The Defense

Summary

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DOUBT: The Case of Lucy Letby – Episode 5: The Defense

Host: Amanda Knox
Podcast: iHeartPodcasts, Vespucci
Air Date: March 24, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this pivotal episode, Amanda Knox dives into the defense case of Lucy Letby — a British nurse convicted of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven more. Knox, herself wrongfully convicted in a globally-watched case, explores the courtroom drama, the defense strategy, the scrutinized evidence, and the fierce debate over whether justice was truly served. Testimonies, expert (and non-expert) opinions, narrative framing, and the gendered lens of criminal justice are all brought into question.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Complexity and Atmosphere of the Trial

• Experienced Court Reporting: Kim Pilling (court reporter) emphasizes the trial's complexity:

  "In effect was 17 trials in one. Really. Each day we were full on, so to speak." [04:15]

• Expert-Heavy Proceedings: The sheer volume and technicality of medical evidence made proceedings difficult to follow, particularly for the jury.

Lucy Letby's Testimony and the Decision to Testify

• Risk of Testifying: In the UK, defendants may be judged harshly for not testifying. Knox reflects on her own trial and the impossible expectations this placed on defendants, particularly women:

  "Every factual mistake in your testimony is an opportunity for the prosecution to call you a liar." [06:54]

• Letby on the Stand:
  • Chose to sit in the witness box before others entered, avoiding the spectacle of being escorted in as a prisoner. [08:16]
  • Direct, clear, but reserved style:

    "She was very direct, gave clear answers, didn't deviate from the question, but again, not particularly expressive." – Kim Pilling [14:09]

• Denial of Guilt:

  Defense: "Did you ever do anything that was meant to hurt any of them?"
  Lucy: "No. I only ever did my best to to care for them." [10:06]
  Defense: "Did you ever want to hurt any baby you looked after?"
  Lucy: "No. That's completely against everything that being a nurse is. I'm there to help and to care, not to harm." [10:18]

New Defense Counsel & Problems with the Original Defense

• Mark McDonald’s Background:
  • Former operating theater assistant, extensive hospital experience before becoming a barrister. [15:17]

  "I think this is a miscarriage of justice." – Mark McDonald [15:17]

• The Media Narrative:

  "From the moment she was arrested, it became a story in the mainstream media...She was described as evil...It became about dismantling her as an individual." – Mark McDonald [16:18]

• Defense Approach: Multi-pronged, focusing on legal arguments, the narrative, and exposing issues in the evidence. [16:52, 39:00]

Evidence and Cross-Examination

• Prosecution’s Lack of Direct Evidence:

  "No witnesses, no forensic evidence, no cctv, you know, no mass amount of drugs that have gone missing. In fact, the opposite. She was highly regarded and seen by many on the unit as an excellent nurse." – Mark McDonald [18:36]

• Damning "Confession" Notes:

  • Post-it notes found under Letby’s bed used as key prosecution evidence.

  Prosecutor: "You write down at the top right hand corner, don't you?"
  Letby: "Yes."
  Prosecutor: "And that's true, isn't it?"
  Letby: "No. That's how I felt at the time. I was not good enough and I must be an awful person." [19:10]

• Counterpoint – Writing Down Feelings is Therapy:

  • Neonatal nurse Jenny Harris:

    "I've been to therapy...they've told me to write things down on what I'm thinking and what I'm feeling, but it doesn't mean it's right...As soon as I heard that she'd written these post it notes, I was like, well, I've done that." [21:28]

• Expert on False Confessions:

  "This is not a confession and should never have been treated as a confession, in fact, should never be put before the jury." – Quoting UK's leading expert via Mark McDonald [22:29]

Defense Case and Critique of the Prosecution's Medical Experts

• Notable Cross-Examination Battle:

  • Dr. Dewi Evans, lead prosecution expert, was accused of bias by defense counsel Ben Myers.

    Defense: "I'm suggesting to you, Dr. Evans, that you are reaching for things that support the allegation rather than reflecting the facts." [30:26]
    Dr. Evans: "Well, I disagree with you. I have just explained the facts." [30:35]

  • Evans' certainty was a "red flag" for several observers and critics:

    "He's absolutely certain that it's deliberate harm and has since gone on podcasts saying that Lucy Letby is evil." – Dr. Phil Hammond [27:39] "He's also on record of saying, I've never lost a case...he's the hired gun really for the prosecution." – Michelle Warden [28:25]

• Defense Only Called One Other Witness – A Plumber:

  • The plumber testified about unit sewage issues, highlighting hospital conditions [23:45]
  • "Painting a picture of a sick hospital was important." – Amanda Knox [24:00]
  • Critics (including Dr. Mike Hall, defense medical advisor) argue failure to call more expert defense witnesses was a grave error:

