Censoring Science in the UK

When I learned of the Lucy Letby case in March 2023, I did so from the State of California, in the US. I am a British citizen, who like many Brits lives outside of the country. Hence the peculiarly derisive term I received from the British media as the "Woman from California." Owing to this piece of misinformation, I still receive the odd threatening email informing me that I am an American and I have no right to be involved in the case.

Still, my response to the case was not to read through the post-it notes, the text messages, or act disdainful about the handover sheets or facebook searches. I was narrowly focussed on the science and nothing else. When it comes to a case such as one alleging attempted murder and murder then such a case really should rest on the science and little else.

Once I saw that the evidence in the case amounted to the opinions of a retired medical doctor, who has since made peculiar statements that he can diagnose causes of death by looking at two x-rays from unrelated babies, and where he has never met the patient, I became perplexed as to how the scientific standard could be so low. Still, I took the assumption that is governed by the scientific method. In this case, I adopted a null hypothesis, which dictates that a given claim is not true. This means in science we are probing the null hypothesis which dictates that there is no difference between groups, no effect of an intervention, or no relationship between variables.

A Scientific Approach

In the case of a murder, one would have to investigate the suspects under the assumption that there was no relationship between the variables observed, which would be the death of the infant and the presence of a number of specific events. Naturally, before submitting someone to the role of a suspect, it would be necessary to establish whether there were any other relationships between the variables which are subject to an investigation.

As with something as rudimentary as a game of scrabble, there is a need to establish the procedure that will be applied in such an investigation. The procedure is essentially the defined rules that will be applied consistently in order to ensure that the findings made are sufficiently reliable. In doing this I prepared the information of https://rexvlucyletby2023.com website.

Few people know that I did not prepare this website for the benefit of the general population. Instead I prepared the website to submit to the court, as a friend of the court. I naively believed that the submission would be accepted in good faith, and even got advice from a law academic.

On June 30th 2023, I wrote to the court asking whether I could make such a submission. I sent a copy of my CV, and I described my concerns. In addition, I offered the court references.

I received a response from the court on July 3rd 2023, which seemed to imply that my query was under consideration.

I had waited until both the prosecution and defence had submitted their closing statements before I made my submission. My view was that this would limit any disturbance to the proceedings and would allow the court to consider the submission in the context of all the evidence that was submitted in the trial. It came as a significant surprise to me to receive an email on Wednesday 5th July 2023 from Cheshire Constabulary, accusing me of being in contempt of court and threatening me with arrest, prosecution and potential imprisonment for creating the rexvlucyletby2023.com website for the purposes of it being submitted to the court. Curiously, I have never had any contact with Cheshire Constabulary and the email address they used to contact me was my work address. It is unclear to me how they could have obtained my email address.

In England and Wales, the Contempt of Court Act (1981) permits courts to exercise widespread censorship over what can be discussed regarding an ongoing court case. However, I do not reside in the UK, and I am permanent resident of the United States. Owing to the sovereignty of U.S. laws alongside the First Amendment protections, governing freedom of speech, it appears that it would be unprecedented process to attempt to enforce any legal penalties against a British citizen who holds residency in a nation whose laws guarantee their right to free speech.

For England and Wales to enforce its laws against a British citizen who holds U.S permanent residency, there would need to be some basis for asserting jurisdiction, which might be complex and challenging in cases involving placing material on a private internet domain, such that the information can be made available to the court. Crucially, the First Amendment Protections are not limited to citizens of the U.S. Even though I am a British citizen, my residency status in the United States protects my right to freedom of speech. A jurisdictional argument can be made that my communication with the court places my conduct in the jurisdiction of the UK, and therefore bound by these laws. However, at issue here is the fact that I did not advertise the website in any manner, and the one act I took was to write to the court and ask for the court to provide a means by which I could get the information to the court for review.

The court declined to respond to my inquiry directly. It appears that Cheshire Constabulary were permitted to involve themselves in the matter despite the fact that contempt of court is a matter that is dealt with by the attorney general. Further, Cheshire Constabulary led the entire investigation and they have clearly vested interests in suppressing a scientific analysis which reveals clear examples of gross misrepresentation of scientific information by expert witnesses who carried out the investigation and testified for the prosecution.

After receiving this correspondence I emailed a letter to the Attorney General, Victoria Prentis, and the Lord Chancellor, Alex Chalk MP. The letter is attached below:

Unfriendly Courts

The term "amicus curiae" originates from Latin, translating to "friend of the court." In a legal context, an amicus curiae refers to a party that is not directly involved in a case but provides information, expertise, or insight that has bearing on the issues being considered by the court. The amicus curiae is designed to assist the court in making its decision by offering perspective, legal argument, or relevant technical information that the court might otherwise not be aware of, and where failure to make the court aware could harm the administration of justice.

The concept of amicus curiae has its roots in English common law. Originally, it was utilised as a mechanism by which the court could seek advice on points of law from lawyers, over time it expanded to individuals. Presently, it exists in the form as an application to intervene, and although this process is more common in civil cases it has been permitted in the context of criminal appeals.

The Office of the Children's Commissioner for England actively participated in criminal appeals concerning victims of trafficking, some of whom were purportedly minors, each previously prosecuted and convicted of criminal infractions (L., H.V.N., T.H.N., and T. v R [2013] EWCA Crim 991). In these appeals, the Children’s Commissioner offered submissions on how children in such predicaments should be handled, especially pertaining to age assessment procedures when age is contested, ensuring that the child's best interests are thoroughly considered. All of the aforementioned appeals were successful.

The intervention request was formally submitted through a letter addressed to the Lord Chief Justice, maintaining the same content as an application for permission to intervene in the Civil Division, and encompassed a synopsis of the intended intervention. Approval for the intervention was granted, inclusive of mutual cost protection concerning the intervention.

The rules do not explicitly allow for public interest intervention in standard civil proceedings other than judicial review, or in criminal proceedings before the High Court of Justiciary, regardless of whether it is acting as a court of first instance or a court of appeal. Nonetheless, public interest interventions have been permitted in various other cases despite the lack of a formal procedural provision.

Transnational repression

I did not receive a response to my letter to the Attorney General and the Lord Chancellor. However, I did receive legal advice from a lawyer in the U.S who informed me that Cheshire Constabulary cannot threaten me for exercising my free speech in the U.S. They also stated that Cheshire Constabulary has no authority to prevent me from speaking out on something that could broadly be described as a human rights issue, and where I was seeking to expose misconduct in the UK. In the U.S. where the government of another country seeks to harass and intimidate their own citizens, living in the United States, for taking a stance that said government disagrees with, this is termed Transnational Repression and it is a crime.

Though, this is not about me specifically, even though there is the broader issue surrounding why Cheshire Constabulary went out of their way to threaten me. Recently, I found out that Cheshire Constabulary obtained a court order to block rexvlucyletby2023.com being listed on Google searches in the UK. As far as I am aware nobody else running either YouTube Channels, Substacks, Blogs, or other sites were blocked in this way. What is it that Cheshire Constabulary are so afraid of people in the UK might learn from my website? It simply contains all the scientific information I believed was necessary for the Court to see, before it permitted a jury to deliberate over the claims put forth by some eight expert witnesses, who testified against Lucy Letby.