Lucy Letby - Specifically those who think she is guilty…

A lay jury couldn’t have possibly unravelled all that medical jargon. Most people wouldn’t be able to get their heads around NHS consultants using a young nurse as a scapegoat. No one wants to think that any departments in a hospital are unsafe whilst management turn a blind eye. We like to think that the premature babies would be especially carefully cared for. It’s so unfathomable that in fact 12 people off the street could easily be swayed into guilty verdicts by the disbelief of any other cause for the deaths

I think it's telling how weak the case is that when asked about her guilt people bring up things that don't point to guilt at all, such as her keeping notes, misremembering if she had a shredder, and her Facebook activity etc. In most other murder cases there's something other than this gives bad vibes or is odd. The point that we don't know everything said in the court is true but it's strange that the media and authorities would keep secret strong pieces of evidence.

When she was found guilty I didn't question it. I remember watching the BBC documentary where they showed that table with all the crosses showing she was the only one at every incident. Of course I later learnt there was no strict criteria to determine what was an incident and what wasn't, as if she wasn't on duty and something happened then it wouldn't be classed as such. It seems like a sharpshooter fallacy.

I had a ventilated adult patient whose ventilator lost power as I was standing with the Ward Manager (top nurse) at the side of the bed.

The WM and I looked at the ventilator, the patient, then each other, then the patient again, then the ventilator again, both with our arms at our sides, before she spoke, and we bagged the patient.

If someone had walked in at that time, they would have seen both of us doing nothing because we were trying to determine whether the patient was breathing, which is difficult in an adult, let alone a neonate. Even though alarms were going off, we had to observe the patient, which is a plausible explanation for what could have happened.

Another plausible explanation is that she was a poor nurse who, due to the well-documented staff shortages, didn't get the training and support she needed. Which would have been a manslaughter charge maybe?

Murder is just too big a stretch given the evidence. There are some overly familar nurses that blur the boundaries. We had a nurse in ICU who was caring for a young male patient who tried to get the patient's wife removed from the hospital- people do go a bit doolally if they are overworked and haven't slept.

🤣🤣

I don’t know where to start with this.

What confuses me about the race stuff is that so much of the doubt is stemming from Dr Shoo Lee, who isn't white, and his actions. Do people really think someone in his position would be unbothered about their research being misattributed in a mass murder trial if Letby was, say, the same ethnicity as him?

It was one thing people thinking that in 2023, especially as it wasn't then known that Ravi Jayaram had given false information to the court. I can see how people's analysis of the racial dynamics might reasonably have differed then. Not so much now.

Because to just stand watching in an emergency situation seems beyond incompetent for a trained nurse. I can't say she's 100% guilty but the op asked why people think she is and that is the detail which has stuck with me personally.

It's all the evidence the jury didn't have that's the problem...

I don’t believe, that if this was a south asian nurse or a black nurse, there would be the number of campaigners out there, trying to convince others that a convicted child killer is innocent.

I don’t believe there would be newspaper serialisations or channel 5 documentaries either.

The truth is, there are white women who take a strange interest in crime who dunnits, conspiracy theories etc….who are happy to revel in the disturbing details of this case and to justify this morbid interest, they claim evidence has been missed, that only those like them can see, that it’s a miscarriage of justice. Thus adding to the idea that they are special, that their interest in grisly murders, somehow makes them qualified to bang on to others that a convicted killer….isn't the killer after all.

You see that upthread with the claim that jury system cant understand complex evidence…but obviously the poster can!

It’s the refusal to believe that someone who looks like them or looks like their daughter, could ever do something like this.

Thank you for explaining this. That's the part that most convinced me of deliberate wrongdoing throughout this case.
I unfortunately have some experience of a young infant in high dependency, and the Drs and nurses invariably understand the trajectory, explain it to the parents, and the care given follows this path. They hold a great deal of credibility because they are so expert and experienced.
The sudden decline of babies who were doing relatively well (I believe some were even preparing for discharge) is what instantly made this 'deliberate' in my mind.
The fact that some really dubious evidence was needlessly presented to hammer it home (ie.handwritten notes of 'guilt') has really now muddied the waters.

For what it's worth, I absolutely believe she's innocent, due to a little known podcast called We Need To Talk About Lucy Letby.