    "I couldn't understand why on earth you would not call expert witnesses, particularly given what I'd heard by other expert witnesses. A significant proportion of what some of the other expert witnesses said I disagreed with." – Dr. Mike Hall [36:39]

• Controversy Over Key Medical Evidence:

  • Dr. Hall disputed prosecution claims that "babies don't suddenly collapse":

    "That's not the case in neonatal care. Babies do suddenly change, and they can change quite quickly when you’re not expecting them to." – Dr. Mike Hall [37:21]

  • On air embolism theory:

    "I thought all of the conclusions relating to air embolism were not based on credible evidence." – Dr. Mike Hall [37:57]

Narrative and Public Perception

• Changing the Narrative:

  • McDonald is working to shift public and legal perception for a fairer appeal process [39:00–39:12]
  • "She was one of the most qualified nurses on the unit, which is why she got all the seriously ill patients...always sort of almost constantly on call and constantly there." – Mark McDonald [39:12]

• The Gendered Nature of Public and Criminal Justice Response:

  • Knox draws parallels to her own experience, remarks on the unique scrutiny female defendants face:

    "One thing I've noticed is that it's more common for women to face character assassination than men. They have to deal with unequal scrutiny when they are faced with answering for a crime, innocent or not." [40:10]

  • Mark McDonald:

    "Years after this conviction is overturned, people will be talking about issues of misogyny and feminism that I think polluted the whole of this case and the narrative behind it." [41:31]

  • Baroness Helena Kennedy (lawyer):

    "It's about basing attitudes towards women in the stereotypes and the myths that exist about, about womanhood...The ways in which it is assumed that women will manipulate and lie..." [42:24]

  • Amanda Knox and her producer discuss male and female stereotypes during trials, how women are condemned no matter how they present:

    "There’s just no winning when you're a woman...anything that you do or say or appear to be can be used to find fault in you." [44:25–44:28]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "No direct evidence of Lucy doing anything wrong. In fact, the opposite." – Mark McDonald [18:36]
• "I've been to therapy...they've told me to write things down...As soon as I heard that she'd written these post it notes, I was like, well, I've done that." – Jenny Harris [21:28]
• "This is not a confession and should never have been treated as a confession." – Mark McDonald citing expert opinion [22:29]
• "If he had said...the most likely cause...is deliberate harm, then that's absolutely fine...But what he said, he's absolutely certain...and has since gone on podcasts saying that Lucy Letby is evil." – Dr. Phil Hammond [27:39]
• "I couldn't understand why on earth you would not call expert witnesses...A significant proportion of what some of the other expert witnesses said I disagreed with." – Dr. Mike Hall [36:39]
• "The justice system is not gender blind." – Amanda Knox [41:31]
• "Years after this conviction is overturned, people will be talking about issues of misogyny and feminism that I think polluted the whole of this case and the narrative behind it." – Mark McDonald [41:31]

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Key Timestamps

• [03:53 – 04:36]: Introduction to trial’s complexity and volume of medical evidence (Kim Pilling, Amanda Knox)
• [08:47 – 10:30]: Lucy Letby’s testimony highlights and denials of guilt
• [13:52 – 14:17]: Discussion of Lucy’s demeanor on the stand
• [15:08 – 16:18]: Mark McDonald’s background and reasons for taking the case
• [18:36 – 22:29]: Debate over lack of direct evidence and the meaning of the "confession notes"
• [23:35 – 24:37]: Criticism of defense strategy and the significance of hospital conditions
• [25:05 – 27:39]: Scrutiny of prosecution’s medical "expertise"; Dr. Evans controversy
• [36:39 – 37:57]: Dr. Mike Hall discusses the importance of calling expert witnesses and the disputed medical evidence
• [39:00 – 41:31]: Mark McDonald and Amanda Knox on reframing the narrative and systemic misogyny
• [42:24 – 45:10]: Baroness Helena Kennedy and Amanda Knox examine the gendered treatment of women in criminal justice

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Conclusion

This episode provides a meticulous, open-ended look at Lucy Letby’s defense, offering insight into legal tactics, the fraught and sometimes dubious nature of trial evidence, and the social narratives—especially concerning women in the justice system—that shape guilt and innocence. With expert commentary, personal accounts, and a critical lens toward both the prosecution and defense, Amanda Knox urges listeners to recognize the complexity and the possibility for doubt in even the most "open and shut" cases.

Next episode preview: The focus turns to Lucy Letby's sentencing and the aftermath, confronting the totality of societal and judicial response.

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Transcript

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[Amanda Knox]

Before we begin, please be aware this episode contains discussions around infant deaths and other difficult topics. Please take care while listening the movement of the court can feel like theater. Everyone, a member of a cast who knows their roles, stand when the judge comes in, speak from the witness box, swear to tell the truth. The prosecution is bound to share their evidence with the defense and the defense team prepares ahead of time how best to defend their clients. Reporters who cover court for a living know this rhythm in their bones.

