May 2026: Thirlwall Inquiry report delayed to at least September 2026 · six-baby inquests relisted to 2027 · CCRC review active · Shoo Lee Panel: no medical evidence of deliberate harm.
Witness testimony at the 2022–2023 trial and the 2024 retrial was competent evidence of the events it addressed. The Crown's witnesses gave evidence on events from 2015–2016 with appropriate recall.
Cognitive psychology establishes that long-delay witness testimony has substantially reduced reliability compared to contemporaneous records. Memories are reconstructive, not recording; accuracy declines with time; repeated retelling modifies memory; post-event information (press coverage, police interview, legal preparation, peer discussion) integrates with original memory; confidence and accuracy are weakly correlated over long delays. Witness testimony at the 2022–2023 trial was on events six to eight years old; at the 2024 retrial, on events eight years old. Between events and testimony, witnesses had participated in multiple internal reviews, police interviews, press coverage, and legal preparation — each of which is, in memory-science terms, a source of post-event information that would have integrated with original memory. Contemporaneous records — Datix logs, clinical notes, internal-review minutes — are more evidentially reliable than long-delay testimony. Where the two conflict, the contemporaneous record should prevail.
Contemporaneous records are more reliable than long-delay witness testimony. On the Letby record, the contemporaneous documents support the systems-failure reading; the long-delay witness testimony was pressed into the single-actor reading at trial.
Witness testimony from 2022–2023, on events from 2015–2016. The memory-science reliability limits were not systematically walked through; no expert on memory science gave evidence at trial.
The Panel's reliance on contemporaneous records rather than trial-testimony recollections is implicitly consistent with the memory-science reliability hierarchy. Its conclusions reflect the contemporaneous record, which is the more reliable source.