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.

If you can't see the obvious difference in terms of medical knowledge, procedures, patient cohort and expertise required between a maternity unit caring for pregnant women and women in labour, and a neonatal unit caring for newborn and premature babies, I don't think you can claim to be able to form a rational and informed view on this case.

I believe Dr Jayaram's testimony changed, hence unreliable. Originally he apparently said the Baby couldn't have pulled the tubes out as she was sedated on morphine, but later said the morphine bolus was given AFTER that event. Hence unreliable.

Is the extract attached to this post from one of the "LL is innocent" websites? It's a highly revealing insight into the way they operate - posting something completely out of context so that it appears to say something very, very different indeed from what the judge actually did say. That presumably is how they suck in the hard-of-thinking.

This from the CPS "We have sought a retrial on one count of attempted murder against Lucy Letby – there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings."

https://www.cps.gov.uk/mersey-cheshire/news/cps-statement-lucy-letby-retrial-decisions

So sounds like no mention of this allegation or this baby from now on.

"I think maybe the Judge is quoting what the defence said about Dr Jayaram's evidence being tainted and unreliable"

Sorry didn't explain that well at all, my point was that the Judge warned the jury as to baby K evidence being circumstantial without expert opinion, with the prosecution then asking the jury to accept inference.
That neither the Judge nor the prosecution objected to the defence's description of the evidence being tainted, I find rather odd.

Agree @HazelE123

Anyway this is a thread about the appeal decision, so we must try to keep on topic.

Personally, I think the CPS has done well to get the trial sorted today on the day of the Letby appeal.

Once that is decided, I think it'll be a no, then further discussions should halt.

I know a consultant, now retired, who specialised high risk pregnancies, C Sections - she performed the C-Section. There HAS to be a detailed plan of coordination between pre-natal, birth and after care, especially the transfer of the babies. Parents are well informed and taken carefully through the steps. So in those instances both NICU/SCBU and the maternity ward need careful and reliable cooperation.

Surely that's standard? The prosecution makes its case that the defendant is guilty, the defence makes its case that the prosecution evidence doesn't prove that - frequently by claiming that defence witnesses are unreliable. The judge can't prevent the defence from putting forward its case, that would be completely wrong. You might just as well say you find it odd that the judge and defence didn't object to the prosecution saying Letby's evidence was a series of lies.

Yes, up to and including the birth. Once the baby is the neonatal unit the maternity ward is out of the picture so far as the baby is concerned. Any defects in pre-birth care tell us nothing in terms of anything that goes wrong in care in the neonatal ward.

If Letby's defence had tried to argue from stillbirth statistics that that must mean that babies born alive who later died did so as a result of failures in maternity care, it would be like holding up a sign saying "We can't find anything remotely resembling a respectable defence so we've been reduced to this bollocks".

"Surely that's standard?"

I don't believe it is standard to claim evidence as tainted and denigrate the witness, without explaining why.
Perhaps the Judge had already done that by stating lack of expert evidence and any other evidence being circumstantial.

All units have to be working well for good outcomes. Clearly CoCH has a problem. @Oulu

The jury heard the original point being made and the Defence speech, the judge doesn't have to repeat it all in his summing up: he's simply reminding them of what the Defence case was about this.

We know it had problems, like a number of units in the area. None of that explains how its problems with the spike in deaths and collapses moved from night to daytime when LL changed her shift from night to daytime, stopped when she was on holiday, and stopped again when she was moved out of the neonatal unit.

"The jury heard the original point being made"

Sorry, what was the original point, was it the Judges, or the prosecutions.

The Defence's.

I missed this part of the news. Can somebody sum up latest. Thanks. Didn't want to start a new thread. Are all the convictions being appealed.

It hasn't been heard by the court of appeal yet

"Letby heard she will be facing a retrial over one count of attempted murder related to a baby girl, known as Child K, in February 2016 but not the other five outstanding allegations"

Thanks. I was dreading the whole thing would be started again. Must be agony for the families.

It is, it will probably be a while before the court of appeal make a decision , then if they agree it will be referred back to Manchester Crown Court. It's going to be hanging over those poor parents until an appeal decision is made I bet .

Is there any news at all on Letby's application for leave to appeal? Ie when it will be heard and / or the grounds she's relying on?

It'll take months.

I've not seen anything about grounds and also interested.

But it's limited grounds so either new evidence (which is highly unlikely after 4 years of investigation and trial or a point of law - which I doubt because it was handled carefully even done to reasonable adjustments within court for her ptsd.

So yes - why is an illuminating point.

The ones she’s been sentenced for yes, if I’m correct. The ones where they haven’t reached an agreement or didn’t have enough evidence etc (forget which) then these can’t be appealed yet. But assuming she’s tried and convicted for the latter she’ll appeal those too.

I see this thread is almost full now. I didn’t want to divide people and yes by some miracle she may be innocent (doubtful in my view) but this is such a divisive case and I’ve said before I thought as others did she was innocent and a scapegoat and a lot of that based on looks etc. I now don’t think that at all and was shocked I was hoodwinked.

LL ranks up there with me along with Rose West and Myra Hindley in her capacity for evil in my opinion.

It would have to be something big I'd think for her to be allowed an appeal. As she's pleaded not guilty you'd think she'd be trying to appeal all convictions and I can't see that being allowed.

Appeals are based on issues like new evidence coming to light, on technical issues such as the judge misdirecting the jury, where the defence has been incompetent or the trial has been biased in some way.

sadly - for LL - there isn’t any new evidence - the trial was very fair - the judge managed the trial very well - LL had an able defence team…

Consequently the appeal will be (rightly) denied.

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the key point about an appeal is that it isn’t a retrial. It’s not “I didn’t like that result so let’s go again” - it’s pointing to something in the trial process that was not according to law or pointing to some kind of bias which makes the result - LLs conviction - unsafe - in which case an appeal will be allowed!

I’ve just listened to the podcast episode with the lead detective who explained they started the investigation after receiving a letter from the COCH asking them to get involved in an investigation about unusual deaths and near-deaths, each baby was assigned their own investigator.

The hospital did not write to them saying “Please investigate Lucy Letby”. The wrote to say “investigate to see if there was any crime committed in these X amount of deaths”

The detectives were given folders with everything - handover sheets, medical notes, logs, details of the death etc. all factual - nothing subjective

What each detective found was that, when they spoke to each other, The same patterns happened - the same name kept coming up. “My baby collapsed when her designated nurse went on a break and Lucy Letby took over” - the others would say “the same happened to my baby, that name keeps coming up”. They followed the pattern.

So how do the Lucy Fan Club think she was stitched up or blamed for problems? When police themselves started with no suspect and through very careful and stringent interesting each detective had the same pattern. How is that related to lack of staff?

It may be circumstantial evidence but in the context of dozens of instances of circumstantial evidence it’s strong as hell.