[Kim Pilling]

I'm there every day. A couple of other people were there every day.

[Amanda Knox]

Kim Pilling, a reporter with the Press association in the UK, has been a news reporter for more than three decades. 20 years as a court reporter and 10 months of those covering the Lucy Letby case every single day.

[Kim Pilling]

So we knew it was going to be a very lengthy trial full of complexities and lots of complex medical evidence surrounding that in effect was 17 trials in one. Really. Each day we were full on, so to speak. There was a lot of information being put out each day. It was done at a very brisk pace.

[Amanda Knox]

I remember sitting through days and days of medical testimony during my own trial. It was hard for me to follow and I can't imagine what it was like for the jury, but my life depended upon people understanding this evidence.

[Kim Pilling]

The prosecution case closes, defense case starts, and she's called to give evidence.

[Amanda Knox]

One spring day in 2023, after the crown ended its case, the doors of the court were opened for the first time.

[Kim Pilling]

That morning when we came into court, she was already sat down.

[Amanda Knox]

For months, all anyone saw of Lucy Lepy was from what the Brits call the dock. It's essentially a glassed in box for prisoners to sit in during their trial. From the public gallery, you see Lucy from the side facing the judge, who sits on his dais at the front of the courtroom. But on this May morning, Lucy was waiting for everyone to arrive from a different vantage point at the front of the court, facing out from the witness

[Kim Pilling]

box, before any of the lawyers came into the room, any of the families came into the room.

[Amanda Knox]

Since her arrest, and through what was to be one of Britain's longest trials in history, Lucy Letby had lost the power to tell her own story. Now, sitting there in the witness box, Lucy was about to try to get that power back. Everyone knew it would be a gamble. I'm Amanda Knox, and from Vespucci and iheart podcasts, this is the case of Lucy Letby. Episode five, the Defense. It is not a given that a defendant will testify in their own trial. It's a tricky decision. And in England, unlike in America, a failure to testify can actually be held against a defendant. In my own trial, my lawyers and I both wanted me to testify because we understood that the prosecution's case relied so heavily on character assassination. And the best antidote to that was for the jury to see the real me. But there's a huge risk in testifying. It's perfectly normal to get details wrong or confuse the order of events when recalling something that happened a long time ago. But every factual mistake in your testimony is an opportunity for the prosecution to call you a liar. And if you say, I don't remember, as my lawyers recommended I do, that can look evasive because people expect you to remember everything. And when it came to Lucy's cross examination, she often couldn't remember the details and said so on the record.

[Kim Pilling]

Defendants don't always give evidence, you know, they don't have to give evidence.

[Amanda Knox]

In an English courtroom, it's common for a witness that is also a prisoner to be escorted from the dock to the witness stand.

[Kim Pilling]

They walk across the courtroom in front of the public gallery where I'm sat. And then you go across the witness box. Sit down, face the jury, prison guard behind you.

[Amanda Knox]

But for the two weeks Lucy testified in her own defense, each morning she would be there, ready, sitting in the witness box before anyone else came into the courtroom.

[Kim Pilling]

I think she preferred to be sat in place before the jury came in. So we didn't have this performance of her being led across each day from the dock to the witness box.

[Defense Lawyer (Ben Myers)]

Miss Letby, would you give the court your full name, please?

[Lucy Letby]

Yes, Lucy Letby.

[Defense Lawyer (Ben Myers)]

And what's your date of birth?

[Lucy Letby]

Ms. Letby, 4th of January 1990.

[Amanda Knox]

There are no recordings in a UK court, so we've had actors read from the trial transcripts.

[Defense Lawyer (Ben Myers)]

When was it that you first knew you wanted to be a nurse?

[Amanda Knox]

The first five days Lucy spent answering questions from her defense lawyer.

[Lucy Letby]

I've always wanted to work with children, but it was towards the end of secondary school that I thought I wanted to do nursing and then picked a level subjects that would best support that career.

[Amanda Knox]

After months of evidence being presented against her, it was finally Lucy's turn to answer for herself.

[Defense Lawyer (Ben Myers)]

Over the period of 2015 to 2016, we know you were looking at a number of babies in this indictment and you understand that, don't you?

[Lucy Letby]

Yes.

[Defense Lawyer (Ben Myers)]

There's 17 of them.

[Lucy Letby]

Yes.

[Defense Lawyer (Ben Myers)]

But could you put a figure on the number of babies you cared for over that 12 month period?

[Lucy Letby]

Probably hundreds.

[Defense Lawyer (Ben Myers)]

Hundreds?

[Lucy Letby]

Yes.

[Defense Lawyer (Ben Myers)]

And did you care for them?

