer. His name is Mark McDonald.
Speaker 6: So, I mean, it all initially started when the family
Speaker 6: contacted me and asked me to go and see Lucy.
Speaker 1: It's almost as though Mark McDonald's career was leading him
Speaker 1: to this case.
Speaker 6: I think this is a mischaracter justice. Before I became
Speaker 6: a barrister, actually in the operating theater, of the operating
Speaker 6: room as they called it in the US, for fourteen years,
Speaker 6: I was an assistant to the anetheist and the surgeon.
Speaker 6: I've worked in the INTERP two K unit, I've worked
Speaker 6: in A and E. I've spent many years working and
Speaker 6: embedded in the hospital in former situations as a doctor's assistant,
Speaker 6: I carried the crash bleep when I went to cardiac arrest.
Speaker 6: On the ward, I could take part an anesthetic machine
Speaker 6: and ventilators and put them back together again. I knew
Speaker 6: all the drugs and assistants. I intubated, I put IV
Speaker 6: lines in, I put arterial lines in, netlines in. I
Speaker 6: had a wealth of knowledge. And then I came to
Speaker 6: the bar and I qualified through night.
Speaker 1: School at the age of thirty four. Mark became a lawyer.
Speaker 1: Today he has taken on Lucy's case and is working
Speaker 1: pro bono.
Speaker 6: You know, from the moment she was arrested, it became
Speaker 6: a story in the mainstream media, on the front page
Speaker 6: of all the newspapers and documentaries and news items. She
Speaker 6: was described as evil as you described as the worst
Speaker 6: person in the country. It became about dismantling her as
Speaker 6: an individual, and I don't want to be part of
Speaker 6: that narrative. I want to focus on what convicted her
Speaker 6: and ow do ee and do that conviction.
Speaker 1: Mark says to do that, he has employed a multi
Speaker 1: pronged approach.
Speaker 6: The first element is the most important element. You don't
Speaker 6: undo a conviction unless you have the legal arguments and
Speaker 6: the expertise to be able to do so.
Speaker 1: Going through Lucy's testimony, it's clear that was something Lucy's
Speaker 1: trial lawyer Ben Myers had attempted to do. For example,
Speaker 1: the jury had heard that Lucy was on duty for
Speaker 1: every suspicious death and collapse. Myers tried to show that
Speaker 1: she was not alone.
Speaker 4: What was the atmosphere like concerning Baby N as that
Speaker 4: afternoon went on, We see there were these multiple attempts
Speaker 4: at indubation.
Speaker 5: It was becoming increasingly chaotic. More and more staff were
Speaker 5: coming to try and assist. There was a sense of
Speaker 5: panic around the unit. I think that we weren't sure
Speaker 5: how we were going to manage Baby n.
Speaker 4: Do you remember how many people were present as the
Speaker 4: afternoon went on, how many people gathered.
Speaker 5: There were loads of people I would say ten to fifteen.
Speaker 4: Were you his designated nurse during this Yes? Were you
Speaker 4: the only person caring for him at any point?
Speaker 5: No baby n needed such care that he always had
Speaker 5: at least two members of staff with him. I remember
Speaker 5: nurse being helping a lot, and the doctors were near
Speaker 5: enough in the room the whole time.
Speaker 1: Mark won't cred size Lucy's original lawyer, but he has
Speaker 1: no trouble pointing out what he says is a lack
Speaker 1: of evidence against his client.
Speaker 6: No direct evidence of Lucy's doing anything wrong. In fact
Speaker 6: the opposite. So no witnesses, no forensic evidence. Don't see
Speaker 6: see TV you know, no lesson abted drunks that have
Speaker 6: gone missing, In fact the opposite. She was highly regarded
Speaker 6: and seen by many on the unit as an excellent nurse.
Speaker 1: But what about those damning post it notes, the self
Speaker 1: incriminating notes found under Lucy's bed during the police investigation.
Speaker 7: I am an awful person, you write down at the
Speaker 7: top right hand corner, don't you?
