Why her role matters
Senior Treasury Counsel are the senior barristers instructed by the Crown in the most serious criminal cases. Their deployment reflects the Crown Prosecution Service’s own assessment of the gravity of the case. Ms Blackwell KC’s leadership of the prosecution is therefore itself a marker of how the Crown viewed the case.
Her closing speech to the jury is the Crown’s synthesis of its case at the moment the jury was about to retire. The specific framing she advanced — six mutually-corroborating strands of evidence — is the framing independent review has subsequently identified as circular rather than independently convergent.
Professional background
- Senior Treasury Counsel. Senior Treasury Counsel are a small group of senior barristers instructed by the Crown in the most serious cases.
- King’s Counsel (KC). Previous extensive criminal practice on the Northern Circuit.
- Led the Crown at the original Letby trial (Manchester Crown Court, October 2022 – August 2023).
- Led the Crown at the Child K retrial (Manchester Crown Court, June–July 2024).
The six-strand closing framing
The Crown’s closing speech presented its case as built on six mutually-corroborating strands:
- The air-embolism mechanism supported by Dr Dewi Evans’s causation opinion.
- The Roche Cobas insulin immunoassay result on Babies F and L.
- The shift-rota chart on the 25 selected events.
- The handwritten Post-it notes.
- The Facebook searches and search history.
- The handover sheets retained at home.
Independent review since 2024 has identified that the strands are not independent of each other. Each strand rests on the premise that the cluster requires a criminal explanation — and the cumulative argument only works if the strands are treated as mutually corroborating. When each is examined individually, the evidential weight is much less than the Crown’s closing suggested. See our circular evidence analysis.
Why this biography is on the site
Public-record transparency. The prosecutor who led the case is a material figure in the trial record. Providing a neutral biographical entry is a matter of public-record completeness, not personal criticism. The framing Ms Blackwell KC advanced at trial is the framing the CCRC review now considers.