Lucy Letby guilty - part 2

[twoandcooplease]

Thread 1 Lucy Letby guilty www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/4875009-lucy-letby-guilty

Just in case anyone wants to keep the conversation going

Those who don't believe that there is enough evidence, what do you think of her taking paperwork from the hospital, about her going through bins, that she had been witnessed standing beside a baby in distress and not helping that baby, of how the deaths ceased when Lucy Letby was removed from the unit? I haven't read the full thread and my questions are genuine.

I've just been a bit overinvested and had a dig around on ancestry. LL's mother never had any other children, she was also married before, no children from that marriage either. I wonder whether LL was difficult to conceive, IVF perhaps.

You have really no idea about how criminal prosecutions work. You think the fact that the court case took 10 months means it was not clear cut? The fact the jury didn’t return guilty verdicts on all counts actually makes me more sure that they were thorough and took ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’ seriously. They returned guilty verdicts on those where there was no reasonable doubt that she was guilty. I believe those were the insulin cases as it was clear to see the babies were murdered. Perhaps in the other cases it wasn’t so medically obvious that it was definitely murder. But do you think that those not guilty verdicts somehow override the fact that she has been found guilty, beyond all reasonable doubt, of murdering other babies?

How do you know that there was not a cross section of society? They don't choose a jury based on their time, do they? They can't have known that this was going to be a 10 month trial, surely? I ask this because I've never been on jury duty and I really don't know how a jury is selected so please correct me, but they can't possibly pick juries of retired and unemployed people?

I'm not in her fan club. She definitely needed to be investigated.

I just don't think that the justice system is very efficient or a good way of doing things

If many police officers spend five years charging this woman, they are going to want her to be found guilty, or it makes the police force look totally stupid.

I just read one comment from a policeman that made me think.

He said: we looked at all the evidence for years, and tried to come up with another explanation for what happened. Eventually we couldn't find a good enough explanation so we decided to charge Lucy".

It was just the way he said it. It was like he didn't think there was enough evidence to charge her. But after exhausting all other avenues , they decided to charge her.

Just seemed to be a bit weird

@Mooshamoo do you think she's innocent?

Apologies if you feel that way - the jury was unable to decide on six counts, and there were two not guilty verdicts.So, to me that means there was not sufficient evidence overall.

I won't respond further as well aware this is a highly sensitive case and any sort of dissent of opinion seems to trigger outrage. If I were debating this in person - as I've been doing with friends and family this morning - we'd have a healthy discussion with some points of agreement, but here I get called 'uninformed shite' and 'ridiculous'. Oh well!

you don't have to be a 'fan' of someone, or indeed believe them to be innocent (I don't) to discuss the type and quantity of evidence or the jury's decision.

One of out the 11 jurors didn't find the evidence compelling for the majority of the crimes (I think three were unanimous, all but one dependent on the insulin evidence, so that tells you that they did find that convincing). Several other deaths did not meet the evidentiary standard, even though by the probability/Occam's Razor standard, she must have done it, I mean there won't be two killers on the loose (or perhaps these were less convincingly murder and could be accidental deaths).

I find the fact she left evidence in her own house in boxes to be fascinating and probably deliberate because she knew by then she was under-suspicion. She left all her emotional notes to be found, all of the handover sheets (which should not have been removed from the hospital, I mean that in itself is surely a sackable offence). She also made so many searches, again, she must have known that police would come get her computer at some point. If I had been her mum and my dd was under suspicion, I would have hunted for stuff when she was out of the house, yet none of them did, and none removed all that stuff. Did they think she was invunlerable? Did she actually want to get caught? Who knows.

The other piece of evidence that I think is compelling (not a smoking gun at all, just really adds something) is that many of the deaths took place on significant dates (e.g. Fathers Day or the date the child should be leaving the hospital). That is not random deaths, that's planned and calculated deaths. I haven't seen the actual evidence on this and don't know just how robust it is, but it seems very calculated.

I haven't read much of these threads, its too time consuming and I've been catching up on the press reporting instead.

I think its understandable that some people are having a hard time accepting the verdict at face value. The crimes are unimaginable. Doesn't mean she's not guilty, but the very fact the trial took 10 months reflects the complex nature.

Questioning isn't wrong, it doesn't mean a person is refusing to believe, it shows critical thinking and can indicate that a person wants to be convinced as much as it can be seen to show refusal to believe.

So little was reported until the verdict that it means there's a lot of information to wade through and with a guilty verdict all the reporting is done from this viewpoint, which means a person who wishes to come to an independent conclusion is going to be conscious of demonisation in the press.

Note - I am not defending Lucy letby, nor am I saying its wrong that people are calling her evil.

I couldn't see another outcome for this trial and as hard as it is to believe a person could commit such terrible crimes, I believe that justice has been served.

The ability to question our justice system is important, however. Even if there could be better times to do it. I can't stop thinking about the parents and families of her defenceless victims and the sheer hell they must have through.

How can it be meaningless? There were 38 nurses on shift when 13 murders/attempted murders were committed and just one who was present for all of them.

I haven't been particularly invested in this trial so I can only answer parts, just my opinion.

As I understand it, she had paperwork from everything at home. So not just that related to the babies that died. That's a hoarding disorder. Equally the writing everything down. I actually think she's probably on the autistic spectrum, just going off what I've read, but that's an aside. I know hoarders who are not on the autistic spectrum. They just keep everything. Or certain types of everything. Paper is quite a common one.

I'd expect a guilty person being investigated to either burn the evidence or store it where it wouldn't be found. She was under investigation for years. Why keep it at the house? Sure - keep it as a trophy - elsewhere. And why all the irrelevant paperwork as well?

