Lucy Letby (2)

@IonianNerveGrip in response to your post -

In the Letby case. I doubt an expert jury would've been feasible because of logistics. An agreed expert panel model would've probably been easier to pull off. You left out the part of my post where I talked about what was more realistic.

Okay, so how do you deal with the inevitable deadlock and delays that would cause? Would the court have to force one side or another to capitulate after a certain amount of time and/or vetoes? I don’t often find myself standing up for Letby, but I really can’t see how a system like that would have served her fairly for eg the insulin babies.

But the poor quality and in one case incorrect evidence is a problem in itself. It's all very well saying get another expert to address it, but Dewi Evans having honestly misstated the Shoo Lee paper means it's possible the jury will believe the incorrect interpretation.

How material do you believe the misinterpretation of Shoo Lee’s paper was, and did that misinterpretation undermine the 13 (I think) other references cited by Dewi Evans in his report? Did the misinterpretation mean that a diagnosis of AE was absolutely excluded?

And in terms of poor quality evidence, who should decide what is good quality and what is poor quality within a judicial system? Expert evidence is basically just one person’s opinion - I can’t see how you could ever effectively (and fairly) control for quality, other than by letting both sides challenge the evidence provided and put forward their own instructed experts.

As has been pointed out before, being an expert in a field doesn't translate to being a persuasive performer in court. They're not necessarily the same skillset, and while we're anecdoting, someone being incredibly eminent in their field and also coming across as arrogant is very much a thing!

Agreed - as was ever thus, and ever will be. But the same would be true even in an agreed expert system. What if as a defendant the expert speaking to the strongest bit of your case was also the weakest performer in court or most likely to rile the jury up? At least in the current system lawyers are able to use their experience to instruct the expert that they believe can best support their client’s case.

What a silly response. You've been told before on these threads to stop attributing things to people that they haven't said. As pointed out already, one way to address this is an agreed expert

So you can’t see anything wrong with defendants having to agree to a joint expert, even if that expert is only going to be able to support the prosecution case and undermine the defence case? As per my response above, how would that have played out any better for Letby for the insulin babies? It would have been two whole life orders guaranteed before they’d even got started.

The fact that poor statistical evidence was used at all is bad. As neither of us know how persuasive the jury found it, there's no basis to either agree or disagree about extent- we simply know that it was part of the prosecution.

So the prosecution should not have been allowed to demonstrate that Letby had the opportunity to commit the crimes she was accused of? Hardly any time was actually spent on the rota chart during the 10 month trial, and as the jury didn’t convict her on all counts perhaps they didn’t find it as persuasive as some statisticians would like to think they did.

And the fact is that the prosecution tried to draw inferences from her behaviour, which weren't backed up by expert evidence. Think back to the closing speech for example. It's all very well saying they could've called a forensic psychologist but that doesn't actually mean the jury are going to find that expert persuasive over some cod nonsense. And the prosecution weren't doing anything wrong within our system here either, which is the point.

Do you think we should just remove any consideration of human behaviour from criminal trials then? Even though all crimes are fundamentally, and only, a result of human behaviour. What sort of expert would even be able to provide objective evidence on motive or intent?

Ie does it need to be less narrow. The Law Commission undertook and published a review last year.

I am still none the wiser what you actually think needs to change to make it ‘less narrow’.

ok well most of the country, if you read the book by chris morris he explains everything which i could not do.... i guess if you just stick to the bbc/sky news or listen to the horrendous daily mail podcast you might believe she actually done it but maybe have a think about how silent they are. It is not the exciting subject it used to be,

Not sure why you would go on about judges or being found guilty the whole court case was a farce, she had no chance. Some guy Malkinson i think, just got out of jail after 20 years every MOJ includes a court case.

The police wanted her prosecuted again, i wonder why that would be and why they were told to forget it as they have done enough damage to her life and caused panic with how biased the investigation was.

Which professions should have made up the juries for the Letby trials? And how could they all have relevant knowledge across all of the wide-ranging areas covered? What expertise would neonatologists have about the specifics of nursing practices and protocols? Or pathologists about endocrinology? etc etc

In the Letby case. I doubt an expert jury would've been feasible because of logistics. An agreed expert panel model would've probably been easier to pull off. You left out the part of my post where I talked about what was more realistic.

The defence were perfectly entitled to challenge the evidence provided by Dewi Evans via their own experts. And I know some posters might point out that the defence were refused permission to put forward their expert/s as the trial went along, but I’ve also sat through a fair few long trials where the defence experts have swept in at the end and completely blown the prosecution evidence out of the water. Why did the Letby defence decide it was better to do nothing than to have a go at that? Particularly if the quality of the prosecution evidence was as shockingly poor as people are saying it was (and we can be pretty certain Ben Myers would have known poor quality evidence when he saw it).