The people who did the podcast are two doctors who unfortunately know nothing about making podcasts so they never became part of the official narrative around this case, but they do know a huge amount about pediatric medicine and understand the details of the case to a spectacular degree.

Because they're not media people, the podcast isn't scripted, "fun" to listen to etc. It's mostly a very long, extremely elaborate discussion of this case and each of the babies. However, when you hear the full scientific / medical detail, it becomes shockingly clear how little of it was presented at the original trial, for various reasons, and the alternative explanations for how the babies died are overwhelmingly convincing, from a medical standpoint. And the whole story of exactly how and why she got accused also makes far more sense, when you hear all the details (such as of her falling out with the consultants), as her being a scapegoat. Someone had to pay and she did, unfortunately.

Anyone who's truly interested in this case should listen to this podcast.

Even if this was the case... why murder, why not incompetence?

She wasn't technically found guilty by a jury of her peers, but by the general public in a trial that was based on highly technical knowledge.

I briefly worked on a neonatal ward as a physio, but I couldn't follow much of their reasoning for why she was responsible. It was clear to me that the wards were run poorly. For example, a linked review showed that consultants did ward rounds 3 times a week, whereas the ward I worked on had consultant ward rounds 3 times a day, or more for ventilated patients.

Therefore, I simply cannot understand how people could be so sure she is guilty based on the trial, especially if they do not work in, or have experience working in, a neonatal ward.

I don't think that follows at all.

After years under investigation, on trial * 2 and in gaol there's no way she'd be mentally or physically fit to go back toany sort of nursing still less in the same field she was in before.

I dont think you’ve properly read what I wrote? I was talking specifically about cluster deaths which is what you commonly see on failing units, and a pattern of lack of timely intervention is one of the things you would commonly see cause a cluster due to poor medical practices at that specific time, which would then cease once either education work was carried out or medics rotated, whereas the deaths in question show a diffuse pattern over a number of years. I never said that lack of timely intervention couldn’t be a factor in any of the deaths?

My daughter is a Midwife, and has discussed this extensively with colleagues.

They all think she's a scapegoat.

They all work under conditions where they know that any single of them could be thrown under the bus at any moment for poor management decisions that impact patients. I take my hat off to them, and don't know how they do it.

I thought someone witnessed her in the same room as a baby in distress and not doing her job to help and respond but just standing there until someone else walked in. That seemed the most compelling evidence to me if true.

The tide isn’t turning, in fact the inquiry into why the hospital didn’t act sooner has shown she should have been reported to police far earlier, given the amount of evidence against her. The hospital bosses have been found guilty of gross misjudgement, lack of candour, and a complete lack of awareness of safeguarding in not reporting it to police sooner. Ie there was a cover up.

I think she is guilty. The doctors suspected something was going on with the sudden deaths. Seven babies mudered guilty attempted murder of seven more guilty. You can argue she's innocent but I think she's guilty.

Of course you don't. We've established that you don't really think about other people. But do not think about the babies' parents and families? Or about the babies who could be reading this and somebody wanting to actually be in the court room which must have been hell on earth.

I listened to all the trial episodes too. I don't know how anyone can think she's not guilty after listening to all of them.

The insane conspiracy theories surrounding Lindsay Clancy and how it was somehow all her husband's fault reminded me of this too.

This. I find the idea that a judgement automatically reflects the truth to be bizarre. Miscarriages of justice are incredibly frequent.

I M not saying that Letby is innocent though, I haven't followed enough to know.

They could but she’s not.
The evidence for guilt is unbelievably weak. It only looks like a lot because there were so many babies involved.
For example, the insulin poisoning claim rests purely on two anomalous results from a test which is not designed for neonates and specifically says in the instructions it isn’t reliable enough to be used in legal cases. No witnesses showing her tampering with the bags, no explanation of how she got insulin into tamper evident bags with no sign of tampering, and now it turns out there were also results showing normal levels in the same babies which the jury weren’t told about.

It doesn't have to be one or the other, but it doesn't matter that the jury was told about the possibility of one, but not the other. If they had heard about the hospital's failings, who knows what the verdict might have been.

What counters the argument that there was indeed a lack of timely intervention in these cases? That's the conclusion the panel of neonatologists examining the case has come to, along with errors in care. You seem to be listing things that could indeed have caused these deaths, but it's not clear why you are ruling them out.