Dr Evans was first asked to review 60 cases. We don’t know who selected these cases, or why.
Dr Evans detailed his initial thoughts to police over two days in 2017.
He told them he’d identified 28 suspicious incidents.
Now, we know that Dr Evans is a brilliantly perceptive man, because he’s told us so - after all, he spotted that a baby had been murdered
within just ten minutes of reviewing that child’s notes. So evidently these weren’t some off the cuff findings.
The problem was,
ten of these suspicious incidents occurred when Letby wasn’t on shift. So clearly more work needed to be done!
Eventually, of course, the prosecution contrived (and I use that word very deliberately) a final chart showing suspicious incidents which coincided perfectly with Letby’s presence, but
how exactly this came about, we don’t know.
It may well be that the incidents that were flagged then dropped, were dropped because following further investigation they turned out to be not suspicious (and not dropped simply because, you know, Letby wasn’t there). But we don’t know what investigations were done, or by whom - though we can have a bloody good guess!
The thing is, even if these incidents genuinely weren’t suspicious, it would obviously be useful, arguably necessary, to know more about them - for instance, they might have had features in common with the suspicious incidents which actually
did make it on to the final chart.
In January 2023 Mr Myers expressed concern that the prosecution was only interested in cases where Letby was on duty. The defence was asking, essentially, how far had they considered collapses that
didn’t incriminate Letby?
The prosecution could’ve settled the matter there and then - had this final list of suspicious incidents been compiled without any regard to who was on duty when these incidents had taken place?
Instead, Mr Johnson claimed the prosecution wasn’t obliged to say - and sadly the judge agreed.
This is an entirely circumstantial case, but the exact circumstances surrounding which cases were chosen and which ones weren’t, has never been disclosed. It’s absolutely extraordinary!