Lucy Letby - new thread

[anonymousamy]

No idea why the last one was taken down, but for anyone who wants to continue the discussion on Letby, I’m starting a new thread here.

I’m 100% sure she’s guilty, but I’m still massively struggling to comprehend why on earth she did it.

I asked about witnesses for the defence a while back but no one answered.

Who decides which witnesses to call? Is it the defence lawyer, or can the defendant overrule their decisions?

It strikes me as very odd that there were no medical defence witnesses. She was clearly popular at work and thought of as a good nurse..why no colleagues who could comment on her abilities? None of the nurses working on the cases in question that could have been asked about e.g. previous desaturation incidents. Why was the consultant who withdrew the ventilation for the baby that died shortly afterwards not questioned at the very least (or were they a prosecution witness... not sure how this works)?

Other notorious trials always seem to have a bunch of expert witnesses for the defence even in much more cut and dry cases. Did LL not want to involve her colleagues? Did they refuse to be involved? Did all potential expert witnesses refuse to help (even for the cases where she was found not guilty) or were they too expensive? I find it very odd.

@WhisperingHi

Its not end of thought is it? Not one of us here has the authority or the insight to use the phrase “end of”. I’m 35 and I’ve never been made to feel guilty about my life choices some which my mother hasn’t agreed of deep down. We have NO idea the level of guilt she may or may not have felt and the fact you’ve spent “some” time studying aspects of psychotherapy means nothing. Overall I was just saying I don’t personally feel sorry for her parents. I don’t believe they’re good people. I may be wrong. You may be right. Who knows, who cares.

I feel sorry for the other victims in all of this, if which there are many.

What case was that?

Cherry MaDeara.

"What do you mean she wasn’t working alone, are you saying she was killing babies with someone else’s support?

Any evidence for your ramblings?"

The article is perfectly clear, I have never said she or anyone else killed any babies, which the post-mortem reports clearly state as natural causes, which inexplicably were excluded by the judge, something the appeal court will also be interested in.

The prosecution KC asked.."Prosecutor Nick Johnson KC told the jury on Monday that only two nurses worked both shifts when the infants were allegedly poisoned, Letby and a colleague named Belinda Simcock.
“Isn’t the reality that unless there’s more than one poisoner, it has to be either you or Belinda Simcock?” Johnson asked.

Put your money on a retrial.

Isn’t it obvious? Even Letby said there was no other explanation. You cannot provide witnesses to that which scientifically can’t be disputed.

what are people trying to do.? It’s so distasteful and disrespectful to try to in some way cast doubt or exonerate the serial killer who undoubtedly murdered or maimed these families children, against the families own thoughts, and especially with half baked or erroneous thoughts, or not even taking a few hours to read up on the very basics of the case.

lucy Letby is one of the most heinous serial killers of our time. Her crimes may extend much further than we yet know. Like Hindley or west, she will spend the rest of her life in prison, paying for her crimes and giving protection to other children she would be undoubtedly compelled to go on to kill had she been left to remain free.

The defendant can decide who they want to call, on the advice of their lawyers, if they're sensible. But any witness's evidence can be challenged by the prosecution ie, if it's not admissible. Then the judge will make a decision on whether to allow the jury to hear it. If either side doesn't like the judge's decision they can appeal.

That's the answer in very general terms but an English lawyer would know more about particular rules etc.

I'm not commenting on guilt or innocence, I'm wondering who decided not to mount a normal defence and why.

I can imagine that if I was accused of something serious like this I'd be bringing all my colleague's, friends and family as witnesses to evidence my behavior pre/post the incidents even if there weren't any medical expert witnesses available.

Did LL perhaps ask for her friends and colleagues etc not to be brought into it?

I think we are in position to judge or pass comment on LL's parents - they will have an unbearable experience and must be so distressed. I can understand them not being there on when the sentencing occurred. I am not convinced that those found guilty should be made to attend court to hear the sentence - they can be passed the judgment to read or could listen to it in private. The reason for my view is that they could cause even more potential distress to the victims families through what they might shout out or their expression. Forcing someone kicking and screaming into a court room is not in my view an action which we should be following - it sets a precedent about other hearings and the way we conduct informal actions.

@Janieforever

It is total arrogance. Believing you know best and that she could be innocent. It’s not critical thinking, not in this case. It’s also like you said, deeply distasteful to sympathise with her. There’s never going to be a retrial and she’s going to die in prison. End of case. 👏

I think the fact even Letby agreed the babies were deliberately poisoned with insulin and the defence had absolutely no expert witness to give any other explanation points to the fact there was a murderer on the ward. Not sure why people are so obsessed with the fact she didn’t do it. She did. And thankfully she’ll rot in prison for the rest of her miserable days.

I answered this exact question upthread an hour or so

It's there if you want to look at it

It basically says no-one knows/likely will never know

I'm really enjoying the idea that the defence were somehow so incompetent that they just couldn't be arsed to find an expert witness who could back her up. Like her barrister was some local idiot they found down the pub and not a leading criminal lawyer.

If Richard Gill and The Scientist had really had something worth mentioning in her defence, is it not likely that Ben Myers et al would have brought it up? Is this yet another part of the anti Lucy Letby conspiracy that she ran into first at work and then again as part of the criminal justice system?

Beggars belief, it really does.

The post- mortem results said they were natural deaths, what do pathologists/coroners know though, less than you obviously.

