Page 12 | Lucy Letby guilty - part 2

twoandcooplease · 2023-08-19T00:47:10+00:00

Thread 1 Lucy Letby guilty http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/4875009-lucy-letby-guilty Just in case anyone wants to keep the conversation going

ssd · 19/08/2023 15:23

Its not relevant at all. And the zeal that some posters are discussing issues that aren't their business in a horrific murder trial is frankly sickening.

marmaladeandpeanutbutter · 19/08/2023 15:23

Hbh17 · 19/08/2023 13:00

There is potentially a "culture" issue at play, in that middle-aged male consultants were forced to apologise for "bullying" a young, female nurse - managers terrified of some sort of discrimination claim? Part of the problem is that hospitals have all sorts of procedures, but don't (at least in this case) always implement them properly.
Henry Marsh (distinguished consultant surgeon) has made the very valid point that the biggest single problem in the NHS over the last 40 years has been the loss of consultant autonomy - one of the reasons why so many retire early. Also, a "failed" consultant would be struck off, but a "failed" manager simply moves on to another good job.

That's so true, @Hbh17 . They used to be sent to region in the 90s if they were senior enough!

Mooshamoo · 19/08/2023 15:24

Another failure I think is this:
She had just qualified from college and did one extra short course.

And she was put straight away looking after severely ill premature babies.

Surely nurses should need more training before they are put in nearly sole care of a tiny premature baby. One baby was born at 6 months - then went into her care.

MavisMcMinty · 19/08/2023 15:25

She denied they had an affair in court, as presumably did he - not sure what else the prosecution could do beyond ask, which they must have done for it to be denied by them both. It’s probably irrelevant whether or not he fancied her back and if they did or didn’t have an affair.

WorkworkworkworkworkTips · 19/08/2023 15:26

Everybody needs to watch "The Nurse" on Netflix - an eerily similar true story that took place in Denmark. The killer nurse did it because she loved the attention and praise she got whilst seemingly trying everything she could to save the patients

Toffeebythesea · 19/08/2023 15:26

How is it not relevant? Her obsession with him has been presented as a primary motive for committing murder.

HaveYouHeardOfARoadAtlas · 19/08/2023 15:28

Toffeebythesea · 19/08/2023 15:16

I get why he was kept anonymous. What I don't understand is why the trial failed to establish whether or not they were having a sexual relationship. Surely this is pretty relevant to the case and it would have been appropriate to get an answer from him in relation to this.
Also I read that many text messages between were not shown to the court which again seems odd

If they both denied it (which they did) I don’t see what the court could do?

Their responses would have to be taken on face value and I think it rings true. she was infatuated, he liked having his ego stroked and enjoyed meeting her, etc. so an emotional affair but probably not a sexual one.

I do wonder if his wife has worked out it was him (I’d guess so from the details released) and whether it cost him his marriage.

BIossomtoes · 19/08/2023 15:29

Toffeebythesea · 19/08/2023 15:26

How is it not relevant? Her obsession with him has been presented as a primary motive for committing murder.

The first two murders were before he even worked there. Obsession is enough, it’s completely irrelevant whether they were having sex or not.

HaveYouHeardOfARoadAtlas · 19/08/2023 15:29

Toffeebythesea · 19/08/2023 15:26

How is it not relevant? Her obsession with him has been presented as a primary motive for committing murder.

But she could have that obsession with him without them having a sexual relationship. Or she could be equally obsessed with him if they were having sex. It makes no difference.

MavisMcMinty · 19/08/2023 15:31

It’s a strange way of flirting with someone, I’m sure we can all agree on that.

Lemieux7 · 19/08/2023 15:36

What I find most bizarre is that there doesn’t seem to be any evidence (aside from the murders) of antisocial personality. She was conscientious enough to complete A-levels & a nursing degree & had long-standing friendships & there is no evidence of conduct disorder in childhood.

A lot of people with ASPD are high functioning and most of them don't actually kill. Although it's true that they would tend to show signs that would drive people away and you'd think that they may have trouble maintaining relationships. Maybe her relationships were superficial?

I would also suggest that people who really know her won't have been able to say what their experiences of her were like because of the risk of prejudice to a fair trial. Maybe more will come out now?

