Lucy Letby Court Case

[Pebble21uk]

Today has been the first day of the trial, which is expected to last for six months. One thread has already been pulled on the subject. Upon deletion MNHQ said that a thread about the case is fine but please read the rules around contempt of court before posting... these are copied and pasted here:
Publicly commenting on a court case:

You might be in contempt of court if you speak publicly or post on social media.
For example, you should not:
say whether you think a person is guilty or innocent
refer to someone’s previous convictions
name someone the judge has allowed to be anonymous, even if you did not know this
name victims, witnesses and offenders under 18
name sex crime victims
share any evidence or facts about a case that the judge has said cannot be made public

If any of the above take place then new threads will also be pulled. Let's please try and keep it going!

If you would like to follow proceedings in court today - there are live updates here:
www.chesterstandard.co.uk/news/23053961.live-lucy-letby-trial-monday-october-17/
Please note that the first set of parents (of twins A&B) have taken the stand this morning along with the twins grandmother. Some of the testimony may be upsetting or triggering so please proceed with caution. I've tried to do a summary below leaving out some of the more upsetting testimony.

LL is charged with the murder of Child A (a boy) and the attempted murder of Child B (a girl)

The mother had a blood condition (known & medicated) and was going to have her twins delivered by a specialist unit outside of Chester at full term. This changed when she had various medical conditions and the twins were delivered by C section a week prior to the date she would have had them delivered elsewhere. She was 'very upset' to have to have them at Chester and not as planned.

Both children were stable at birth.
the mother was told she could see the twins when she was well enough to sit in a chair and be taken to see them. Becoming anxious she was taken to see the children around 12-1pm on 8th June.

It was 8pm that evening when they were told there was an emergency with Child A. Resuscitation was attempted, but unsuccessful.

The same happened to Child B (Live feed isn't clear on date and time) but she was stabilised.

Child B remained in the hospital for a further four weeks.

This afternoon the court is hearing from Claire Hocknell, intelligence analyst employed by Cheshire Police.
She explains data has been obtained from medical records, Lucy Letby's mobile phone, and door swipe data showing access/exits by medical staff at the Countess of Chester Hospital's neonatal unit.

A consultant allegedly told the mother of Child A and B that child A might have died as a result of the mothers blood condition.

The mother objected to this but it hasn't yet been explained why the medical professional thought this or what the mother's blood condition was.

@DysonSpheres was is definitely a consultant who said that? The Chester Standard just said:

"It was said to the mum from a member of the Countess staff that Child A's death, if 'unascertained' from the coroner, could have come from her blood condition. She was "furious" upon being told this, and sought answers."

I would assume that knowing what the condition was would be quite pivotal in this case?

No it wasn't ascertained that it was a consultant. Apologies, I got muddled up.

As you say. It was a member of staff not identified.

I haven't been reading all the live feeds. What did the coroner ascertain in regards to Baby A? Or is that to come?

I was wondering about the Grandmother's testimony as it didn't seem to add anything, unless there's something I have missed? Or is it the case that everyone who had a significant interaction with the babies concerned gets to speak?

@DysonSpheres They haven't mentioned any post moten of coroner's findings yet.

I think the grandmother's testimony was included as she was there at Child A's death. She also confirmed a mottled appearance to Child B's skin when they rushed to the hospital fearing they would lose her as well.

Wasn't it mild haemophilia? I'm sure I've read that on one of the court updates (I haven't been looking at anywhere else like Reddit).

Nope I'm wrong that's Child N

Does anyone know where the idea came from that the hospital unit for the babies was sub-par/failing. I am following the trial updates and saw this in the evidence trail:

“A message to Letby from a colleague, shortly afterwards on June 9, following the death of Child A, began: "Luckily it doesn't happen very often here, not that that's any consolation at all."”

From the link to live trial updates, here:

www.chesterstandard.co.uk/news/23056892.live-lucy-letby-trial-tuesday-october-18/

this article is from 2017

www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/strange-markings-link-several-tragic-13055668

it states in the review that "The review also highlighted inadequate staffing levels for both doctors and nurses, a reluctance to seek advice and “remote” senior staff"

that can't have been something that just had happened in 2017, so whilst it may not have been "officially failing" there was definitely issues - as I suspect there would be with every single hospital if you looked closely enough

The CQC rated the hospital as requiring improvement in 2016, they stopped admitting prems because of high death rates around the same time and cancelled operations, and the baby unit had inadequate staffing. The investigation started the LL case. There is probably detailed info on the hospitals previous CQC reports. Its all on Wikipedia.

