LUCY LETBY CASE: THE SWIPE-CARD ERROR IS BACK UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

A disputed piece of evidence from the Lucy Letby case is attracting renewed attention after material relating to Dr. Ravi Jayaram and the police investigation resurfaced online.

At the centre of the controversy is something much more concrete than the rumours now circulating:

Door-swipe data used during Letby’s first trial was wrong.

THE DATA WAS REVERSED

During Letby’s 2024 retrial concerning Baby K, prosecutor Nick Johnson KC told the court that swipe-card information for one neonatal-unit door had been “mislabelled.”

Entries and exits had effectively been reversed.

The Crown Prosecution Service later confirmed that accurate data was presented during the retrial.

That correction changed an important part of the timeline.

In the original trial, prosecutors said a nurse had left the unit at 3:47 a.m.

During the retrial, the corrected data showed that the nurse had actually returned to the unit at that time.

That distinction mattered because the prosecution’s original timeline had been used when describing who was present around Baby K.

AND THEN THERE WERE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE INVESTIGATION

The discovery naturally raised questions about how the data had been interpreted and checked before it was presented to the first jury.

Sir David Davis publicly pressed the CPS for clarification, arguing that the swipe information was important to reconstructing where medical staff were at particular moments.

More recently, material relating to Dr. Ravi Jayaram’s police interview has circulated online, prompting renewed debate about how investigators constructed the timeline around Baby K.

But there is an important line that should not be crossed:

The existence of an evidence error does not prove that police and Dr. Jayaram deliberately manipulated evidence.

No credible public source reviewed here establishes such a conspiracy.

WHAT DID THE RETRIAL DECIDE?

Despite the correction, Letby was convicted at the retrial of attempting to murder Baby K.

The CPS maintains that the corrected swipe data was presented to the second jury and that the case involved multiple strands of evidence.

Letby continues to deny the offences.

Her convictions also remain in place after previous appeal attempts.

 THE BIGGER QUESTION

The most significant issue is therefore not whether a swipe-card error existed.

It did.

The harder questions are:

How was the mistake made?

How widely was the incorrect information used?

Which timelines were affected?

How did the correction alter the evidence presented at retrial?

And perhaps most importantly:

What safeguards existed to prevent an important evidential error from reaching a jury in the first place?

The CPS says the mistake did not have a meaningful impact on the prosecution as a whole.

But the fact that the error had to be corrected at a retrial means the issue deserves careful examination rather than being dismissed as an internet rumour.

THE SWIPE DATA WAS WRONG.

 THE ERROR WAS CORRECTED FOR THE RETRIAL.

 DR. JAYARAM’S EVIDENCE REMAINS PART OF THE DEBATE.

 BUT THERE IS NO ESTABLISHED PUBLIC EVIDENCE OF A POLICE-WITNESS CONSPIRACY.

The real story may be less sensational than the claims spreading online — but the evidence error itself is a genuine and documented part of the Letby case.

Independent commentary based on publicly available court, CPS and judicial material. Allegations of deliberate evidence manipulation or police-witness collusion are not presented as established facts.