[Lucy Letby]

Yes.

[Defense Lawyer (Ben Myers)]

Did you ever do anything that was meant to hurt any of them?

[Lucy Letby]

No. I only ever did my best to to care for them.

[Defense Lawyer (Ben Myers)]

Did you ever want to hurt any baby you looked after?

[Lucy Letby]

No. That's completely against everything that being a nurse is. I'm there to help and to care, not to harm.

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[Amanda Knox]

everything about Lucy Letby was scrutinized during her time on the stand. From what she wore, she was dark blue, black.

[Kim Pilling]

You know, she's quite no bright colors

[Amanda Knox]

to how she spoke.

[Kim Pilling]

She was very direct, gave clear answers, didn't deviate from the question, but again, not particularly expressive.

[Amanda Knox]

And of course how she looked.

[John Ashton]

I mean, if you didn't know she

[Kim Pilling]

was a nurse, you might think she was a librarian, something like that, you know, quite mousy maybe, if that's been unkind.

[Amanda Knox]

This intense gaze on your every move and utterance is exhausting. When it came to the coverage of my trial, I was in an unwinnable situation. If I smiled at my family in the courtroom, a small gesture to let them know I was surviving. I was a media whore hungry for the spotlight. If I cried, they were crocodile tears and I was being manipulative. It was soul destroying. In September of 2024, Lucy Letby got a new lawyer. His name is Mark McDonald.

[Mark McDonald]

So, I mean, it all initially started when the family contacted me and asked me to go and see Lucy.

[Amanda Knox]

It's almost as though Mark McDonald's career was leading him to this case.

[Mark McDonald]

I think this is a miscarriage of justice. Before I became a barrister, actually in the operating theater, or the operating room as they call it in the US for 14 years, I was an assistant to the anesthetist and the surgeon. I worked in the intensive care unit. I worked in A E. I've spent many years working and embedded in the hospital in former situations as a doctor's assistant. I carried the crash bleep and I went to cardiac arrest on the ward. I could take part an anesthetic machine and ventilators and put them back together again. I knew all the drugs and assistance. I intubated, I put IV lines in, I put arterial lines in, neck lines in. I had a wealth of knowledge. And then I came to the bar and I qualified through night school.

[Amanda Knox]

At the age of 34, Mark became a lawyer. Today he has taken on Lucy's case and is working pro bono.

[Mark McDonald]

You know, from the moment she was arrested, it became a story in the mainstream media. On the front page of all the newspapers and, you know, documentaries and news items. She was described as evil and she was described as, you know, the worst person in the country. It became about dismantling her as an individual. And I don't want to be part of that narrative. I want to focus on what convicted her and how do I undo that conviction.

[Amanda Knox]

Mark says to do that he has employed a multi pronged approach.

[Mark McDonald]

The first element is the most important element. You don't undo a conviction unless you have the legal arguments and the expertise to be able to do so.

[Amanda Knox]

Going through Lucy's testimony, it's clear that was something Lucy's trial lawyer, Ben Myers had attempted to do. For example, the jury had heard that Lucy was on duty for every suspicious death and collapse. Meyers tried to show that she was not alone.

[Defense Lawyer (Ben Myers)]

What was the atmosphere like concerning Baby N as that afternoon went on? We see there were these multiple attempts at intubation.

[Lucy Letby]

It was becoming increasingly chaotic. More and more staff were coming to try and assist. There was a sense of panic around the unit. I think that we weren't sure how we were going to manage abn.

[Defense Lawyer (Ben Myers)]

Do you remember how many people were present as the afternoon went on? How many people gathered?

[Lucy Letby]

There were loads of. Of people, I would say 10 to 15.

[Defense Lawyer (Ben Myers)]

Were you his designated nurse during this?

[Lucy Letby]

Yes.

[Defense Lawyer (Ben Myers)]

Were you the only person caring for him at any point?

[Lucy Letby]

No. Baby N needed such care that he always had at least two members of staff with him. I remember Nurse B helping a lot and the doctors were near enough in the room the whole time.

[Amanda Knox]

Mark won't criticize Lucy's original lawyer, but he has no trouble pointing out what he says is a lack of evidence against his client.

[Mark McDonald]

No direct evidence of Lucy doing anything wrong. In fact, the opposite. So no witnesses, no forensic evidence, no cctv, you know, no mass amount of drugs that have gone missing. In fact, the opposite. She was highly regarded and seen by many on the unit as an excellent nurse.

[Amanda Knox]

But what about those damning post it notes? The self incriminating notes found under Lucy's bed during the police investigation.

[Prosecutor]

I am an awful person. You write down at the top right hand corner, don't you?

[Lucy Letby]

Yes.

[Prosecutor]

And that's true, isn't it?