Speaker 8: Yes?
Speaker 7: And that's true, isn't it.
Speaker 5: No, That's how I felt at the time. I was
Speaker 5: not good enough and I must be an awful person.
Speaker 1: The Crown used those notes and her social media posts
Speaker 1: to try and paint a picture of a woman who
Speaker 1: would hurt babies.
Speaker 7: We don't need to go back through the social media
Speaker 7: stuff to show you out on the rasp with your friends,
Speaker 7: do we No, you are having a good time, weren't you.
Speaker 5: Yes? There were times in those years that I did
Speaker 5: have good times.
Speaker 7: Yes, drinking fizz, going to the races.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 4: Yes, you felt like.
Speaker 7: This because you knew that you had killed and grievously
Speaker 7: injured these children. No, and that's the truth, isn't it.
Speaker 5: No, it's not the truth.
Speaker 7: You are a murderer.
Speaker 5: No, I am not.
Speaker 7: You have murdered many children.
Speaker 5: I've never murdered a child or harmed any of them.
Speaker 7: I have nothing further. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Lucy's notes made for sensational headlines, but those who have
Speaker 1: come to Lucy's defense say the police and the media
Speaker 1: and ultimately the jury have read them all wrong. Mark
Speaker 1: says Lucy had written these notes before she had been arrested,
Speaker 1: but had realized she was being blamed for the deaths
Speaker 1: on the unit.
Speaker 4: Why had you written not good enough and underlined it?
Speaker 5: I think that's the overwhelming thought and feeling that I
Speaker 5: had about myself at that point that I wasn't.
Speaker 4: Good enough and why did you think you weren't.
Speaker 5: Good enough because of the way people have made me feel?
Speaker 4: Had you actually done anything wrong to hurt any baby?
Speaker 6: No, and emotionally, she's writing this stuff down, as I say,
Speaker 6: with other stuff, saying that she hadn't done anything wrong,
Speaker 6: But the prosecution presented this to the Jewy as a confession,
Speaker 6: and it was left to the Jewy as a confession.
Speaker 1: Lucy wasn't the only nurse who leaned on this practice
Speaker 1: to help them cope with how hard their job really was.
Speaker 9: I do that too.
Speaker 1: This is a nurse named Jenny Harris. She's been a
Speaker 1: new Needdle nurse for eighteen years.
Speaker 9: So like things like saying that she did the confession
Speaker 9: on the post it note. I've been to therapy, I've
Speaker 9: been in CBT, I've had counselors and they've told me
Speaker 9: to write things down on what I'm thinking and what
Speaker 9: I'm feeling, but it doesn't mean it's right. So like,
Speaker 9: for example, I had a core belief that I was
Speaker 9: worthless and I was a bad person. There was no
Speaker 9: evidence that I was a bad person. That's what I've
Speaker 9: learned through my therapy. But I was to write that down,
Speaker 9: and I would write down I'm worthless, I'm a bad person,
Speaker 9: but I'm not a bad person.
Speaker 3: But just because I.
Speaker 9: Wrote it down doesn't mean it's true. But as soon
Speaker 9: as I heard that she'd written these post it notes,
Speaker 9: I was like, well, I've done that.
Speaker 1: Well the prosecution considered these notes a confession. Mark McDonald says,
Speaker 1: one of UK's leading experts on false confessions, does not
Speaker 1: see it that way.
Speaker 6: Thank you for everything, and he writes a very detailed
Speaker 6: report says this is not a confession. It should never
Speaker 6: have been treated as a confession. In fact, should never
Speaker 6: be put before the jewelry. And we've got to remember
Speaker 6: again that was left to the Jewey as a confession,
Speaker 6: and no expert evidence before the jewelry to counter that.
Speaker 6: It was part of and a strong part of the
Speaker 6: public narrative.