Toffeebythesea · 19/08/2023 15:36

Also if he denied an affair which actually happened then he was lying under oath. This puts into dispute what else he could have lied about. Sounds like he was blind to her mistakes which again is relevant to the case surely.
Apparently he has since been promoted and works in another hospital. I am surprised that someone who allowed their judgement to be clouded by an affair with a junior colleague and then potentially lied under oath is still working in medicine. l know a doctor who was struck off for much less serious reasons than this.

benfoldsfivefan · 19/08/2023 15:39

They sent out for meals together, he came to her house, and they went together to London. You’d have to be pretty naive to think they weren’t having sex.

Echio · 19/08/2023 15:40

TooOldForThisNonsense · 19/08/2023 12:24

There’s a doctrine in criminal evidence law of similar fact evidence which I’m sure you could look into if you wanted. But I’m sure you prefer to think that unlike you we’re all just gullible fools with blind faith in the criminal justice system. I assure you, I don’t have that blind faith at all. But sometimes hard and hugely evidentially complex cases can still end up in fair convictions and I do think that’s what’s happened here.

Thank you for the pointer, I might have a nosey some time. I'd be glad to end up confident that a fair conviction has happened here. At the moment I couldn't come to that conclusion myself. I'm not sure I ever will, because it's just my nature not to be easily convinced - it makes me good at my job but a right ditherer at decision making.

Anyway - if you come from an informed professional position as you infer (apologies if I've missed this earlier), I'm happy to take your conviction with somewhat more weight than most here, who are, like me, not experts.

margegunderson · 19/08/2023 15:41

WhisperingHi · 19/08/2023 08:44

@Lemieux7 I can't say for sure how I'd feel about a different trial with someone with different demographics. I'm pretty certain her age and looks aren't very relevant to me but I could be unconsciously biased and obviously I wouldn't recognise that. I agree with you that many people struggle to think she could do it because perhaps they relate to her, see her as a young, sociable, seemingly likable person, and question how she could do it.

That's not what I'm doing though. I'm simply wondering why we aren't being shown all of the evidence. Why would a reporter home in on a phrase such as 'back to work with a bang' with the insinuation that she said that to prewarn colleagues shes back to cause more harm 🥴 when that's a very normal phrase to use when going back to a busy role, but not share something more compelling? I'm not disputing that there's more evidence, I just struggle to understand why it's not publically available when other, much less substantive evidence has been reported.

But I do understand your comment about bias, whether unconscious or conscious and I agree that it is at play in many cases, including this one.

I've reported court cases - years ago - much shorter ones that this. Can you imagine reading every word of the evidence given in 10 months? So much of it will be confirmation of what someone else had said and another take on events. Part of the jury's decision will be that they've cumulatively heard so many hours, days, weeks, months of evidence.

MavisMcMinty · 19/08/2023 15:44

I assume they were having an affair, of course, I imagine everyone in court thought the same, but the convictions were made regardless of that detail. She fancied/was infatuated with him, and it’s suggested she deliberately harmed the babies in her care so she could crash-call him to the unit. They don’t need to have actually had sex for her to have done that.

JazzyBBG · 19/08/2023 15:46

It's amazing how an organisation chooses to ignore so many red flags. Even when the consultants all took it to the senior management. And normally consultants word is god so what did she have that was so special she couldn't be challenged? I did wander if she was having a thing with the ex medical director as he stuck up for her so much - why? There was evidence that should have been looked at.

Second thing I don't understand is did the post moretms not reveal anything?

EmpressSisi · 19/08/2023 15:46

Iserstatue · 19/08/2023 15:12

I'm not sure evidence was submitted to suggest an affair, even if 'just' emotional.

There was a text with a heart. But no texts involving emotional language? No exchange of their feelings for each other?

I can understand him not wanting to be identified but that also doesn't suggest an affair of any kind based on the evidence presented in court.

I think the evidence suggested that Lucy felt very strongly about him but not that he had ever reciprocated?

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It’s all a bit murky. She denied he was her boyfriend and kept stating that he was married and they were just friends.

Yet at one point she admitted that she did have a boyfriend at the time. She never said he was the boyfriend but there was never any mention of a boyfriend before this (yet she kept reiterating that the doctor was married, so she could have easily said “I also had a boyfriend”). They also went out together a lot for dinner and days out, including a weekend together in London, which could possibly be seen as inappropriate if he was married and she has a boyfriend. They were also super flirty, as seen with the love heart emojis.