I know quite a bit about how this operates as I work in a relevant field.

The Defence argue a case based on their client's instructions. So the client will give their account of what happened, eg. 'It wasn't me, it was my brother Fred Bloggs, it can't have been me because I was down the pub at the time.' The Defence team will then call whatever witnesses they can find who will support that view. That might be an expert witness saying, 'I examined the pint glass and found the DNA of Joe Bloggs, which is consistent with him having been in the pub', or it might be the pub landlord saying, 'Yes, Joe was definitely there that night because he argued with me about the Arsenal match.'

If the witnesses don't support the account Joe Bloggs has given to his Defence team, then the barristers will point this out to Joe, and suggest that his account is unlikely to be believed by the jury. But ultimately if he sticks to his story, no matter how implausible, that is the argument the Defence will present in Court. What the Defence can't do, contrary to popular belief, is say to their client, 'Look, this story is ridiculous, you'd be much better off arguing XYZ instead'. They also cannot argue a defence if the client has admitted to them that he is guilty but wants them to argue his innocence anyway. That does occasionally happen, and in that case the Defence will have to withdraw from the case (it's rather splendidly called being 'professionally embarrassed').

The cost of expert witnesses will not have been an issue. The rates expert witnesses can charge in criminal cases are laid down by the Legal Aid Agency - the fee rates are commensurate with reasonable reimbursement for the professional time of experienced specialists, so it will add up if they have hours and hours of work do to looking at lab samples or whatever. But the cost would really not have been a barrier - this is major murder trial, if they had found an expert or a professional witness whose evidence they thought would support LL's case, then the costs would have been authorised, and he or she would have been called. Much more likely is that they did in fact instruct multiple expert witnesses to re-examine everything from medical notes to scans to blood reports to HR records, but that the resulting reports were not considered helpful to the Defence case, and hence the expert witnesses would not have been called to give evidence before the Court.

I will never understand why these cases (not just this one, but any high profile murder case) bring out these people who insist on arguing with any point, protesting the innocence of the killer even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

Even the likes of Harold Shipman have their defenders. Why?

The need to defend a murderer is quite disturbing and says a lot about the people who do it.

These people to me are on the same level as the people who claim that the likes of Sandy Hook and 9/11 were a hoax.

Which deaths did postmortem reports show to be natural?

What a shame they didn’t use that as part of her non existent and absolutely dreadful defence then.

It really concerns me that differential diagnoses don’t seem to have been considered. See this information about the possibility of enterovirus outbreaks:

“The infectious course of enteroviruses is similar to the course of symptoms in the infants at CoCH There was no discussion as to whether the symptoms described in the infants at CoCH were due to an infectious disease, despite the fact that the deaths occurred in a seasonal cluster that overlaps with viral infections known to be deleterious to the neonatal population”. Source: https://rexvlucyletby2023.com/work_4_1_1_1/

This type of virus can be passed on in utero and cause a higher than average rate of still births. This was also seen at the time.

It sounds credible, but there may be reasons why this doesn’t fit. Anyone with medical knowledge able to comment?

But there may be reasons

In a case such as this the expert witnesses required are unlikely to work to Legal Aid rates, but the Legal Aid Authority will certainly authorise higher fees to be paid. Costs of expert witnesses is not going to have been an issue.

What I can't get my head around at all is the time she came back from a holiday and THE VERY NEXT DAY went into work and killed babies...
You'd think she'd be happy and relaxed from the hol, thinking about getting her laundry done, happy to be back with her cats.....
I just can't understand it on any level.

abouttimemum,

"What a shame they didn’t use that as part of her non existent and absolutely dreadful defence then"

You haven't been following very closely, they couldn't use the reports, the Judge for some unknown reason excluded them...that alone will guarantee a retrial.

As I understand it, the babies were tested for infections, which were negative, and their deterioration did not fit into an infection category.
Although the babies were mostly premature, they were expected to survive. In each case there was a dramatic sudden deterioration. I think an infection is a bit slower and more observable.
The isulin was not a naturally produced insulin, but one that had to have been administered to the babies somehow.

Its clearly not an academic journal, its a substack (like a blog). If you are after referenced scientific discussion on why this conviction is unsafe, take a look at https://rexvlucyletby2023.com/

Why the blog is worth reading tho is because it discusses a similar case at Oklahoma NICU, where two nurses were always on-shift when 11 neonates unexpectedly died. Rather than jumping to a conclusion of murder, the hospital did a full investigation. It turned out that they had a rare bacterial outbreak on the ward, and that these two nurses had signs of the relevant bacteria under their fingernails, so when the handled the babies, they passed on the infection and the babies died shortly afterwards. Here's an article from the NY times about it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/24/us/study-links-bacteria-long-nails-and-baby-deaths.html

Once again. Which deaths did postmortem reports show to be natural?

There's nothing similar about these cases. Lucy Letby murdered and attempted murders in a variety of ways including vastly overfeeding, insulin poisoning, for both of which there was clear physical evidence. The collapses were quick and completely unexpected. These same sudden, unexpected and unexplained collapses followed Letby from night to day shifts. There were no symptoms of infection, no markers of infection, and infection was ruled out post-mortem. They happened on significant dates - due dates, Father's Day, 100 day milestones. I don't know of any natural causes that would remotely explain that.
Please just stop this inane and grossly disrespectful misrepresentation. It's either malicious, stupid, or both.