Speaker 1: Over the course of those twenty five weeks the Crown
Speaker 1: put on their case, the jury heard from expert after expert,
Speaker 1: hundreds of hours of testimony from people who all believed
Speaker 1: Lucy had killed these babies. But when it came time
Speaker 1: to refute all that expert testimony, the jury heard first
Speaker 1: from Lucy and then from one other person.
Speaker 2: In the end, she didn't call any experts on ABF
Speaker 2: and we heard a plumber.
Speaker 3: So the optics may look a bit curious there.
Speaker 1: That's right. You just heard reporter Kim Pilling say that
Speaker 1: the only witness to be called on behalf of Lucy
Speaker 1: let be was a plumber.
Speaker 2: He was just called to make a point which had
Speaker 2: come up during the trial that there'd been issues in
Speaker 2: the past with a sewage system on the unit, which
Speaker 2: the defense sort of portrayed the picture of well or
Speaker 2: was not well at the hospital.
Speaker 1: In fact, for about a year the unit was designated
Speaker 1: a risk, sometimes a high risk for a bacteria called
Speaker 1: Pseudomonas eruginosa, absolutely deadly for newborn babies. This decision to
Speaker 1: only call one person other than Lucy to the stand
Speaker 1: it's been widely criticized, but Lucy's current lawyer, Mark McDonald
Speaker 1: says that painting a pure of a sick hospital was important,
Speaker 1: something he believes is partly key to the question of
Speaker 1: what happened to those seven babies who died.
Speaker 6: It's no surprising now that we have so many problems
Speaker 6: in our NHS, not soly down to poor doctoring, but
Speaker 6: you know a whole complex issues in our hospital environment
Speaker 6: that we have a crisis. Our health system in this
Speaker 6: country is broken, and I should say that Lucy's a
Speaker 6: consequence of that broken system.
Speaker 1: But Mark's message is more than that. He believes there
Speaker 1: is another broken system at play here.
Speaker 6: One of the failings in our criminal justice system is
Speaker 6: that our threshold well what is an expert is actually
Speaker 6: quite low, as almost any medic can pitch up and
Speaker 6: say that they're an expert at something. And I know
Speaker 6: that it was argued during the trial that the lead
Speaker 6: expert in this case didn't have the expertise to say
Speaker 6: what he said. The Court of Appeal disagreed that defense
Speaker 6: arment was said to the trial judge. But that's one
Speaker 6: of the arguments that I'm now taken forward.
Speaker 1: Much has been made of doctor Dowie Evans since this trial.
Speaker 1: The police leaned heavily on his word and the Crown
Speaker 1: put him on the stand as their star witness.
Speaker 10: Juwey Evans was set up as some kind of messiah
Speaker 10: of the truth.
Speaker 1: John Ashton, who investigates serious failures of practice and hospitals,
Speaker 1: found doctor Evans' testimony lacking.
Speaker 10: When actually, in my view, there is a case for
Speaker 10: him to answer with the General Medical Council, which has
Speaker 10: consistently refused to even look at his behavior and his testimonies.
Speaker 1: In essence, John is saying that the way doctor Evans
Speaker 1: acted and what he said should have been investigated by
Speaker 1: the regulator for doctors in the UK, the General Medical Council,
Speaker 1: and John isn't alone in this thinking. Member of the
Speaker 1: people we interviewed had very specific issues with the way
Speaker 1: doctor Evans presented evidence during the trial and his behavior
Speaker 1: after not the.
Speaker 3: Experience I've got sitting down with experts. You know, they spake.
Speaker 11: A lot of time on these things and very rarely
Speaker 11: do they come out with it. Yes, this is being
Speaker 11: a deliberate killing.
Speaker 1: Doctor Steve Watts is a veteran police officer and former
Speaker 1: Assistant Chief Constable. He authored the National Guidelines for Investigating
Speaker 1: Potential Crimes in healthcare settings used by police departments across England.
Speaker 1: He thinks the Cheshire Police made every grave mistake possible
Speaker 1: during their investigation into Lucy, starting with their involvement with
Speaker 1: doctor Dowie Evans.
