Last week, the New Yorker published a blockbuster piece by Rachel Aviv, “A British Nurse Was Found Guilty of Killing Seven Babies. Did She Do It?”

Journalists in Britain cannot link to the article or tell you what it says. The story is blocked from internet browsers in the U.K.. This is because of the 1981 Contempt of Court Act, the violation of which is punishable by fines or imprisonment.

In the U.K., citizens are limited in commenting on ongoing criminal proceedings lest they prejudice the jury. The convicted British nurse, Lucy Letby, faces a retrial next month on one charge of attempted murder. Hence the current censorship of Aviv’s article.

What’s particularly egregious in this case is that in the aftermath of Letby’s conviction, while it was still legal to do so, there was relentless, one-sided coverage of the case.

Those articles were — and still are — available to the jury Letby will soon face. And yet a serious piece of investigative journalism that, in the words of Conservative MP David Davis, “raised enormous concerns about both the logic and competence of the statistical evidence that was a central part of that trial” is banned.

On May 14, Davis raised the issue in Parliament. He said:

Yesterday, the New Yorker magazine published a 13,000 word inquiry into the Lucy Letby trial which raised enormous concerns about both the logic and competence of the statistical evidence that was a central part of that trial. That article was blocked from publication on the UK internet I understand because of a court order. Now I’m sure that court order was well intentioned, but it seems to me to be in defiance of open justice. Would the Lord Chancellor look into this matter and report back to the house?

More on Letby later, but, for now — Davis is right, and this law urgently needs to be reformed.