[Lucy Letby]

No. That's how I felt at the time. I was not good enough and I must be an awful person.

[Amanda Knox]

The Crown used those notes and her social media posts to try and paint a picture of a woman who would hurt babies.

[Prosecutor]

We don't need to go back through the social media stuff to show you out on the razz with your friends, do we?

[Lucy Letby]

No.

[Prosecutor]

You were having a good time, weren't you?

[Lucy Letby]

Yes. There were times in those years that I did have good times. Yes.

[Prosecutor]

Drinking fizz, going to the races.

[Lucy Letby]

Yes.

[Mark McDonald]

Yes.

[Prosecutor]

You felt like this because you knew that you had killed and grievously injured these children.

[Lucy Letby]

No.

[Prosecutor]

And that's the truth, isn't it?

[Lucy Letby]

No, it's not the truth.

[Prosecutor]

You are a murderer.

[Lucy Letby]

No, I am not.

[Prosecutor]

You have murdered many children.

[Lucy Letby]

I've never murdered a child or harmed any of them.

[Prosecutor]

I have nothing further. Thank you.

[Amanda Knox]

Lucy's notes made for sensational headlines. But those who have come to Lucy's defense say the police and the media and ultimately the jury have read them all wrong. Mark says Lucy had written these notes before she had been arrested but had realized she was being Blamed for the deaths on the unit.

[Defense Lawyer (Ben Myers)]

Why had you written not good enough and underlined it?

[Lucy Letby]

I think that's the overwhelming thought and feeling that I had about myself at that point, that I wasn't good enough.

[Defense Lawyer (Ben Myers)]

And why did you think you weren't good enough?

[Lucy Letby]

Because of the way people have made me feel.

[Defense Lawyer (Ben Myers)]

Had you actually done anything wrong to hurt any babies?

[Lucy Letby]

No.

[Mark McDonald]

And emotionally she's writing this stuff down, as I say, with other stuff, saying that she hadn't done anything wrong. But the prosecution presented this to the jury as a confession and it was left to the jury as a confession.

[Amanda Knox]

Lucy wasn't the only nurse who leaned on this practice to help them cope with how hard their job really was.

[Jenny Harris]

I do that too.

[Amanda Knox]

This is a nurse named Jenny Harris. She's been a neonatal nurse for 18 years.

[Jenny Harris]

So, like, things like saying that she did the confession on the post it note. I've been to therapy, I've been in cbt, I've had counsellors and they've told me to write things down on what I'm thinking and what I'm feeling, but it doesn't mean it's right. So, like, for example, I had a core belief that I was worthless and I was a bad person. There was no evidence that I was a bad person. That's what I've learned through my therapy. But I was to write that down and I would write down, I'm worthless, I'm a bad person, but I'm not a bad person. But just, just because I wrote it down doesn't mean it's true. But as soon as I heard that she'd written these post it notes, I was like, well, I've done that.

[Amanda Knox]

While the prosecution considered these notes a confession confession, Mark McDonald says one of UK's leading experts on false confessions does not see it that way.

[Mark McDonald]

I give him everything and he writes a very detailed report and says this is not a confession and should never have been treated as a confession, in fact, should never be put before the jury. And we got to remember again, that was left to the jury as a confession and no expert evidence before the jury to counter that. It was part of and a strong part of the public narrative.

[Amanda Knox]

Over the course of those 25 weeks, the Crown put on their case. The jury heard from expert after expert, hundreds of hours of testimony from people who all believed Lucy had killed these babies. But when it came time to refute all that expert testimony, the jury heard first from Lucy and then from one other person.

[Kim Pilling]

In the end, she didn't call Any experts on her behalf. And we heard a plumber. So the optics may look a bit curious there.

[Amanda Knox]

That's right. You just heard reporter Kim Pilling say that the only witness to be called on behalf of, of Lucy Letby was a plumber.

[Kim Pilling]

He was just called to make a point, which had come up during the trial, that there'd been issues in the past with a sewage system on the unit, which the defense sort of portraying the picture of. Well, all was not well at the hospital.

[Amanda Knox]

In fact, for about a year, the unit was designated a risk, sometimes a high risk, for a bacteria called Pseudomonas eruginosa, absolutely deadly for newborn babies. This decision to only call one person other than Lucy to the stand, it's been widely criticized. But Lucy's current lawyer, Mark McDonald, says that painting a picture of a sick hospital was important, something he believes is partly key to the question of what happened to those seven babies who died.

[Mark McDonald]

It's no surprising now that we have so many problems in our nhs, not solely down to poor doctoring, but, you know, whole complex issues in our hospital environment, that we have a crisis. Our health system in this country is broken. And I should say that Lucy is a consequence of that broken system.

[Amanda Knox]

But Mark's message is more than that. He believes there is another broken system at play here.

