Lucy Letby appeal

[GonnaGetGoingReturns]

Sorry if not allowed to discuss here but just seem that this vile creature plans to appeal against her original sentence as per yesterday’s news. Her defence team is leading this potential appeal.

WTAF?!

They haven’t reached a verdict on is it 6 or 7 poor other little babies who died and she’s suspected, I thought?

So sad for the poor parents and babies still.

I've read some of it but - well - he's the prosecution isn't he? It's his job to convince everyone she's guilty and he did a good job by the sound of it. But everything he says she did was based on Dr Evans "diagnoses" of what he decided was the case. I'll have another look though. But I know barristers for the prosecution can twist things to suit the result they want to achieve. It's their job.

Yes, of course he is going to put a prosecution slant on things. But he absolutely cannot misrepresent the evidence given in court and would have been pulled up on it immediately if he had tried. In particular, when he is talking about similarities that go way beyond coincidence, the relevant facts are incontrovertible and have nothing to do with Dr Evans' evidence. Obviously the prosecution relies on a great deal more than that, but having the events in question drawn together in that way is very revealing indeed.

I don't know why people who question the case insist on presenting it as solely based on Dr Evans. Manifestly there was much more evidence before the jury than his. Perhaps most significantly, there was no expert evidence contradicting his. We know that the defence did instruct experts, so the fact that they didn't call them is very revealing.

Prosecutors are required to be impartial. Yes, they have to put their case but it would be contrary to professional ethics to "twist things to suit the result they want to achieve."

Defence barristers aren't under an equivalent obligation although neither side may mislead the Court.

"Here" is Scotland. Which unlike England & Wales, Ireland and Northern Ireland is not a pure common law jurisdiction but where the right to appeal from a jury verdict is the same as England.

There's certainly no evidence that Scots law requires a higher standard of criminal proof or that it's fairer, or that it's a better or worse system of law than the other nearby jurisdictions.

Having read a bit more of the closing statement, I see what you mean. There is a lot of detail about timing and who was where when. Some I could see as making a case where there might not be one, and other bits do sound persuasive.

Thanks for explaining that.

The problem I have with some of it is statements like this

"Mr Johnson says while Mary Griffith was out, Letby took the opportunity to inject clear liquid and air down Child Q's NG Tube."

He is telling the jury that happened as a fact and they hear that and believe it. But it's not a fact, it's an interpretation of what they think might have happened based on Dr Evans assessment of how the child died.

Yes it is an interpretation, but the jury will know that because the prosecutor isn't a witness. Making sense of a jumble of facts and presenting them to a jury as part of a cogent narrative is part of a barrister's job. I accept that there's no clear distinction between doing this and pushing an interpretation that the facts don't bear (deliberately or otherwise) but there are safeguards against this (some discussed above.)

But I know barristers for the prosecution can twist things to suit the result they want to achieve. It's their job.

And the defences job is to cast doubt on those facts presented.

What spoke volumes to me in this case was the inability of the defence to find any witnesses (apart from the hospital plumber ) to defend LL and offer an alternative POV of those facts to create reasonable doubt.

I wasn't convinced she was guilty until the defence couldn't provide me reasonable doubt and she took the stand and spoke.

This is simply not true. Two of the babies - Baby F and Baby L - had insulin levels that were off the charts. From memory baby F had insulin levels that were off the chart at some 4500 and low C-Peptide which tracks natural insulin production. When baby F received the insulin there was no baby on the whole ward who was on insulin! He was deliberately poisoned.

Baby L had a blood sample taken - which again showed very high insulin levels - with low C-Peptide. To be absolutely clear baby L was not on insulin at the time - it was deliberately provided to baby L to poison him. There is no question about that which is why the defence did not dispute the fact.

Agree with that. The defence plumber witness! He could only remember one incident of sewage on the ward. As you would expect the doctor’s instituted a system so that staff washed their hands elsewhere… it was a complete non-point!

shat the defence couldn’t find was an expert to say that these deaths were just bad luck or poor staffing levels / poor care related… because that just won’t fly…

“What”

I'm intrigued though. Please explain to me, if the insulin levels were so high why didn't the consultants take it more seriously at the time? Surely that was a massive oversight on their part? They didn't appear to follow the correct procedure in terms of re testing and sending samples to the Guildford lab. You would have thought that possibilities of a killer on the loose would have been raised straight away for the sake of the other babies on the ward and urgent action taken. Perhaps they just dismissed those tests as random odd results (especially given they were so stangely high and the babies got better). In which case why blame Lucy Letby at all?

The one set of test results were read by a junior doctor who did not understand the significance. It was also a week later and by that time the situation had resolved as the bags were no longer contaminated.

So are you saying that a week later a junior doctor knew so little about insulin test results (and sorry but that is hard to believe) that he failed to raise an alarm? Wow.

Apologies, I should have said he/she when referencing the junior doctor. Can't believe I did that and on Mumsnet of all places!

