Nine more babies died at the Countess of Chester Hospital during the period that Lucy Letby was convicted for murdering seven others, it has emerged.
However, the deaths of the nine babies in question were not included on an evidence graph presented at her trial because they were not deemed unexpected or suspicious, it has been suggested.
Neo-natal nurse Letby has been convicted of murdering seven babies, who were under her care, between June 2015 and July 2016.
Letby, 34, was convicted at Manchester Crown Court last August of the murders of the seven babies and the attempted murders of six others at the hospital’s neonatal unit between June 2015 and June 2016.
The nine other babies also died in the same unit at the hospital during the same period.
Letby continues to insist she is innocent.
There are mounting calls for her conviction to be reviewed and statisticians, who have written to the Government questioning the safety of Letby’s convictions, insist the graph is flawed for leaving out the other nine deaths, Mailonline has reported.
The 24 experts have asked for the upcoming public inquiry into Letby’s crimes to be postponed or its terms of reference expanded, to look at the possibility of a wrongful conviction.
The graph did compare the events around 25 suspicious collapses or deaths over the same period and Letby was found to have been present on each occasion.
A prosecution source told the news outlet that the nine deaths were investigated and later deemed irrelevant to the trial because they had valid explanations, largely natural causes.
The source said: “Four of the deaths were babies born with a congenital problem or birth defect, another baby was sadly asphyxiated or deprived of oxygen at birth, the remaining four died of infection and their deaths were precipitated with a period of time consistent with infection – they did not suddenly and unexpectedly collapse and die.”
Letby was on duty at times when at least two of the nine babies, who had non-suspicious deaths, were being treated in the neonatal unit – although it is not known if she was ever their designated nurse, the Mail understands.
Professor Jane Hutton, a statistician from Warwick University, and one of the experts who wrote to ministers with concerns, told the Mail’s Trial podcast she was concerned about the graph because information about the other nine deaths was missing.
But, the expert on survival analysis, said she had only read a summary of the Court of Appeal judgement, from three of the country’s top judges, who refused Letby leave to appeal her convictions in July.
And, Tim Owen KC, a barrister experienced in cases involving miscarriages of justice, said the statisticians’ claims were not valid since Letby was not tried on a basis of statistical probability.
He said: “The graph of when Miss Letby was on duty was simply there to demonstrate that she had the opportunity to inflict harm, not that, because she’s on duty, she inflicted harm.
“The prosecution case was not a statistical probability case.”
He suggested the correct place for the concerns to be aired was the Criminal Cases Review Commission, but it would require new “compelling” evidence of an unsafe conviction to go anywhere.