To me, it seems that it was more than just a friendship. And she slipped up saying she had a boyfriend when the prosecution was cross examining her and she was struggling to keep her story straight as he was putting pressure on her.

We will never know unless one of them admits to it of course but I would say that they at the very least had an emotional affair. Maybe she wanted more and saw her as her boyfriend?

Menerica · 19/08/2023 15:47

I would suggest all those baying for the blood of Lucy Letby, who have no doubt to her guilt, and who think that convicting a person on the basis of circumstantial evidence alone is acceptable - I urge you to go and look up the case of Lucia de Berk - a Dutch nurse also convicted of murdering babies - also on circumstantial evidence - also with long blonde hair looking remarkably like Lucy Letby - the only difference being - after serving 6 years in prison her case was found to be the biggest miscarriage of justice the NL had ever seen.

Also check out Richard Gill - who shows how the cases of 'insulin' and 'poisoning my air' are also very suspect - in the cases of insulin - those babies are still alive, fit and healthy. Women are witches though and the public love nothing more than to crucify a witch

Belladonna56 · 19/08/2023 15:50

GrouchyKiwi · 19/08/2023 08:55

@WhisperingHi A lot of the evidence/testimony not shared by the media would be complex medical information. It's one of the reasons this trial took so long (apart from the number of victims). The jury would have had to spend time understanding terminology, what medical stats meant, how those stats showed that these babies had been murdered, etc.

This. I study my blood test results carefully but I haven't a clue what most of them mean. I can imagine there would have had to be very comprehensive instructions given to the jury. I'm still struggling to get my head around it all.
For me, one of the shocking things was how easily she lied about her recent knee surgery when she got into the police car. (Obviously that wasn't the most shocking thing about the whole tragedy, but it struck me that she could think up the lie so quickly).

MavisMcMinty · 19/08/2023 15:53

For me it’s the horror that she was a nurse, as I was for 35 years, and the disgust that someone could demean and degrade the title and profession in such an unbelievably wicked manner. Not because she’s a woman. People trusted her, and for a while after this, some people will be very suspicious of the rest of us. It makes the job so much harder when there’s no trust.

StBrides · 19/08/2023 15:54

I really don't get why so people here are sniping at each other. People are questioning things because they're new to the details of this case and of course most people have limited understanding how the criminal justice system works. We can educate each other without bitchiness.

MavisMcMinty · 19/08/2023 15:54

Belladonna56 · 19/08/2023 15:50

This. I study my blood test results carefully but I haven't a clue what most of them mean. I can imagine there would have had to be very comprehensive instructions given to the jury. I'm still struggling to get my head around it all.
For me, one of the shocking things was how easily she lied about her recent knee surgery when she got into the police car. (Obviously that wasn't the most shocking thing about the whole tragedy, but it struck me that she could think up the lie so quickly).

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That was a lie??

Truemilk · 19/08/2023 15:55

Menerica · 19/08/2023 15:47

I would suggest all those baying for the blood of Lucy Letby, who have no doubt to her guilt, and who think that convicting a person on the basis of circumstantial evidence alone is acceptable - I urge you to go and look up the case of Lucia de Berk - a Dutch nurse also convicted of murdering babies - also on circumstantial evidence - also with long blonde hair looking remarkably like Lucy Letby - the only difference being - after serving 6 years in prison her case was found to be the biggest miscarriage of justice the NL had ever seen.

Also check out Richard Gill - who shows how the cases of 'insulin' and 'poisoning my air' are also very suspect - in the cases of insulin - those babies are still alive, fit and healthy. Women are witches though and the public love nothing more than to crucify a witch

There's huge differences between the Lucia de Berk case and Lucy Letby, they are not comparable

Friggingfrog · 19/08/2023 16:05

Belladonna56 · 19/08/2023 15:50

This. I study my blood test results carefully but I haven't a clue what most of them mean. I can imagine there would have had to be very comprehensive instructions given to the jury. I'm still struggling to get my head around it all.
For me, one of the shocking things was how easily she lied about her recent knee surgery when she got into the police car. (Obviously that wasn't the most shocking thing about the whole tragedy, but it struck me that she could think up the lie so quickly).

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Oh she hadn’t had knee surgery?