What a summing-up does
In English Crown Court procedure, the trial judge’s summing-up has two functions: to remind the jury of the evidence adduced during the trial, and to direct them on the legal framework under which they must deliberate. Its influence is disproportionate because it is the last sustained exposition the jury hears before they retire to consider their verdicts.
The expert-evidence direction
A standard expert-evidence direction in a complex criminal trial includes:
- Reminding the jury that expert witnesses are giving opinions, not facts.
- Reminding them that they are not bound by expert opinion.
- Identifying the specific limitations of the expert methodology in use.
- Comparing competing expert opinions on their methodological merits rather than on rhetorical presentation.
The summing-up in the Letby case did discuss the expert evidence. The extent to which it specifically alerted the jury to the methodological limitations of the Crown’s lead causation expert — the self-referral to police, the decade out of routine NICU practice, the forensic-from-hypothesis rather than blinded-differential methodology — is a specific CCRC question.
The statistical-evidence direction
The Royal Statistical Society’s post-Sally-Clark framework is, in UK criminal-justice circles, the canonical reference on how statistical evidence should be presented to juries. Where a prosecution case relies on a pattern derived from selected events, a proper judicial direction would alert the jury to the selection effect.
The summing-up in the Letby case addressed the shift-rota chart. Whether the direction given on the chart satisfied the RSS post-Clark framework — particularly on the selection-effect problem the chart demonstrably has — is a specific CCRC question. Independent statisticians have publicly argued it did not.
The handwritten-notes direction
The notes were the emotional centre of the prosecution case. The jury was asked to read “I am evil I did this” as a confession. A judicial direction on such evidence would normally:
- Place the highlighted phrases in the context of the whole document.
- Alert the jury to the distinction between private notes and forensic confession.
- Remind them that self-blame writing has multiple interpretations.
- Identify the specific features a forensic confession would normally include (specific victim, method, motive, audience).
The extent to which the summing-up walked the jury through each of these elements, in the full-context reading, is again a specific CCRC question. The clinical-psychology expert reports filed with the October 2025 CCRC application address the self-blame alternative reading at the level of detail a fair direction would have required.
The institutional-context direction
A fair summing-up in a case of this structure would also walk the jury through the institutional context: the documented unit strain, the superbug outbreak, the infrastructure failures, the 2016 RCPCH review’s scope, and the CQC inspection’s scope. The Crown’s institutional narrative was that external review had examined the concerns; the accurate institutional record is that external review was not scoped to examine individual deaths. The summing-up could have made that distinction explicit. On the public record, it did not do so at length.
Why the summing-up is a CCRC question
The CCRC can refer a conviction to the Court of Appeal where there is a real possibility the Court of Appeal would not uphold the conviction. One of the grounds that can contribute to that conclusion is inadequate judicial direction — particularly on the methodological limitations of the prosecution case. Inadequate direction is not a judicial failing in any pejorative sense; it can simply reflect what was before the court at the time. Mr Justice Goss did not have, in 2023, the Panel report, the Joint Insulin Report, the clinical-psychology expert reports, or the Thirlwall Inquiry evidence that a summing-up in 2026 could address.
The CCRC’s question is not whether the 2023 directions were wrong by 2023 standards. It is whether a Court of Appeal, reviewing the convictions on the 2025 and 2026 body of evidence, would conclude that the 2023 jury had been adequately equipped to weigh the case as a 2026 reader now can. That is a different question — and it is the question the October 2025 application asks.