Speaker 11: You know, it's very much more nuanced than that. I mean,
Speaker 11: speaking personally, if I'd had an expert who responded in
Speaker 11: that way, it would raise questions in my mind as
Speaker 11: to whether I needed that evidence look to again, and
Speaker 11: that sort of view validated by others.
Speaker 1: Doctor Phil Hammond, a columnist from Private Eye magazine and
Speaker 1: a critic of Lucy's conviction, also weighed in.
Speaker 12: I think the thing that was a big red flag
Speaker 12: for me as a doctor about Dewry Evans, who's the
Speaker 12: lead prosecution expert, is his certainty. If he had said
Speaker 12: I've looked at all of these cases and in my
Speaker 12: professional opinion, the most likely cause of these deaths is
Speaker 12: deliberate harm, then that's absolutely fine to me. But what
Speaker 12: he said, he's absolutely certain that it's deliberate harm, and
Speaker 12: has since gone on podcasts saying that Lucy let Me
Speaker 12: is evil. He couldn't possibly be wrong. People are only
Speaker 12: defending her because they're obsessed with a pretty blonde nurse.
Speaker 12: He said some quite extraordinary things that have completely gone
Speaker 12: outside the lane of being an independent expert, and that
Speaker 12: for me is a big red flag.
Speaker 1: Michelle Warden, a neonatal practitioner at Countess of Chester, is
Speaker 1: also wary of doctor Evans's motivation.
Speaker 8: He's also on record of saying I've never lost a case. Now,
Speaker 8: how can an expert. He's not a barrister, he's not
Speaker 8: a lawyer. He shouldn't be about winning and losing. He's
Speaker 8: about giving his expert opinion. But he's never lost a case.
Speaker 8: So he's a hired gun really for the prosecution. It
Speaker 8: earned a lot of money. Is on record of saying, well, yes,
Speaker 8: I earned a lot of money, but I have to
Speaker 8: pay for my daughter's horse and my son's car. I mean,
Speaker 8: he's on record. He said that in a I think
Speaker 8: it was BBC radio program. He said that.
Speaker 1: Ben Myers, Lucy's original defense lawyer, did conduct a very
Speaker 1: aggressive cross examination of doctor Evans.
Speaker 4: No, what you have done in your evidence today is
Speaker 4: introduced something new with the purpose of supporting the allegation
Speaker 4: rather than explaining the facts. Isn't it.
Speaker 13: No, No, that is incorrect. I'm here to support the
Speaker 13: jury and everyone in this court trying to explain what
Speaker 13: was it that led to a baby who was very
Speaker 13: small and premature suddenly collapsing and where resuscitation was unsuccessful.
Speaker 13: In doing that, I am totally upfront in seeing that.
Speaker 2: It was very adversarial between mister Myers and Dowie Evans.
Speaker 3: I mean, they clashed quite regularly.
Speaker 2: And to the point where you know, in the end,
Speaker 2: we got very quickly to the point where mister Myers
Speaker 2: just accused Dowie Evans of being bused.
Speaker 13: I am not relying on my opinion alone. I'm relying
Speaker 13: on other people's opinion, sorry, other medical people's opinion as well.
Speaker 3: That is what doctors do. We do it all the time.
Speaker 3: That is what we do.
Speaker 13: Okay, So I'm here to assist the members of the
Speaker 13: jury in sorting out what is a pretty complicated case.
Speaker 4: I'm suggesting to you, Dr Evans that you were reaching
Speaker 4: for things that support the allegation rather than reflecting the facts. Well,
Speaker 4: I disagree with you.
Speaker 14: I have just explained the facts.
Speaker 2: Mister Meyeres was accusing him of being an unreliable witness,
Speaker 2: and Dutch Evans I think he took that.
Speaker 3: Personally as well.
Speaker 2: So that played all out and at times it was
Speaker 2: quite uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: To listen to.
