Cheshire Police are an incompetent bunch of useless bastards

OP, I have no problem with people raising concerns about this trial and discussing a way forward. I’m not that bothered about the criticism of the police but I do find it weird that you are so convinced of her innocence when truth be told, you have no idea.

You are no better than the people you are criticising, you have your stand point and will champion all the points that support it and ignore all of those that don’t. You either have skin in this game or it’s a bit of a weird hobby.

Indeed. Which, when you've got three or four alleged "methods" is extremely dangerous.

If your husband has been tried and convicted of multiple murders then that is a useful analogy and would explain your motivation. If not, it is a ridiculous comparison.

The crux of the matter is that if the mechanisms of death are implausible, dubious and have no precedent, then it utterly undermines the safety of the prosecution. As someone else said the fact that she was "in the room" isn't enough for a prosecution. By that score, anyone could be prosecuted at any time for being in the proximity of any unexplained death.

But post mortems did identify causes of death on these babies, in 6 out of 7 I believe. Is it believable that the pathologists involved were so incompetent every one was wrong? Because they weren't looking for murder? Which is the argument I've heard several times.

You can't convict people on the basis of "well, we're not sure what you've done but you must have done something" (although you can permanently remove children because the bar in family court is lower and done on the balance of probabilities - which us essentially based on what expert witnesses "think" based on the information given to them).

The second trial did involve the judge telling the jury that they didn't need to be certain what she'd done, because she'd been convicted of other murders. That's not justice.

You've got the prosecution witnesses saying "you can kill a baby by injecting air into an NG tube". You've got a multitude of other essentially impartial professionals coming out and saying "eh?" Who wouldn't have been able to challenge that during the trial for legal reasons, but who don't want to see something patently untrue fall into common use. That's just for starters.

Until these technicalities are addressed, no amount of "Ooh I knew she was a wrong un due to her cold dead eyes and the way she lurked around the wards like the spectre of death" can justify her conviction on the evidence presented. It's the stuff of Penny Dreadfuls, frankly.

I don't believe a man would have been convicted or even brought to trial based on the 'evidence'. This case is Amanda Knox all over again isn't it. Wasn't acting like we think she should= guilty. The whole reason it was bought to the police in the first place was 'feelings' about her, absolutely no evidence. I think if they had been male the idea probably wouldn't have even made it beyond her colleagues heads.

There may be questions about the validity of the evidence and how it was presented but your absolute belief that she is innocent is bizarre.

Also, to go the title of this thread, Cheshire Police have investigated thoroughly and presented a case to the CPS, they will have had to disclose to the defence anything that undermined the prosecution or assisted the defence. From there on in, the trial process takes over. I’m not sure what the police have done wrong, they are not medical experts so will have to be led by what they are told by medical experts (that are willing to put pen to paper, not just sit back and go on podcasts after the event).

This exactly. In this case I don't believe there was any conspiracy. Just incompetence. Separately to incompetence, I can assure you that there has been, and probably currently are, cases where deep corruption goes right the way through police and CPS.

I'm so sorry that happened to you and thankyou for this insight. I think it's more common than people realise. Years ago, My DM had a friend who was a Dr herself who was accused of harming her newborn. Turned out to be a birth injury. I just can't imagine being separated from your baby knowing you are the one thing they need desperately but the rest of the world believing you're a danger to them. Absolutely terrifying and could happen to anyone.

Yes, and you don't accept an answer about pots falling out of helicopters and concussing camels in the desert or whatever that was about.

Defence witnesses for this sort of case are indeed rare as hens teeth. And were pretty thin on the ground 30 years ago when I was left to try and build my own "defence" in yes, the family courts, but which is no less a traumatic experience when you're facing the permanent loss of your child to adoption.

One witness I found was close to be struck off for allegedly working outside the scope of his expertise because he had identified alternative explanations for the discovery of metaphyseal fractures in large numbers, in often premature babies and multiple births. At that time the medical dogma in place for decades insisted that the only explanation for these occult fractures was violent and deliberate abuse - and if there were no bruises it must be careful torture. Things have thankfully moved on a bit by now.

My solicitor wouldn't call on that witness because the court would not accept his testimony. The idea was that going to this "charlatan" would emphasise my desperation to "get off" and the courts would hold it against me. The expert in question was a highly respected biochemist heading up the Brittle Bone Society in Scotland and had decades of work examining collagen disorders under his belt. When he successfully challenged too many cases in family court, prosecution experts got him struck off as it was challenging and undermining the dogma they followed.

I'm not trying to make this all about me, I'm using this as an example of when medical evidence meets the legal system. It can be complex. I've said on other threads that the adversarial system is not about the "truth" it's about winning, and that came straight from my solicitors mouth in the first meeting I had with him, when I was 6 weeks post partum, had just been accused of the worst thing imaginable and was told from the get go that if I couldn't come up with an explanation for occult, mostly symptomless fractures, then adoption was the only outcome. He went on to be a respected circuit judge in the family courts, so he knew exactly how it all worked.

I didn't follow the Lucy Letby trial at the time. I'm painfully aware of my own natural bias and I tried to believe that after Sally Clarke, Angela Cannings etc these sorts of cases would only make it to court on the back of virtually incontrovertible evidence. Once the trial was over, and I saw the other experts coming out saying essentially WTF about some of the medical evidence, despite my better judgement I had to look closer. It was some of the language used against her that really struck me, the phrases used by the experts - forcce of a car crash is one that gets trotted out because it's dramatic, sounds terrible and will push the buttons of a jury. It's clear that in 30 years, very little has changed with regard to medical evidence in complex court cases.