So will they go back to Child As case later on? Seems like they've presented a set of facts but no actual evidence of any foul play.

It says they will go back when the doctors etc give evidence

This section contains mostly “agreed facts” so just a more detailed telling of events before various witnesses are called to elaborate on the prosecutions points 👍

Ah ok!

It’s interesting to note that LL’s colleague thought the incidents surrounding babies A, C & D was odd.

This taken from messages between LL and said colleague.

‘LL: “What do you mean? Odd that we lost three and in different cicrumstances?'

Colleague: “I don't know, were they that different?"

Colleague: "Ignore me, I'm speculating."’

It shows that even early on there was some concern that something wasn’t right but no one seems to have acted upon it.

I think they will be taking things slowly, first presenting the agreed facts and then moving on to each side's arguments and evidence, but even with that, imagine how incredibly difficult it will be for everyone there to understand what happened in nearly 20 separate cases, some involving several attempts to murder, as alleged. It's so complex, no wonder it's listed for 6 months. I can't possibly imagine being a juror in a harder case than this one, for so many reasons. Today's evidence related to the parents of babies A and B was utterly heartbreaking, I feel broken for them.

It shows that even early on there was some concern that something wasn’t right but no one seems to have acted upon it.

Well yeah, staffing levels were inadequate and there was serious problems in the unit. Not unlike the East Kent hospitals were 15 babies died, the report on which is due soon:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-63265892

Or the Shrewsbury and Telford hospital where care failures led to 200 baby deaths over 20 years.

Did they all have serial killers too?

Don’t get me wrong we’re not far enough into the trial to be able to form any kind of judgement on LL, but it’s perfectly possible for multiple babies to die in a hospital due to problems in the unit.

So did A B C and D all happen in the same night?

@IrisVersicolor I’m not say it indicates that she killed them, just that if staff had suspicions that something wasn’t right, why did it take them all so long to actually act on it. From a safeguarding point of view alone it’s terrible that staff didn’t act on such serious suspicions earlier on.

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz The Standard clarified their previous posting. I think they realised their wording was confusing, as I too thought the same thing at first.

”A small clarification for the 11.50am entry - the messages between Letby and her colleague, written on June 30, initially talk about 'that night' as the night Child A collapsed. The conversation then moved on to the wider topic of Child A, Child C and Child D having collapsed and died in the same month (June).”

It is possible that babies die as a result of poor care, as you say there have been plenty of reports in recent years, Morecambe Bay, Ockenden review, Cwm Taf maternity scandal, to name a few, but the list of failures everywhere is long and nobody seems to be doing anything about it.

But the trial isn't for clinical negligence and this isn't a regulatory investigation into failure to act in accordance with professional and safety standards. Not in relation to LL and not in relation to Countess of Chester hospital or its other staff members. So I think it's important to focus on what it is, a murder and attempted murder trial of LL. We will need to wait and see what the evidence shows going forward.

I think there will inevitably be some failures of CoC involved generally because there's an epidemic of poor maternity and neonatal care in this country and they already had negative reviews anyway. But if staff even at a supposedly failing neonatal unit are noticing and discussing cases they consider odd, one can argue that it's quite telling in a sense despite their issues, this was out of ordinary and even in their understaffed/too busy/inadequate, whatever it may have been, workplace, they still noticed something was off, but perhaps didn't fully click at the time. I said before that it's off the scale shocking to even think anyone would murder neonates and this factor, alongside the above, may have contributed to safeguarding failure, that's a possibility.

Apologies if I’ve missed it, but does anyone know if child A was LLs first experience of losing a baby at work?

(not to say there’s earlier ones she could have been involved with, it’s more the not knowing what to say to the parents, etc. she seemed quite lost in the text exchanges)

@PurplePansy05

But the trial isn't for clinical negligence and this isn't a regulatory investigation into failure to act in accordance with professional and safety standards. Not in relation to LL and not in relation to Countess of Chester hospital or its other staff members. So I think it's important to focus on what it is, a murder and attempted murder trial of LL

Analysis of murder/attempted murder in these or any circumstances inevitably involves consideration of other explanation for the deaths.

What you refer as “off” and “odd” in terms of what the staff noticed may simply be the result of poor staffing and failure to seek advice and remote senior staff as per the report. That could easily result in babies dying unexpectedly whose deaths were not inevitable.

I think it’s important not to be drawn into the drama of a potential serial killer to be tempted read into initial staff response intuitions that may not be there.

Great post, balanced and sums up just about how I feel too