Interview With Tom Hayes On Lucy Letby And Libor

Tom Hayes, the LIBOR trader whose conviction was eventually quashed by the UK Supreme Court after years of imprisonment, speaks about the parallels between his experience and Lucy Letby's. He explains how his confession was extracted under duress during complex legal proceedings and how it was later used against him despite being unreliable. Hayes is critical of the expert witness industry, arguing that paid experts are selected and briefed precisely to reach particular conclusions, and that courts lack the means to assess whether competing expert claims are genuinely contested within the relevant scientific community. He proposes court-appointed independent experts to address the inequality of arms between prosecution and defence. Hayes is clear that the British legal system, while superficially fair, has structural features that make it prone to convicting people who lack the resources or knowledge to challenge technical evidence effectively.

Last updated 2026-07-14

2 min read

Notable extracts

Short verbatim extracts from the video. Each quote is under 80 words and attributed to the speaker. Extracted under fair-dealing for review and news reporting (CDPA 1988 s.30).

Tom Hayes (Speaker 1)

I confessed. And my confession was used against me for years. But a confession extracted when someone is terrified, legally isolated, and facing decades in prison is not evidence of guilt — it is evidence of fear.

On false confessions and their use in court

Tom Hayes (Speaker 1)

The expert witness industry is a business. Experts are selected because they will say what the side paying them needs them to say. The court cannot easily tell the difference between a genuine scientific consensus and a manufactured one.

On the unreliability of paid expert witness evidence

Tom Hayes (Speaker 1)

Court-appointed experts. Independent of both sides. That is the only way you can have genuine equality of arms on technical questions. Without that, money wins.

Proposing a structural reform to the expert witness system

Interview With Tom Hayes On Lucy Letby And Libor

Last updated 2026-07-14

2 min read

Notable extracts

Short verbatim extracts from the video. Each quote is under 80 words and attributed to the speaker. Extracted under fair-dealing for review and news reporting (CDPA 1988 s.30).

Tom Hayes (Speaker 1)

I confessed. And my confession was used against me for years. But a confession extracted when someone is terrified, legally isolated, and facing decades in prison is not evidence of guilt — it is evidence of fear.

On false confessions and their use in court

Tom Hayes (Speaker 1)

The expert witness industry is a business. Experts are selected because they will say what the side paying them needs them to say. The court cannot easily tell the difference between a genuine scientific consensus and a manufactured one.

On the unreliability of paid expert witness evidence

Tom Hayes (Speaker 1)

Court-appointed experts. Independent of both sides. That is the only way you can have genuine equality of arms on technical questions. Without that, money wins.

Proposing a structural reform to the expert witness system

Interview With Tom Hayes On Lucy Letby And Libor

Notable extracts

Related on this site

Interview With Tom Hayes On Lucy Letby And Libor

Notable extracts

Related on this site