Context
Ms Letby elected to give evidence in her own defence, something a defendant is under no obligation to do. She was on the witness stand for many days of examination-in-chief and cross-examination in May and June 2023. A near-verbatim archive of her testimony is maintained by lucyletbyinnocence.com.
Recurring themes
- Consistent denial. She denied every count, in terms, and did not shift across days of cross-examination.
- Clinical context for every count. She gave detailed, specific clinical accounts of each alleged event, often referring to what handover notes and Datix records would show, and relating the events to the unit’s staffing picture.
- The notes. She said the Post-it notes and free-writing at home were written at the height of a period in which she had been told, repeatedly, that she was the suspect in every unexplained death on her unit. The phrases prosecution highlighted had to be read in that context and alongside the contradictory lines on the same pages.
- Facebook searches. She told the jury it was her ordinary practice, and the practice of many neonatal nurses she knew, to search family names after a ward event; she described doing so for many patients, not just those later charged.
- Handover sheets at home. She said she kept handover sheets at home, as many nurses do, for continuing professional development and reflective logging. She was unaware that the practice was controversial until the police raised it.
Read alongside
her police interviews (same themes, a year or two earlier), the handover-notes evidence page, the Facebook-searches evidence page.