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Trial by numbers?

02 August 2024 / Jon Robins
Issue: 8082 / Categories: Opinion , Criminal
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Rigged datasets & the lottery fallacy: was the conviction of Lucy Letby based on unreliable statistics, asks Jon Robins

Some ten years ago, the British born statistician Dr Richard Gill wrote an article for The Justice Gap: ‘How to become a convicted serial killer (without killing anyone)’. His provocative article began: ‘Step 1: Become a nurse’, followed by: ‘Step 2: Now sit back and wait’ for, he added, ‘an unexplained cluster of cases’.

Gill, professor emeritus of mathematical statistics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, is now an outspoken champion of Lucy Letby, the former neonatal nurse who was last week given a 15th whole life order following a retrial for a single count, having been jailed last August for murdering seven babies and attempting to kill another six (now seven).

During last year’s trial, Cheshire police wrote to the academic, warning that his social media presence was in ‘flagrant and serious’ contempt of court. ‘“Contempt of court” means disrespect of a court,’ an unapologetic Gill later

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NEWS
Charlie Mercer and Astrid Gillam of Stewarts crunch the numbers on civil fraud claims in the English courts, in this week's NLJ. New data shows civil fraud claims rising steadily since 2014, with the King’s Bench Division overtaking the Commercial Court as the forum of choice for lower-value disputes
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
In this week's NLJ, Steven Ball of Red Lion Chambers unpacks how advances in forensic science finally unmasked Ryland Headley, jailed in 2025 for the 1967 rape and murder of 75-year-old Louisa Dunne. Preserved swabs and palm prints lay dormant for decades until DNA-17 profiling produced a billion-to-one match
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
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