But the poor quality and in one case incorrect evidence is a problem in itself. It's all very well saying get another expert to address it, but Dewi Evans having honestly misstated the Shoo Lee paper means it's possible the jury will believe the incorrect interpretation.

As has been pointed out before, being an expert in a field doesn't translate to being a persuasive performer in court. They're not necessarily the same skillset, and while we're anecdoting, someone being incredibly eminent in their field and also coming across as arrogant is very much a thing!

So if you’ve committed a crime but want to plead not guilty, you should be compelled to put forward an expert who will inevitably undermine your case (because you actually did it)? That feels like quite a fundamental shift away from the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

What a silly response. You've been told before on these threads to stop attributing things to people that they haven't said. As pointed out already, one way to address this is an agreed expert

We can probably agree to disagree about the extent to which statistical evidence was used in the Letby case, but it would be ridiculous to not be able to consider someone’s behaviour as part of the evidence. Again, the defence are perfectly entitled to challenge this. In the Letby case the defence instructed at least one forensic psychologist - they could have called them to explain why there was nothing concerning or unusual about Letby’s behaviour (assuming that’s what their opinion was).

The fact that poor statistical evidence was used at all is bad. As neither of us know how persuasive the jury found it, there's no basis to either agree or disagree about extent- we simply know that it was part of the prosecution.

And the fact is that the prosecution tried to draw inferences from her behaviour, which weren't backed up by expert evidence. Think back to the closing speech for example. It's all very well saying they could've called a forensic psychologist but that doesn't actually mean the jury are going to find that expert persuasive over some cod nonsense. And the prosecution weren't doing anything wrong within our system here either, which is the point.

Not sure what you mean by whether the test is wide enough?

Ie does it need to be less narrow. The Law Commission undertook and published a review last year.

The Letby defence instructed a statistician - why didn’t they call them to provide some challenge and clarity on the statistical position? I suspect it’s primarily because the actual data would look far worse for Letby than the rota chart ever did.

Doesn't address my point. The RSS have been raising the alarm for years about poor use of stats in legal matters, you must know this, and the prosecution did it again here. As with the other times you made this argument, merely saying an alternative expert can be called doesn't take away the problem of it happening in the first place. Once poor quality evidence is adduced, it becomes possible that a jury will find it persuasive.

Which also brings us back to my question - what professions would be represented on a professional jury in the Letby case?

If there’s one thing that has been hammered home to me from these threads, it’s that very few people can ‘do’ statistics other than statisticians (and that includes most doctors as I understand it). So should the professional jury just be made up of statisticians in cases like this? Otherwise, how is the professional jury any more likely than a lay jury to be assessing statistical claims correctly?

And then what about the way the professional jury assesses claims relating to neonatal medicine or pathology or endocrinology or psychology or hospital plumbing?

@Oftenaddled what's the overwhelmingly most likely reason the results showed what they did?

@Oftenaddled that someone had to come up with a whole new theory to explain it that no endocrinologist knew of prior to the trial tells you everything you need to know.

Why didn't her defence call any witnesses except a plumber. Because it would have not helped. In other words she's guilty.

There are pros to the jury system, but it's neither realistic nor reasonable to expect a lay jury of people without relevant professional expertise to appraise huge volumes of evidence in fields where they don't have the experience or training.

Which professions should have made up the juries for the Letby trials? And how could they all have relevant knowledge across all of the wide-ranging areas covered? What expertise would neonatologists have about the specifics of nursing practices and protocols? Or pathologists about endocrinology? etc etc

Multiple professional bodies have been sounding the alarm about the expert witness system for years, in some cases decades. We don't have safeguards built in to prevent an expert giving genuinely believed but wrong specialist evidence. It should concern us all that Dewi Evans could give incorrect evidence to the court without it being corrected.

The defence were perfectly entitled to challenge the evidence provided by Dewi Evans via their own experts. And I know some posters might point out that the defence were refused permission to put forward their expert/s as the trial went along, but I’ve also sat through a fair few long trials where the defence experts have swept in at the end and completely blown the prosecution evidence out of the water. Why did the Letby defence decide it was better to do nothing than to have a go at that? Particularly if the quality of the prosecution evidence was as shockingly poor as people are saying it was (and we can be pretty certain Ben Myers would have known poor quality evidence when he saw it).