I've looked at all the alleged mechanisms of death as forensically as I can as a lay person with only Google to hand. They don't add up. The circumstantial evidence and character assassination has been allowed to obfuscate the forensics and that is wrong. Our justice system should be better than that. No system can be perfect but how many innocent people or miscarriages of justice can be comfortably written off as acceptable collateral damage? Especially when the reason it happens can include perjury, group think, institutional gas-lighting and arse covering, and when challenging it is regarded as nutty conspiracy theorising.

I have actually been there - not as far as being prosecuted, although a SW tried her damndest even after the police didn't want to pursue my case, but in my mind, the stakes were higher - permanently losing my child.

I'm fully expecting to be scoffed at and told I'm making this up because I, like Lucy Letby, am an attention-seeking narcissist intent on harming babies - after all, lots of important educated people have said so. Based simply on medical evidence. And the fact that I disagreed with it.

Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk.....

(Yes, I'm still bitter).

None of which points to a conspiracy. Just incompetence (on the part of the defence mostly). When a doctor says “The likelihood of this occurring by chance alone is very low.” you ask them for the calculated probability, the confidence intervals, and them to show their workings. Basic A-level stats and probability. You don't just accept them at their word.

Disfunctional, yes, e.g. in allowing media to publish on Letby's guilt but not the possibility of error during trials And I would see how you could consider Evans corrupt. So not too much of a stretch, and I don't think that implies a conspiracy theory.

From the post I quoted when I said this

They've clearly never had the displeasure of knowing how completely disfunctional and downright corrupt it [the justice system] can be

Lots of posts about 'she was framed' on social media.

Who on earth is claiming that there is a "conspiracy orchestrated by higher authorities"?

Miscarriages of justice happen all the time - many people believe this to be one. That's all there is to it.

This. However, none of these "experts" were willing to give evidence at her trial. There were plenty of medical experts for the prosecution and very few, of any, for the defence. The documentary on Channel 5 even said why - the experts will have their careers ruined if the verdict goes the wrong way for them. The neo-natal doctor only spoke anonymously because SHE was scared of the repercussions. I think the conviction is unsafe but I can't see how she will ever get a fair trial with the lack of experts willing to speak for her and the high emotion of it being tiny babies.

She was also charged with a number of other deaths which they couldn’t convict her on. On similar (poor, IMO) evidence.

Competing medical evidence / other explanations for the deaths weren’t presented at trial because only one expert (in the entire UK) was prepared to risk being blackballed by the NHS to represent the defence. And in the end, for whatever reason (incompetence, a tactical plan that failed or whatever else) her defence chose not to put him on the stand.

Subsequently, MANY expert pathologists and doctors, worldwide, have come forward and expressed doubts about the way the deaths were represented in court, how the statistics were interpreted and other aspects of the prosecution case.

The jury are just ordinary men and women. If a reputed ‘expert’ takes the stand for the prosecution (and that’s the only interpretation they hear) then they’re much more likely to convict than not. There’s a big problem in this country with medical witnesses. They know that if they become known as defence experts they’ll be actively ostracised by the wider NHS.

I haven't come across anyone who believes Letby's case was a conspiracy against her - just group think, flawed understanding of statistics, and an irresponsible lead witness for the prosecution.

I think the justice system usually gets things right. I know the justice system occasionally gets things wrong. It seems sensible to listen to what relevant experts are saying about this one. That's all - no big drama.

Ah, the 'wake up, sheeple' approach. I am completely amazed myself at some people's desperation to believe in a conspiracy orchestrated by higher authorities. Apparently the deaths of these babies were a Schrodinger's cat situation where it was both simply a series of sad events that just happened, and also, somehow, a terrible scandal of neglect and mismanagement that if exposed would be devastating for the hospital - having a serial killer on staff looks so much better! - and therefore required loads of people to work in cohort to fabricate evidence against one innocent nurse and make her a scapegoat.

The other witnesses received Evans's notes and worked from them. He also worked with them to persuade them of his theories.

Letby was accused of seven murders. Five had postmortems that showed natural causes. One had no postmortem because the doctor on duty told her parents there was no need. One is of unknown cause, which is the case for about one in twelve infant deaths in the UK.

When the hospital commissioned an external review of all 13 deaths on the ward 2015-16, they were told that sub-optimal care had been identified and had contributed to several of the deaths. This applied to at least two of the deaths Letby was charged with. It did not refer to her nursing care.

I'm not convinced of Letby's innocence but I do think the prosecution evidence was weak which imo makes her conviction unsafe.

I was baffled by her defence calling a plumber as their only witness and the only explanation I've been able to come up with is that he thought if he introduced the dodgy plumbing as evidence it would raise the idea of infections being a more plausible cause for the spike in the number of deaths. There is at least one (iirc) documented case of this happening in a neonate unit. Otherwise I remain baffled.

I listened to the DM podcast at the time and every time they released a new episode I had so many questions that weren't answered. I thought the time constraints must limit how much detail could be included but on the basis of what they did present I was confused about how the case even got to court.

She was encouraged to write those notes by a therapist (which the prosecution barrister, nor the MSM who were sensationalising their coverage, didn’t make clear at trial) during treatment.

As you, and a PP has said upthread, people often write things as therapy which aren’t objectively factual, but represent feelings they’re trying to express / work through. A complicated mixture of grief, disbelief, shock etc - if it had all been neat, tidy and with no self-doubt evident, under those circumstances, then I’d more readily believe she was a killer.