Angel of Death Nurse Could Be Freed Due to Flawed Evidence Expert Says

A nurse called Colin Norris was once called “Angel of Death.” Now, experts think he was a victim of a big injustice. He’s served 17 years of a 30-year sentence. A court convicted him in 2008 for murder and attempted murder. His case looks a lot like Lucy Letby’s case.

Letby murdered seven babies and tried to murder seven more. A panel is challenging the evidence against her. Norris, age 48, might be freed soon. The Court of Appeal will hear his case in May. The evidence against him was mostly circumstantial, and some say it had flaws.

Alan Wayne Jones is an expert in forensic toxicology. He sees close similarities in both cases and thinks both convictions could be unsafe. New evidence could weaken the original findings. He thinks experts now understand low blood sugar better, casting doubt on Norris’s guilt.

Richard Marks questioned Norris’s guilt years ago. Marks found insulin in Ethel Hall’s blood, but there was no such evidence in the other cases. Norris was just working when the other women died, and they all had low blood sugar. Prosecutors connected the dots and accused Norris.

Jones says the lab used a test called immunoassays, which isn’t good enough for solid forensic proof. He also claims the lab should have verified the results using a better method: liquid chromatography mass spectrometry. They didn’t use it for Norris’s case.

Hall got glucose before blood tests, which affected the results. The lab was clinical, not forensic, and forensic labs need stricter standards. They control the specimen and drug stability more. Jones thinks these evidentiary problems make the conviction unsafe.

Norris will argue the women’s low blood sugar had other causes. They were old, malnourished, and had conditions that lower blood sugar. Jones said Norris seemed cold at trial, which hurt his case. Jones was surprised by Letby’s guilty verdict.

An expert, Dr. Shoo Lee, questioned the baby deaths. He found no proof of murder, stating the babies died from being premature or having problems. Bad hospital care also contributed, and there was no evidence linking Letby to the deaths. The air embolism evidence was weak.

Judges will hear Norris’s case for four weeks. The Criminal Cases Review Commission sent his case to court, believing the court might find Norris’s conviction unsafe. Norris first appealed in 2009, but the court turned him down. He applied to the CCRC in 2011.