In an adversarial system, prosecution and defence have a duty to put the case as well as they can, which isn't the same thing as having a duty to make sure the court is as well informed as possible. There isn't a duty to present an expert witness to the court, hence Letby had at least one expert who wanted to challenge dodgy prosecution evidence but the court never got the benefit of hearing that.

So if you’ve committed a crime but want to plead not guilty, you should be compelled to put forward an expert who will inevitably undermine your case (because you actually did it)? That feels like quite a fundamental shift away from the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

Prosecution also have an incentive to do things like give shonky statistical evidence and rely on cod psychological tropes about behaviour, and the prosecution in this case were just doing their jobs when they did it. But it was poor quality evidence.

We can probably agree to disagree about the extent to which statistical evidence was used in the Letby case, but it would be ridiculous to not be able to consider someone’s behaviour as part of the evidence. Again, the defence are perfectly entitled to challenge this. In the Letby case the defence instructed at least one forensic psychologist - they could have called them to explain why there was nothing concerning or unusual about Letby’s behaviour (assuming that’s what their opinion was).

Then there's the issues with remedying MOJs. The CCRCs organisational problems are well known, but also there's the question of whether the test isn't wide enough. Justice Gap have some good stuff on this.

Not sure what you mean by whether the test is wide enough?

For some specific issues like prosecutions including poor statistical evidence, much as I respect the work of the RSS (their various publications have been linked to on previous threads and are very good) I'm not sure education is going to tackle the problem. Not when the incentive remains due to the adversarial system. In order to address that we might need more specific rules about what claims can be made, perhaps specific applications if a party wants to depart from RSS guidance.
(Sorry, that was long for a summary!)

The Letby defence instructed a statistician - why didn’t they call them to provide some challenge and clarity on the statistical position? I suspect it’s primarily because the actual data would look far worse for Letby than the rota chart ever did.

Can you link to her appeal?

There you go again with your supercilious sneering.

Of course people understand analogies, but it's only the losers screaming from the rooftops isn’t an analogy.

@EyeLevelStick if you say so. I just nicked it off reddit when someone else made the comparison and I thought it was a good point. I should've known it wouldn't land considering most on here don't understand analogies.

Not buying it. You were using “losers” as an insult. Own it.

I already explained. Football analogy didn't work, fine. The people unhappy with the result shout the loudest. The rest who know justice has been done don't need to be writing articles, launching press conferences and making youtube vids constantly. Clearer?

So, anyone on the side of truth and justice then. Interesting.

So… what did you mean by “losers” in that context? As I already said, I don’t think we have lost anything - figuratively or literally.

Anyone on Letby's side, obviously.

I've posted quite a bit about this before but will summarise. In no particular order, because these are issues that have essentially intersected to create a perfect storm here.

There are pros to the jury system, but it's neither realistic nor reasonable to expect a lay jury of people without relevant professional expertise to appraise huge volumes of evidence in fields where they don't have the experience or training.

Multiple professional bodies have been sounding the alarm about the expert witness system for years, in some cases decades. We don't have safeguards built in to prevent an expert giving genuinely believed but wrong specialist evidence. It should concern us all that Dewi Evans could give incorrect evidence to the court without it being corrected.

In an adversarial system, prosecution and defence have a duty to put the case as well as they can, which isn't the same thing as having a duty to make sure the court is as well informed as possible. There isn't a duty to present an expert witness to the court, hence Letby had at least one expert who wanted to challenge dodgy prosecution evidence but the court never got the benefit of hearing that. Prosecution also have an incentive to do things like give shonky statistical evidence and rely on cod psychological tropes about behaviour, and the prosecution in this case were just doing their jobs when they did it. But it was poor quality evidence.

Then there's the issues with remedying MOJs. The CCRCs organisational problems are well known, but also there's the question of whether the test isn't wide enough. Justice Gap have some good stuff on this.

There are multiple possible ways to remedy some of this. We could keep the same jury system and have an agreed expert model, which I think is probably the likeliest reform. We could have expert juries in cases involving particularly specialist evidence like this, which is imho less likely because such jurors would need paying more for their time than the system currently funds. Non-adversarial systems exist, although I don't think changing to that is on the cards.

For some specific issues like prosecutions including poor statistical evidence, much as I respect the work of the RSS (their various publications have been linked to on previous threads and are very good) I'm not sure education is going to tackle the problem. Not when the incentive remains due to the adversarial system. In order to address that we might need more specific rules about what claims can be made, perhaps specific applications if a party wants to depart from RSS guidance.

(Sorry, that was long for a summary!)