[Mark McDonald]

One of the fadings in our criminal justice system is that our threshold for what is an expert is actually quite low. So almost any medic can pitch up and say that they're an expert at something. And I know that it was argued during the trial. The lead expert in this case didn't have the expertise to say what he said. The Court of Appeal disagreed with that defence argument and so did the trial judge. But that's one of the arguments that I'm now taking forward.

[Amanda Knox]

Much has been made of Dr. Dowie Evans since this trial. The police leaned heavily on his word and the Crown put him on the stand as their star witness.

[John Ashton]

Dewey Evans was set up as some kind of messiah of the truth.

[Amanda Knox]

John Ashton, who investigates serious failures of practice in hospitals, found Dr. Evans testimony

[John Ashton]

lacking, when actually, in my view, there is a case for him to answer with the General Medical Council, which has consistently refused to even look at his behaviour and his testimonies.

[Amanda Knox]

In essence, John is saying that the way Dr. Evans acted and what he said should have been investigated by the regulator for doctors in the uk, the General Medical Council. And John isn't alone in this thinking. A number of the people we interviewed had very specific issues with the way Dr. Evans presented evidence during the trial and his behavior.

[Dr. Steve Watts]

After all the experience I've got of sitting down with experts, you know, they take a lot of time out of these things and very rarely do they come out with a yes, this is being a deliberate killing.

[Amanda Knox]

Dr. Steve Watts is a veteran police officer and former assistant Chief constable. He authored the national guidelines for investigating potential crimes in healthcare settings used by police departments across England. He thinks the Cheshire police made every grave mistake possible during their investigation into Lucy, starting with their involvement with Dr. Dowie Evans.

[Dr. Steve Watts]

You know, it's very much more nuanced than that. I mean, speaking personally, if I'd had an expert who responded in that way, it would raise questions in my mind as to whether I needed that evidence looked at again and that sort of view validated by others.

[Amanda Knox]

Dr. Phil Hammond, a columnist from Private Eye magazine and a critic of Lucy's conviction, also weighed in.

[Dr. Phil Hammond]

I think the thing that was a big red flag for me as a doctor about Dowie Evans, who's the lead prosecution expert, is his certainty. If he had said, I've looked at all of these cases and in my professional opinion the most likely cause of these deaths is deliberate harm, then that's absolutely fine to me. But what he said, he's absolutely certain that it's deliberate harm and has since gone on podcasts saying that Lucy Letby is evil. He couldn't possibly be wrong. People are only defending her because they're obsessed with a pretty blonde nurse. He said some quite extraordinary things that have completely gone outside the lane of being an independent expert expert. And that for me is a big red flag.

[Amanda Knox]

Michelle Warden, a neonatal practitioner at Countess of Chester, is also wary of Dr. Evans motivation.

[Michelle Warden]

He's also on record of saying, I've never lost a case. Now, how can an expert, he's not a barrister, he's not a lawyer, he shouldn't be about winning and losing. He's about giving his expert opinion. But he's never lost a case. So he's the hired gun really for the prosecution. Earns a lot of money. He's on record as saying, well, yes, I earned a lot of money, but I have to pay for my daughter's horse and my son's car. I mean, he's on record. He said that in I think it was BBC radio program, he said that

[Amanda Knox]

Ben Myers, Lucy's original defense lawyer, did conduct a very aggressive cross examination of Dr. Evans.

[Defense Lawyer (Ben Myers)]

No, what you have done in your evidence today is introduce something new with the purpose of supporting the allegation rather than explaining the Facts, isn't it?

[Dr. Dowie Evans]

No, no, that is incorrect. I'm here to support the jury and everyone in this court trying to explain what was it that led to a baby who was very small and premature suddenly collapsing and where resuscitation was unsuccessful? In doing that, I am totally upfront in saying that it was very adversarial

[Kim Pilling]

between Mr. Myers and Dowie Evans. I mean, they clashed quite regularly and to the point where, you know, in the end we got very quickly to the point point where Mr. Myers just accused Dowie Evans of being biased.

[Dr. Dowie Evans]

I am not relying on my opinion alone. I'm relying on other people's opinion. Sorry, other medical people's opinion as well. That is what doctors do. We do it all the time. That is what we do. Okay? So I'm here to assist the members of the jury in sorting out what is a pretty complicated case.

[Defense Lawyer (Ben Myers)]

I'm Suggesting to you, Dr. Evans, that you are reaching for things that support the allegation rather than reflecting the facts.

[Dr. Dowie Evans]

Well, I disagree with you. I have just explained the facts.

[Kim Pilling]

Mr. Myers was accusing me of being an unreliable witness. And Dr. Evans, I think he took that personally as well. So that played all out. And at times it was quite uncomfortable to listen to.