Well thank goodness you weren’t part of the trial.
“they should be struck off” - they did their job. Despite your opinion, she has the right to be represented and defended and to appeal.
Wether or not she is guilty or innocent does not change the law.
if you don’t understand what you are talking about it’s best to say nothing at all.

My understanding is that it was not so much the insulin levels that should have raised the alarm, but the fact that they were accompanied by very low C-peptide levels. If it was naturally raised insulin, C-peptide levels would have been higher, so this pointed to the fact that the insulin levels were caused by synthetic insulin which neither baby should have been receiving. It's not so surprising that, in reviewing results for a baby who was OK by that time, the junior doctor missed the significance of the C-peptide results.

You need to read further. @thedancingbear was being sarcastic. Unfortunately her post was a bit too convincing, and indeed not untypical of some other genuine posts on this thread.

The RHLU clarified that they had no facility to carry out the tests quoted by Dr Milan, its employee, she quoted insulin levels that would have killed an adult, no babies died of insulin poisoning.

I'm intrigued though. Please explain to me, if the insulin levels were so high why didn't the consultants take it more seriously at the time? Surely that was a massive oversight on their part? They didn't appear to follow the correct procedure in terms of re testing and sending samples to the Guildford lab. You would have thought that possibilities of a killer on the loose would have been raised straight away for the sake of the other babies on the ward and urgent action taken. Perhaps they just dismissed those tests as random odd results (especially given they were so stangely high and the babies got better). In which case why blame Lucy Letby at all?

Have you followed any of this? There were constant concerns about deaths raised and then about LL herself. Management basically told the consultants to back off and shut up or lose their job and offered LL a masters or advanced nursing diploma as a sorry for them apparently bullying her by raising those concerns.

That's why there is an enquired into how this was handled covering everything and the director in charge has been suspended from her current position since this was made public.

@itsgettingweird
Of course we all knew about the concerns raised by the consultants about Lucy Letby, how could we not! But it's odd if you think that's a reason for every doctor/consultant to not investigate unusual test results further and with the correct procedures. As I understand it the protocol of the Liverpool lab at that time made it clear that the test that was done cannot prove exogenous application of the insulin. So it's not exactly hard evidence is it?

Am signing off this thread now as I am not sure I like the general tone and I find it hard to understand why, given that that there have been miscarriages of justice before in scenarios involving nurses such as this (eg Lucia de Berk) and as a result of unsafe expert testimony (Sally Clark) anyone is at all surprised or critical of it being questioned carefully by many, or why anyone should be derided for doing so.

Ll herself admitted the insulin was synthetic.

She just said she wasn't the one to administer it.

I find it very interesting she and the defence didn't argue if it wasn't sound evidence.

You have to do more reading mate if you aren’t going to be criticised here.

The Liverpool test results showed low c-peptide which indicates low levels of natural insulin. On the other hand the blood test revealed an insulin result which was off the scale at 4,500 units - by way of comparison I am a type 1 diabetic and I take about 40 units a day and I am a good deal larger than a neonate!

Frankly the peptide-c result isn’t strictly necessary as no baby could naturally produce that level of insulin. It seems to me to be a miracle that the babies did not die (I’m not a medical expert however.) Note that baby F due to the insulin in his blood was hypoglycaemic for 17 hours despite being fed on a sugary mix of nutrients… the length of the time the baby was hypoglycaemic indicates that the insulin was in his feeding bag - a one off injection would not affect the blood sugar level this severely for that long.

the babies blood sugar levels went down to 0.8. My lowest reading ever is about 2.8 at which point I’m shaky and unable to function properly. I’m amazed that baby F didn’t die or suffer long term brain damage.

People get cross as you frankly haven’t done your research - and researching c-peptide and the insulin levels of the relevant babies is all available to you using google - and yet you may influence others to believe the court judgment is somehow unsafe with your poorly informed points.

Court processes are thorough and careful in the UK - especially for grave and serious crimes of this magnitude.

If you are going to find flaws in this 8 month trial informed by medical experts, conducted by an experienced judge, assisted by numerous witnesses from the relevant unit at the hospital, and by the parents of the babies themselves, and decided by an impartial jury of Letby’s peers - then you are going to have to wade through the evidence and you will have to research the medical issues carefully and then think carefully about what you think you have found and test it on medically informed friends or relatives. Otherwise you are simply wasting everyone’s time.

If there was a shadow of a possibility that the insulin in the babies was not exogeneous then the defence would rightly have fought the point. The defence didn’t fight this point as there is incontrovertible evidence two babies - neither of whom were on insulin - were administered life threatening doses of insulin.

those are the facts.

I don't think it was that outrageous a question. I don't understand the c-peptide whatever myself. The difficulty is the that these threads are haunted by a few people who are trying to weave misinformation into the discussion and at least one other who is a perhaps a little naïve.