Why his career matters as context
Most miscarriages of justice are corrected only when sustained, resourced, specialist journalism walks the public through the underlying evidence over years. In the Post Office Horizon case — the closest UK template for the Letby case — Nick Wallis was the principal sustained journalistic voice from 2011 onwards. His Radio 4 The Great Post Office Trial series, his print journalism, and his 2021 book The Great Post Office Scandal together formed the public record that eventually fed into the 2024 ITV dramatisation Mr Bates vs The Post Office and the subsequent statutory exoneration process.
The template is relevant to Letby. Sustained independent journalistic engagement with specialist technical evidence is what moves a contested conviction from “the courts have decided” to “the courts should look at this again”. Dr Phil Hammond at Private Eye is substantially playing that role for the Letby case. Rachel Aviv’s New Yorker piece is a discrete large-scale counterpart. Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday is the right-of-centre broadsheet parallel. Together they are a Horizon-template journalistic response, building in real time.
Professional background
- Broadcast and print journalist, working across BBC, Private Eye, and independent print.
- Principal sustained journalistic coverage of the Post Office Horizon scandal from 2011 onwards.
- Author of The Great Post Office Scandal: The Fight to Expose a Multimillion Pound IT Disaster Which Put Innocent People in Jail (2021).
- Presenter of BBC Radio 4’s The Great Post Office Trial series, one of the most-listened-to UK long-form documentary podcasts.
What the Horizon template teaches
The Horizon exoneration happened because several components worked together: organised defendants (Alan Bates and the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance); independent technical experts (forensic IT specialists); sustained journalism (Wallis and others); parliamentary engagement (David Davis MP among others); and, finally, mass public recognition triggered by the ITV dramatisation.
Mapped onto the Letby case: organised post-conviction defence (Mark McDonald KC and the CCRC application); independent technical experts (Shoo Lee Panel, Joint Insulin Report, pathology re-readings); sustained journalism (Hammond, Aviv, Hitchens, this site); parliamentary engagement (Davis, Sumption). The public-recognition component is the one still running, and building toward the CCRC and Court of Appeal stages.
Why this biography is on the site
Readers unfamiliar with the Horizon parallel cannot fully weigh the miscarriage-of- justice framework we apply on the site. Nick Wallis’s journalism is the reference point for what sustained investigative coverage of a mass miscarriage looks like. The CCRC review of the Letby convictions will, in effect, be happening in parallel with the Post Office statutory inquiry’s final report — two miscarriages of justice being corrected through the same broad institutional architecture at the same time.