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[Amanda Knox]

That's innerbalance.com it's up to every defense team to decide which witnesses to call and how to present their case, but it's important to remember that Lucy was considered innocent before the jury found her guilty. And it wasn't her lawyer's job to prove her innocent. His job was to poke holes in the evidence presented against her. And at some point, Lucy's team decided they would not call their own witnesses.

[Kim Pilling]

I mean, you know, that's. The defence made that decision. They're not at liberty to disclose why they met the decision like that. But I'd say that my experience is, if you're going to call a witness, are they going to help your case, are they going to assist it, or could they potentially damage your case? And as a general rule, if the downside is greater than the upside, then it's maybe best not to call this witness for whatever reason. Mr. Myers is extremely experienced counsel. If they decided not to call the medical experts that it wouldn't have been done on a whim and it would have been a tactical decision.

[Amanda Knox]

It's a tactical decision that Dr. Mike hall did not agree with.

[Dr. Mike Hall]

I was indignant, I think is the best word I can find, and extremely concerned that I had heard things said purporting to be medical facts, which in my view were not medical facts.

[Amanda Knox]

Dr. Mike hall, an expert in neonatal medicine, was there for the whole trial on behalf of the defense team.

[Dr. Mike Hall]

The request was that they asked if I would attend court. Now, initially for the first, probably three or four months that was in person in Manchester, and subsequently for the last, I can't remember, two or three months of the trial, I did that from home.

[Amanda Knox]

Dr. Hall was expecting to be called as an expert witness for the defense. That never happened.

[Dr. Mike Hall]

I'm not legally trained in any way. So as a man in the street, as it were, I couldn't understand why on earth you would not call expert witnesses, particularly given what I'd heard by other expert witnesses. A significant proportion of what some of the other expert witnesses said I disagreed with. And while the jury would have had to decide which of us they believed, I think it was important, in my view, for Lucy Letby to have experts who gave a different opinion.

[Amanda Knox]

Dr. Hall says that he disagreed with a fundamental aspect of the Crown's case,

[Dr. Mike Hall]

this concept that really was portrayed at the trial, that babies don't suddenly collapse for no good reason. That's not the case in neonatal care. Babies do suddenly change, and they can change quite quickly when you're not expecting them to.

[Amanda Knox]

Dr. Evans argued that Lucy must have caused an air embolism by pumping air into their bodies. But since the conviction controversy around that theory has grown. Dr. Hall says that if he had been able to testify, he would have pointed out the flaws.

[Dr. Mike Hall]

I thought all of the conclusions relating to air embolism were not based on credible evidence.

[Amanda Knox]

Mark McDonald says that the first part of his job is to get the courts to acknowledge key issues with the evidence used to convict Lucy. That includes issues with the way police framed the timeline of the so called murders. He says that parents who lost babies after Lucy was off the ward have been ignored by the police.

[Mark McDonald]

I've discussed it with families who have lost their children as a result of problems, medical problems, diagnoses and failures to treat a child who has died. And so I've got these people, these have all come to me since. So I get many emails every day.

[Amanda Knox]

But there is more to Mark's approach than just dealing with problematic evidence. Remember, his approach has more than one prong.

[Mark McDonald]

The second is to change the narrative around her.

[Amanda Knox]

Mark says that this negative narrative around Lucy is hurting her chances for an appeal.

[Mark McDonald]

So it's important to get an alternative narrative out there. Not a false alternative, not a pretend narrative, but simply tell the truth as to what's going on and exposing the issues. She was one of the most qualified nurses on the unit, which is why she got all the seriously ill patients. And she was someone also that worked, had a passion for a job, so did a lot of extra shifts. She was saving up to buy a flat and so she would do extra hours so she would get more money so she could get herself a mortgage for her apartment. And so she was someone who was committed and loved her job. And she told me many weeks ago that, you know, she would go out in the evening, she'd go out with friends and she get a text from the unit because they couldn't set up this particular type of equipment and they didn't know how to do it. And so she had come out and she'd go back and she'd show them how to do it. But she was always sort of almost constantly on call and constantly there.

[Amanda Knox]

This hits me hard. I know what it feels like when other people take your life story and write their own narrative. I've had my own diaries used against me. I've had my childhood nickname twisted to mean something ugly. I too tried to be the author of my own story after my trials. And once I was back home in the us I wrote my first book hoping that if I told things from my point of view, people would hear it. Some did. Lots did not. It took me years to find a way through this maze A big part of this journey is accepting that I will never be able to correct all the false perceptions about me. I have to find my sense of freedom outside of the question of whether people believe I'm innocent. I'm not alone. So many women who face the criminal justice system face this. One thing I've noticed is that it's more common for women to face character assassination than men. They have to deal with unequal scrutiny when they are faced with answering for a crime, innocent or not. The justice system is not gender blind.