Speaker 1: It's up to every defense team to decide which witnesses
Speaker 1: to call and how to present their case. But it's
Speaker 1: important to remember that Lucy was considered innocent before the
Speaker 1: jury found her guilty, and it wasn't her lawyer's job
Speaker 1: to prove her innocent. His job was to poke holes
Speaker 1: in the evidence presented against her. And at some point
Speaker 1: Lucy's team decided they would not call their own witnesses.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know that's the defense meant that decision,
Speaker 3: and they're not at liberty to disclose why they met
Speaker 3: the decision like that.
Speaker 2: But I'd say that my experience is, if you're going
Speaker 2: to call a witness, are they going to help your case,
Speaker 2: are they're going to assist it?
Speaker 3: Or could they potentially damage your case?
Speaker 2: And as a general rule, if the downside is greater
Speaker 2: than the upside, then it's maybe best not to call
Speaker 2: this wordness for whatever reason. Mister Meyers is extremely experienced.
Speaker 3: Council.
Speaker 2: If they've decided not to call the medical experts, that
Speaker 2: it wouldn't have been done on a whim, and it
Speaker 2: would have been a tactical decision.
Speaker 1: It's a tactical decision that doctor Mike Hall did not
Speaker 1: agree with.
Speaker 14: I was indignant, I think it was the best word
Speaker 14: I can find, and extremely concerned that I had heard
Speaker 14: things said purporting to be medical facts, which in my
Speaker 14: view were not medical facts.
Speaker 1: Doctor Mike Hall, an expert in neonatal medicine was there
Speaker 1: for the whole trial on behalf of the defense team.
Speaker 14: The request was that they asked if I would attend
Speaker 14: court now, initially for the first probably three or four months,
Speaker 14: that was in person in Manchester, and subsequently for the
Speaker 14: last I can remember two or three months of the trial.
Speaker 14: I did that from home.
Speaker 1: Doctor Hall was expecting to be called as an expert
Speaker 1: witness for the defense. That never happened.
Speaker 14: I'm not ilegal legally trained in any way, so as
Speaker 14: a man in the street, as it were, I couldn't
Speaker 14: understand why on earth you would not call expert witnesses,
Speaker 14: particularly given what I'd heard by other expert witnesses. A
Speaker 14: significant proportion of what some of the other expert witnesses
Speaker 14: said I disagreed with, and while the jury would have
Speaker 14: had to decide which of us they believe, I think
Speaker 14: it was important in my view for Lucy let Be
Speaker 14: to have experts who gave a different opinion.
Speaker 1: Doctor Hall says that he disagreed with a fundamental aspect
Speaker 1: of the Crown's case.
Speaker 14: This concept that really was portrayed at the trial, that
Speaker 14: babies don't suddenly collapse for no no good reason, that's
Speaker 14: not the case in the enatal Claire. Babies do suddenly change,
Speaker 14: and they can change quite quickly when you're not expecting
Speaker 14: them to.
Speaker 1: Doctor Evans argued that Lucy must have caused an air
Speaker 1: embolism by pumping air into their bodies, but since the conviction,
Speaker 1: controversy around that theory has grown, Doctor Hall says that
Speaker 1: if he had been able to testify, he would have
Speaker 1: pointed out the flaws.
Speaker 14: I thought all of the conclusion relating to our embolism
Speaker 14: were not based on credible evidence.
Speaker 1: Mark McDonald says that the first part of his job
Speaker 1: is to get the courts to acknowledge key issues with
Speaker 1: the evidence used to convict Lucy. That includes issues with
Speaker 1: the way police framed the timeline of the so called murders.
Speaker 1: He says that parents who lost babies after Lucy was
Speaker 1: off the ward have been ignored by the police.
Speaker 6: I've disgusted with families who have lost their children as
Speaker 6: a result of problems, medical problems, diagnoses and failures to
Speaker 6: treat a child who has died. And so I've got
Speaker 6: these people. These have all come to me since so
Speaker 6: I get many emails every day.
Speaker 1: But there is more to Mark's approach than just dealing
Speaker 1: with problematic evidence. Remember, his approach has more than one prong.
