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06 June 2025 / David Walbank KC
Issue: 8119 / Categories: Features , Procedure & practice , Criminal , Media
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Crime brief: 6 June 2025

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Can a retrial be fair when a conviction has been at the centre of a media storm? David Walbank KC considers the Lucy Letby case
  • Trial for murder and attempted murder.
  • Media comment after guilty verdicts.
  • Fairness of retrial.

Rarely in modern English criminal history can charges of murder most foul have generated so many column inches or such lurid headlines as in the case of Lucy Letby. The acres of coverage in the print media are matched only by the constant replaying on our television screens of the bodycam footage showing the moments after her arrest. And that is nothing when compared with the deluge of analysis, comment and speculation that continues to engulf social media.

It is not hard to see why. If Lucy Letby did what she is accused of, can there ever have been a more merciless campaign of indiscriminate killing, waged by the very person to whom those poor, defenceless infants and their grief-stricken parents were entitled to look for care and compassion? But did she do it? And almost as

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NEWS
Talk of a reserved ‘Welsh seat’ on the Supreme Court is misplaced. In NLJ this week, Professor Graham Zellick KC explains that the Constitutional Reform Act treats ‘England and Wales’ as one jurisdiction, with no statutory Welsh slot
The government’s plan to curb jury trials has sparked ‘jury furore’. Writing in NLJ this week, David Locke, partner at Hill Dickinson, says the rationale is ‘grossly inadequate’
A year after the $1.5bn Bybit heist, crypto fraud is booming—but so is recovery. Writing in NLJ this week, Neil Holloway, founder and CEO of M2 Recovery, warns that scams hit at least $14bn in 2025, fuelled by ‘pig butchering’ cons and AI deepfakes
After Woodcock confirmed no general duty to warn, debate turns to the criminal law. Writing in NLJ this week, Charles Davey of The Barrister Group urges revival of misprision or a modern equivalent
Family courts are tightening control of expert evidence. Writing in NLJ this week, Dr Chris Pamplin says there is ‘no automatic right’ to call experts; attendance must be ‘necessary in the interests of justice’ under FPR Pt 25
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