@Mooshamoo Well no doubt the police on initial investigation had to wade through the rubbish certain very senior hospital managers had "decided" in the two years: - Letby was the victim of nasty bullying consultants, the clinical director saying there was "no evidence", reviews which had happened (which incidently the trust also didn't follow up on). Letby herself would have focussed on this and done the whole "I'm the perfect nurse and it's actually ME keeping this unit running etc"

So you can see why the police had to eliminate all this before being certain she was likely the killer and charging her - of course the CPS would have also examined this, agreed, and thought the evidence was enough to convict.

@ArcticSkewer I also find this a very puzzling aspect of the case. I mean, even if you were under suspicion and not guilty, you might well remove notes and babies records to remove any suspicion and because you are not supposed to hoard that stuff. It's very odd to have it just there in the garage when the police came a-calling.

I think unless you do the job or have experience of what neonatal intensive care is it's easy to say "it's all circumstantial"

Don't get me wrong. Even though they couldn't conclusively prove she had done the insulin deaths.

It's not that which stood out for me,

It was then tiny premature baby who was on ventilator which breathes for them, these babies are on morphine infusions. Morphine suppresses the breathing rate. But it's okay because the machine is doing their breathing.

They do often slip their ETT tubes out. Sometimes they come out accidentally, especially when units are short staffed and these babies are not being cared for one to one as they should (this happens often)

But her explanation of just standing by the bedside whilst this baby was literally gasping for air after the tube came out. Was "I was waiting to see if she would correct her saturations herself"

This is NOT normal, this is NOT what we do,

If a breathing tube comes out, the baby cannot correct themselves we will assist with a neopuff until either a new breathing tube is inserted (by a doctor!) or they are stepped down to non invasive breathing support such as bipap or cpap. An experience nurse would know this, an inexperienced nurse would shout for help, she did neither, she stood and watched that baby struggle,

That's when I made up my mind she was guilty,

I am a neonatal intensive care nurse on a very busy very large unit,

Yes people with certain jobs, holidays, childcare, etc etc will get excused from a case like this. It will leave you with a bias towards selection of retired people, people out of work, people working in the public sector. There are strict rules around what excuses are allowed, but a lot of people would get out of a case like this - especially private sector workers- and leave a pretty unequal pool.

In terms of whether juries are fair ...

May I point people to this report, which outlines significant problems with the jury system as a whole (not really around selection, but on matters like the jury's ability to comprehend the instructions - the % able to do so are shockingly low):
https://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/publications/research-and-analysis/moj-research/are-juries-fair-research.pdf

Because statistics can be manipulated to mean anything. This isn't a comment on the rest of the evidence, but certainly, basing a conviction mainly on that evidence would be very unsafe - yet humans like the appeal of numbers and patterns.

Hence these convictions being investigated and/or overturned

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/law/2023/jul/31/new-evidence-claimed-to-undermine-nurse-benjamin-geen-conviction-for-killing-patients

https://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c2100

very odd and very wrong
When Letby’s home was raided more than two years later in July 2018, officers found a bag from the hotel which contained four shift handover sheets for the dates of June 23, June 24, June 25 and June 28, 2016, and an NHS “registered children’s nurse” work badge.

she took her work sheets home and kept them

The handover sheets covered Letby’s shifts where she murdered two of the triplets and attacked another baby on three successive days.

come on, we all know you dont take handover sheets home surely?

It reminds me of the Ben Field case which was in The Sixth Commandment tv series, where he killed the two elderly people. That was also a very difficult case to prosecute, because even though there was evidence of drugging, there had to be evidence of intent to kill as well. In the end, what did for him was his own diaries which bore some resemblance to the material found here, lots of scribblings, plans, emotions, hatred- all written down. Again, why keep that? He knew he was a person of interest. I think it plays into their sense of self/reminding themselves what they have done/anchoring themselves in their alternate lives others don't know about. Otherwise it seems very foolish if you want to avoid a murder conviction.

Not all of the handover sheets related to days babies died or were harmed, she also just seemed to have a lot of handover sheets! But proportionately, those ones were of interest to her, she didn't have every single one from her career.

She has a hoarding disorder? That's some amazing armchair psychology 🙄

Because statistics can be manipulated to mean anything

Oh please. You’re absolutely scraping the barrel now.

It's beyond my comprehension.
🥲

Thanks for your response @ArcticSkewer , it's my understanding that serial killers often keep 'trophies', but I believe this paperwork would have been confidential so it would have been illegal to remove it from the hospital? There's also a school of thought that there's a sense of arrogance around some killers and they believe that they are 'too clever' to be caught. Even if she were innocent, don't you think it would be strange for her to keep the paperwork whilst an investigation was going on too? So that's strange in either case.

I understand that hoarders can keep a hold of paper etc., but why that paper? Wouldn't she hoard other things too rather than just confidential paperwork from her job?

What do you think about her being seen standing passively by watching a baby in distress and that the deaths ceased when she was removed from the unit?

@ArcticSkewer

As I understand it, she had paperwork from everything at home. So not just that related to the babies that died. That's a hoarding disorder. Equally the writing everything down. I actually think she's probably on the autistic spectrum, just going off what I've read, but that's an aside. I know hoarders who are not on the autistic spectrum. They just keep everything. Or certain types of everything. Paper is quite a common one.

But if a hoarding disorder / autism could realistically account for some of the behaviours you mention to the extent they could be expected to impact the reasonable doubt threshold, don't you think that her defence team would have explored those diagnoses and / or had experts testify about them during the ten month trial?