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April 2026: Thirlwall Inquiry final report due after Easter · CCRC still reviewing 31+ independent expert reports · Shoo Lee Panel (Feb 2025): no medical evidence of deliberate harm.

Lucy Letby Facts

Long-form · Procedural framework

What a retrial would require

If the CCRC refers and the Court of Appeal quashes the convictions, the next question is whether a retrial is ordered. A retrial would have to work with the evidence as it now is — which is materially different from the evidence at the 2022–2023 trial. This page walks through what a retrial would actually require and what the evidential picture would look like.

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When the Court of Appeal orders a retrial

After a CCRC referral, the Court of Appeal has four options: quash the convictions without retrial; quash with retrial ordered; uphold the convictions; refer specific counts for retrial while quashing others without retrial. The choice depends on whether the Court considers that a properly-conducted retrial on current evidence is viable and in the interests of justice.

For the Letby case, a retrial order would mean: the Crown would have to proceed on the current evidence, including the post-conviction expert reports that did not exist in 2022–2023. The Crown’s position would be structurally weakened relative to the 2022–2023 trial.

What the Crown would face at retrial

The Crown at a 2027-or-later retrial would face the following evidential pictures:

  1. Medical causation. The Shoo Lee International Expert Panel’s 14-signatory report, the Joint Insulin Report, and the independent paediatric-pathology re-readings each stand against the Crown’s 2022–2023 causation evidence. The Panel would be called by the defence; the Crown would have to adduce equivalent-weight expert evidence to counter it. The peer-reviewed literature does not exist to support the Crown’s framing.
  2. Statistical evidence. Prof. Richard Gill, Prof. Peter Green, Prof. Norman Fenton, Prof. Jane Hutton, Sir David Spiegelhalter, Prof. Leila Schneps each publicly critique the shift-rota chart. The RSS post-Sally-Clark framework applies. A qualified statistician would give evidence for the defence; the Crown did not call a qualified statistician at the original trial.
  3. Post-it notes. Clinical-psychology expert reports on self-blame writing in accused-clinician contexts would be adduced by the defence. The Crown’s “confession” framing would have to withstand this expert psychological-context critique.
  4. Institutional context. The Thirlwall Inquiry evidence — RCPCH review scope limits, apology-letter sequence, eight-month police-referral delay, executives arrested in 2025 — would all be part of the defence narrative on the institutional picture.
  5. Forensic-evidence gap. No TPN bags, no mass spectrometry, no retained physical exhibits, no post-mortem imaging showing intravascular gas. The Crown would have to proceed on clinical-framework evidence against defence expert-disagreement weight.

What the defence would bring that was not available in 2022

  • The Shoo Lee Panel report (Feb 2025) and the Additional 10 Cases report (Jun 2025).
  • The Joint Expert Witness Insulin Report (May 2025).
  • The independent paediatric-pathology re-readings.
  • The Thirlwall Inquiry evidence record.
  • The Ben Myers KC / Mark McDonald KC accumulated defence preparation.
  • The Phil Hammond / Rachel Aviv / Peter Hitchens / Matt d’Ancona public-record coverage.
  • The Fenton / Spiegelhalter / Hutton / Schneps statistical-expert-consensus record.
  • The Heneghan / Goldacre EBM-framework critique.

None of this was available to Ben Myers KC in 2022–2023. A retrial in 2027 or later would be a fundamentally different trial.

The Memory-delay problem at retrial

A retrial would compound the seven-year-delay problem (see our analysis). Witness testimony at retrial would be on events eleven or twelve years old. The memory-science framework predicts substantially reduced reliability. Contemporaneous records would therefore carry even more of the evidential weight, and those records support the Panel’s reading.

The likelihood of retrial order

Whether the Court of Appeal would order a retrial if it quashed the convictions is for the Court. Factors it weighs: interests of justice, public-interest considerations, the viability of a fair retrial on current evidence, the time elapsed since the original events, the personal circumstances of the defendant.

On the Horizon parallel, the Court of Appeal quashed most Horizon convictions without retrial. The Crown acknowledged it could not proceed on the current evidence. For Letby, the practical question is whether the Crown, on the current expert record, could sustain a fair retrial. Observers who have weighed this — Rob Rinder KC, Sir David Davis MP, Lord Sumption, the Bar Council signatories — have publicly expressed scepticism.

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