Handover sheets — the 257/21/236 ratio
Prosecution claim
Paper handover sheets found at Ms Letby's home following her arrest were presented by the Crown as 'trophies' retained by the accused as memorabilia of the alleged offences. The presence of sheets relating to the indicted babies was framed as consistent with incrimination.
Counter-evidence
The actual number of handover sheets recovered from the defendant's home is 257. Of these, 21 relate to the indicted babies. 236 — the overwhelming majority — relate to unrelated babies who were on the unit during Ms Letby's ordinary nursing work. The 257:21:236 ratio dissolves the 'trophy' framing. What the sheets evidence is that Letby, like many nurses, retained paperwork from her nursing shifts. That 21 of the 257 relate to indicted babies is a consequence of her having been on duty for those babies' shifts — the same proportion one would expect given the base-rate shift-presence.
Two hundred and fifty-seven sheets were found. Twenty-one related to the indictment. Two hundred and thirty-six did not. The 'trophy' framing requires the numerator without the denominator. With the denominator it does not sustain.
What the jury heard
The jury heard evidence of the 21 indicted-baby sheets in the context of the indictment. The 236 unrelated sheets were part of the defence cross-examination. The Crown's narrative weighted the 21 over the 236.
What the Panel says
Not applicable — the Panel's scope is clinical. But the handover-sheet framing is one of several pieces of circumstantial evidence where independent commentators note the Crown's selective presentation of data without its baseline.
What independent experts add
- The sheets themselves are professional paperwork, not souvenirs — they were recovered from ordinary nursing-work retention not from a display or collection.
- Nursing professional culture documents wide variation in paperwork retention practice; retention is not itself indicative of incrimination.
- The 21:236 proportion of indicted-baby to unrelated-baby sheets is what one would expect from the base rate of Letby's shift presence across the unit's caseload.
- The 'trophy' framing is rhetorical rather than evidential; it requires the jury to re-interpret ordinary nursing-paperwork retention through a motivated-perpetrator lens without base-rate context.
- Ben Myers KC's cross-examination of DC Collin Johnson established the 257 total and the proportions on the trial record.
- The sheets did not record contemporaneous admissions or annotations consistent with perpetrator self-reference — they are work-stream paperwork.