[Mark McDonald]

Years after this conviction is overturned, people will be talking about issues of misogyny and feminism that I think polluted the whole of this case and the narrative behind it.

[Amanda Knox]

When I was researching for this podcast, I came across this video online for Expeditions, the living library of knowledge.

[Baroness Helena Kennedy]

When I talk about the gendered nature of law, it's about basing attitudes towards women in the stereotypes and the myths that exist about, about womanhood and about women's sexuality, about the need to construct.

[Amanda Knox]

This is Baroness Helena Kennedy, a distinguished politician, human rights advocate and lawyer who practiced law for over 50 years, often focusing on women and the law.

[Baroness Helena Kennedy]

The ways in which it is assumed that women will manipulate and lie, the ways in which it's often assumed that women will not be honest about their own sexual longings and behavior. And indeed, the very idea that women have sexual longings has often been denied in law.

[Amanda Knox]

This question of why women may be treated differently by the judicial system is one I've spent a lot of time thinking about. Here's me speaking to my producer about this.

[Amanda Knox (Producer Conversation)]

You know, there are ways that men are stereotyped. Like things that people tend to project onto men are things like anger and violence. And so if someone is able to present themselves calmly and with confidence in a courtroom, people are. When they're a man, that plays well for them, right? They seem relatable, agreeable, especially if they're put together. Luigi Mangioni is a great example here in the US Right now, where he is this charismatic, very seemingly like, optimistic figure, despite the fact that there's copious evidence that shows that he just murdered this CEO of a healthcare company in cold blood.

[Jenny Harris]

It's.

[Amanda Knox (Producer Conversation)]

It's amazing to me that, like, men who are accused of murder can still imbue this sense of charm, this sense of this calm, confident, amicable nature. Whereas when it comes to women, if you smile and have this sense of calm or warmth to you, well, you're clearly a psychopath. If you are cold and withdrawn, well, you're clearly a psychopath. Like, it just seems that when it comes to women, if you're drab and ugly, well, you're. That's more motive for you have to have committed some crime. If you're beautiful and, and charismatic, ah, well, that's more ability for you to have used your feminine wiles in order to commit this crime.

[Amanda Knox]

There's just no winning when you're a woman.

[Amanda Knox (Producer Conversation)]

Everything about you, anything that you do or say or appear to be can be used to find fault in you. And when it comes to Lucy Letby,

[Amanda Knox]

I mean,

[Amanda Knox (Producer Conversation)]

this is true of all women who are accused of violent crimes, violent crimes that statistically are committed by men. And so we do not expect them to be committed by women. And so we think that a woman has to be a truly egregious example of a monster in order to rise to the level of violence that men are capable of. And then above all, for that to be someone who is in the position

[Amanda Knox]

of being a caretaker for a vulnerable

[Amanda Knox (Producer Conversation)]

population like that is the greatest betrayal

[Amanda Knox]

of our sex that you could possibly be.

[Amanda Knox (Producer Conversation)]

And so it doesn't come to a surprise to me that Lucy, having been found guilty of these crimes, having been found guilty of this betrayal of our gender, was handed such a harsh sentence to be made an example of. And in the one hand, I sort of understand it because society does rely upon women being safe and stable. And so we are especially driven to punish and condemn examples of when that doesn't pan out.

[Amanda Knox]

That's exactly what Lucy Letby was about to face. She's now sitting in prison, about to be sentenced to one of the harshest sentences in British history. Coming up on Doubt. The case of Lucy Letby.

[Amanda Knox (Producer Conversation)]

As soon as she was found guilty,

[Baroness Helena Kennedy]

it was, I mean, there was just

[Amanda Knox (Producer Conversation)]

no voicing of any skepticism or doubt about the verdict.

[Amanda Knox]

It was just the first time that

[Baroness Helena Kennedy]

things were questioned really openly.

[Amanda Knox]

It just didn't.

[Unknown Speaker (Listener or Commentator)]

It just didn't sit right to me. It wasn't believed. There's huge holes in the story that they were telling and what they had to back it up with.

[Amanda Knox]

The case of Lucy Letby is brought to you by Vespucci Iheart Podcasts and Knox Robinson Productions. I've been your host, Amanda Knox. This episode was written by Kathleen Goldhar. Senior producer is Natalia Rodriguez. The co producer was was Lucy Ditchment. The assistant producer was Ami Gill. The sound designer is Tom Biddle. The theme music was written by Tom Biddle. Story editing by Kathleen Goldhar. Legal advice was provided by Jack Browning. Voice acting by Kenny Blythe. Serena Montigh and Paul Leeming. The producers at iHeart Podcasts are Chandler Mays and Katrina Norville. The executive producers were Joe Meek, Amanda Knox, Christopher Robinson, Daniel Turkin and Johnny Galvin. Thank you for listening.

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