Speaker 6: The second is to change the narrative around her.
Speaker 1: Mark says that this negative narrative around Lucy is hurting
Speaker 1: her chances for an appeal.
Speaker 6: So it's important to get an alternative narrative out. They're
Speaker 6: not a false al tentative plan, not a pretend narrative,
Speaker 6: but simply tell the truth as to what's going on
Speaker 6: in exposing the issues. She was one of the most
Speaker 6: qualified nurses on the unit, which is why she got
Speaker 6: all the seriously ill patients. And she was someone also
Speaker 6: that worked, had a passion for a job, so did
Speaker 6: a lot of extra shift. She was saving up to
Speaker 6: buy a flat, and so she would do extra hours
Speaker 6: so she would get more money so she could get
Speaker 6: herself a mortgage for her apartment. And so she was
Speaker 6: someone who was committed and loved her job. And she
Speaker 6: told me one weeks ago that you know, she would
Speaker 6: go out in the evening, she'ld go out with friends
Speaker 6: and she'd get a text from the unit because they
Speaker 6: couldn't set up this particular type of equipment and didn't
Speaker 6: know how to do it, and say she had come out,
Speaker 6: and she'd go back and she'd showed them how to
Speaker 6: do it, but says she was always sort of almost
Speaker 6: constantly on call and constantly there.
Speaker 1: This hits me hard. I know what it feels like
Speaker 1: when other people take your life story and write their
Speaker 1: own narrative. I've had my own diaries used against me.
Speaker 1: I've had my childhood nickname twisted to mean something ugly.
Speaker 1: I too, tried to be the author of my own story.
Speaker 1: After my trials, and once I was back home in
Speaker 1: the US, I wrote my first book, hoping that if
Speaker 1: I told things from my point of view, people would
Speaker 1: hear it. Some did, lots did not. It took me
Speaker 1: years to find a way through this maze. A big
Speaker 1: part of this journey is accepting that I will never
Speaker 1: be able to correct all the false perceptions about me.
Speaker 1: I have to find my sense of freedom outside of
Speaker 1: the question of whether people believe I'm innocent. I'm not alone.
Speaker 1: So many women who face the criminal justice system face this.
Speaker 1: One thing I've noticed is that it's more common for
Speaker 1: women to face character assassination than men. They have to
Speaker 1: deal with unequal scrutiny when they are faced with answering
Speaker 1: for a crime, innocent or not, the justice system is
Speaker 1: not genderblind.
Speaker 6: Years after this conviction is over to people will be
Speaker 6: talking about issues of misolgyny and feminism that I think
Speaker 6: polluted the whole. In this case, I have the narrative
Speaker 6: behind it.
Speaker 1: When I was researching for this podcast, I came across
Speaker 1: this video online for expeditions the Living Library of Knowledge.
Speaker 15: When I talk about the gender nature of law is
Speaker 15: about basing attitudes towards women in the stereotypes and the
Speaker 15: myths that exist about womanhood and about women's sexuality, about
Speaker 15: the need to constrain women.
Speaker 1: This is Baroness Helena Kennedy, a distinguished politician, human rights advocate,
Speaker 1: and lawyer who practiced law for over fifty years, often
Speaker 1: focusing on women and the law, the.
Speaker 15: Ways in which it is assumed that women will manipulate
Speaker 15: and lie, the ways in which itselften assumed that women
Speaker 15: will not be honest about their own sexual longings and behavior,
Speaker 15: and indeed the very idea that women have sexual longings
Speaker 15: has often been denied in law.
Speaker 1: This question of why women may be treated differently by
Speaker 1: the judicial system is one I've spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time thinking about. Here's me speaking to my producer about this.
Speaker 1: You know, there are ways that men are stereotyped, Like
Speaker 1: things that people tend to project onto men are things
Speaker 1: like anger and violence. And so if someone is able
Speaker 1: to present themselves calmly and with confidence in a courtroom,
Speaker 1: people are when they're a man that plays well for
Speaker 1: them right, they seem relatable, agreeable, especially if they're put together.
