Mike Lynch planned to investigate Lucy Letby 'miscarriage of justice' before yacht tragedy

Mike Lynch was planning to investigate whether Lucy Letby could be a victim of a miscarriage of justice before his death earlier this week.

The businessman and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah lost their lives after Mr Lynch's superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily on Monday.

A manslaughter investigation has now been launched into the tragedy which led to the deaths of seven people in total.

Conservative MP Sir David Davis has now said that Mr Lynch was looking to set up the Innocence Project, which is aimed at helping victims of miscarriages of justice.

The project was inspired by his own legal battles over the last decade.

Mr Lynch stood trial in the US after he was accused of inflating the value of his business, Autonomy.

The company was sold for £8.3billion to US company Hewlett-Packard before the deal eventually fell apart. He was acquitted of any wrongdoing in June.

Writing in the Sunday Times, Sir David said: "The toll on Mike was immense, but so was the relief when he was acquitted in June. That's what makes last week's cruel turn of events ever more tragic.

"When he returned to the UK and we had lunch to celebrate his victory, Mike spoke of the 'St Peter questions' - what he would say to St Peter at the pearly gates, when asked 'How well have you spent your life?'.

"He intended to have a good answer to that question when describing the remainder of his life's work.

"So Mike was committed to fighting for those who might face similar injustices to those he had to tolerate in the last decade. He planned to establish a UK equivalent to the Innocence Project, a US non-profit organisation that works to exonerate those who have suffered miscarriages of justice.

"He raised the case of the Lucy Letby trial as one that had already caught his attention. Mike was a world-class expert on probability theory, and saw straight through the statistical weaknesses that underpinned the Letby prosecution.

"One of our first projects was going to be investigating that trial properly. We were due to meet on Thursday, August 22, to discuss the plans. But on Monday, just as I was planning to send him a text to confirm the lunch, devastating news was breaking about his superyacht sinking during stormy weather near Palermo in Italy."

Letby, a former neonatal nurse, was convicted last year of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six others at the Countess of Chester hospital.

She was found guilty at a retrial last month at Manchester Crown Court.

But several experts, including scientists and doctors, have raised concerns over the statistical and medical evidence put to the jury.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) recently admitted that evidence showing when staff entered and left the unit was wrong.

However, the CPS later said that the evidence had been corrected in the retrial.

On Saturday, a CPS spokesperson said: "Two juries and three appeal court judges have reviewed a multitude of different evidence against Lucy Letby, and she has been convicted on 15 separate counts following two separate jury trials.

"We confirm that accurate door-swipe-data was presented in the retrial.

"We have been transparent in clarifying this issue and rectified it for the retrial. We are confident that this issue did not have a meaningful impact on the prosecution, which included multiple strands of evidence."