Why his role matters in this case
Benjamin Myers KC is the barrister who argued the defence case in front of the jury. Every line of evidence the independent expert critique has since developed was, in some form, put in front of the 2023 jury by Mr Myers. Understanding what the defence presented, and what the jury ultimately concluded, matters for understanding what the CCRC review is and is not saying.
The post-conviction expert evidence does not primarily argue that the defence presented the wrong case. It argues that the defence presented the right case but did not have, at that time, the volume of independent specialist back-up that has now accumulated. The Panel, the Joint Insulin Report, the statistical critiques by Prof. Gill and Prof. Green, and the paediatric-pathology re-readings all reinforce the framework Mr Myers ran at trial.
Professional background
- King’s Counsel (KC); Northern Circuit.
- Extensive criminal-defence practice, including serious sexual offences and complex expert-evidence cases.
- Lead defence counsel at the original Letby trial (Manchester Crown Court, October 2022 – August 2023) and at the Child K retrial (June–July 2024).
The defence framework he set out
Mr Myers’s opening statement (October 2022) framed the defence position from the outset. The principal themes — most of which remain the principal themes of the post-conviction evidence — were:
- The cluster of deaths was occurring on a Level 2 neonatal unit operating outside its design envelope, with staffing shortages, infection problems and infrastructure failures.
- The medical evidence of deliberate harm was not, on a proper clinical-biochemistry and neonatology reading, present. Each indicted collapse had plausible natural-causes explanations.
- The statistical shift chart was methodologically unsound. Selection effects, not wrongdoing, accounted for its apparent pattern.
- The handwritten “confession” notes were self-blame under stress, a well-recognised pattern in nurses accused of unexplained deaths — not a forensic confession.
- The Facebook searches were a curated subset of years of routine searches, with the denominator hidden.
- The insulin immunoassay result was a screening test never designed for forensic use.
What the defence did not have at the time
What the defence could not put in front of the 2023 jury — because it did not yet exist — was the body of independent expert evidence that has since accumulated:
- The Shoo Lee International Expert Panel report (February 2025), now the authoritative neonatological reading of the case.
- The Joint Expert Witness Insulin Report on Babies F and L (May 2025).
- The paediatric-pathology re-readings now filed with the CCRC.
- Prof. Richard Gill’s and Prof. Peter Green’s detailed statistical reports.
- The Guardian’s September 2024 investigation, and the Thirlwall Inquiry’s systematic exposure of the Datix record and the apology-letter sequence.
Why the transition to Mark McDonald KC matters
After the May 2024 Court of Appeal refusal, Lucy Letby’s legal representation moved to Mark McDonald KC for the CCRC-application phase. This is standard practice: trial counsel and post-conviction counsel are often different, because the work is different. Mr Myers ran the case the defence had to run in 2022–2023. Mr McDonald is now running the case the defence can run in 2025–2026, with the post-conviction expert evidence in hand.
The shift is not a criticism of Mr Myers’s work. It is a recognition that the question has changed: from “can the defence dislodge the Crown’s evidence in front of a jury?” to “is there a real possibility the Court of Appeal would not uphold the conviction given the new evidence now available?”