Speaker 1: Luigimnngoni is a great example here in the US right now,
Speaker 1: where he is this charismatic, very seemingly like optimistic figure,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that there's copious evidence that shows that
Speaker 1: he just murdered this CEO of a healthcare company in
Speaker 1: cold blood. It's amazing to me that like men who
Speaker 1: are accused of murder can still imbue this sense of charm,
Speaker 1: this sense of this calm, confident, amicable nature. Whereas when
Speaker 1: it comes to women, if you smile and have this
Speaker 1: sense of calm or warmth to you, well you're clearly
Speaker 1: a psychopath. If you are cold and withdrawn, well you're
Speaker 1: clearly a psychopath. Like it just seems that when it
Speaker 1: comes to women, if your drab and ugly, well that's
Speaker 1: more motive for you have to have committed some crime.
Speaker 1: If you're beautiful and charismatic, Ah, well, that's more ability
Speaker 1: for you to have used your feminine wiles in order
Speaker 1: to commit this crime. There's just no winning when you're
Speaker 1: a woman. Everything about you, anything that you do, or
Speaker 1: say or appear to be, can be used to find
Speaker 1: fault in you. And when it comes to Lucy, let
Speaker 1: be I mean this is true of all women who
Speaker 1: are accused of violent crimes, violent crimes that statistically are
Speaker 1: committed by men, and so we do not expect them
Speaker 1: to be committed by women. And so we think that
Speaker 1: a woman has to be a true, the egregious example
Speaker 1: of a monster in order to rise to the level
Speaker 1: of violence that men are capable of. And then, above all,
Speaker 1: for that to be someone who is in the position
Speaker 1: of being a caretaker for a vulnerable population like that
Speaker 1: is the greatest betrayal of our sex that you could
Speaker 1: possibly be. And so it doesn't come to a surprise
Speaker 1: to me that Lucy, having been found guilty of these crimes,
Speaker 1: having been found guilty of this betrayal of our gender,
Speaker 1: was handed such a harsh sentence to be made an
Speaker 1: example of. And in the one hand, I sort of
Speaker 1: understand it because society does rely upon women being safe
Speaker 1: and stable, and so we are especially driven to punish
Speaker 1: and condemn examples of when that doesn't pan out. That's
Speaker 1: exact exactly what Lucy let Be was about to face.
Speaker 1: She's now sitting in prison, about to be sentenced to
Speaker 1: one of the harshest sentences in British history, coming up
Speaker 1: on doubt the case of Lucy let Be.
Speaker 15: As soon as she was found guilty, it was I mean,
Speaker 15: there was just no voice scene of any skepticism or
Speaker 15: doubt about the verdict. It was just the first time
Speaker 15: that things were questioned really openly. It just didn't It
Speaker 15: just didn't sit right to me.
Speaker 3: It wasn't believable.
Speaker 2: There's huge holes in the story that they were telling
Speaker 2: and what they had to.
Speaker 3: Back it up with.
Speaker 1: Doubt. The Case of Lucy let Bee is brought to
Speaker 1: you by Vespucci, iHeart Podcasts and Knox Robinson Productions. I've
Speaker 1: been your host Amanda Knox. This episode was written by
Speaker 1: Kathleen Goldharm. Senior producer is Natalia Rodriguez. The producer was
Speaker 1: Lucy Ditchmont. The assistant producer was Amy Gill. The sound
Speaker 1: designer is Tom Biddle. The theme music was written by
Speaker 1: Tom Biddle, story editing by Kathleen Goldhar. Legal advice was
Speaker 1: provided by Jack Browning. Voice acting by Kenny Blythe, Serena
Speaker 1: Montigui and Paul Leaming. The producers at iHeart Podcasts are
Speaker 1: Chandler Mays and Katrina Norville. The executive producers were Joe Meek,
Speaker 1: Amanda Knox, Christopher Robinson, Daniel Turkin, and Johnny Galvin. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening.