Lucy Letby denied leave to appeal

[Viviennemary]

Just heard on the news Lucy Letby the convicted serial killer has been denied leave to appeal. Good decision I think. She should stay behind bars for the rest of her life.

A month later DM said £1.5m

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12619437/amp/Lucy-Letby-cost-taxpayer-4m-Serial-killer-nurse-awarded-1-5m-legal-aid-ten-month-trial-cost-Crown-Prosecution-Service-2-5m.html

I think if an expert says "That baby was given insulin", you can't say "No they weren't". An expert outranks you and we're supposed to trust that lab results are factual. You therefore have to accept it is a fact. That left her with only being able to say "Ok that baby was given insulin, but not by me."

She was finally arrested November 2020 and the verdict was delivered August 2023. It's an enormous amount of money for those of us free to spend it as we see fit, but it won't have gone far for mounting a competent and comprehensive defence.

Well, most rape cases simply aren't prosecuted

It’s not the defendant’s job come up with alternative theories - that’s the job of the defence team who have crafted her defence.

The defence team have 2 options: yes we accept that insulin was 100% definitely administered, however it was not LL; or no we do not accept that insulin was definitely administered and here we present various experts in blood glucose/insulin dynamics to support this.

Yes I see your point I just feel if it were me I’d be desperate trying to find something to prove it wasn’t me . I just get such a feeling of her being naive from a lot of things and it gives me a concerned feeling that was that how she was and is that why she could have been selected as a scapegoat ? She even had to get her parents to help her with the bullying she felt she was experiencing if I remember correctly her father had accompanied her to a meeting?

It struck me that she is very naive also, all the way through. I don’t know if she had a choice but to accept the prosecution’s claim that the insulin had been introduced into the bags by someone, she is not a scientist or expert herself and wouldn’t have any way of stating for sure that they are wrong. All she’s then left with is “I don’t know who did it, but it wasn’t me”. Her defence should have been the ones challenging the idea that anyone had tampered with the bags. Why didn’t they? It’s utterly baffling that they were so weak in challenging prosecution claims like this.

Let’s just remember that there was no lab test to prove the presence of exogenous insulin. If there were it would be a different case.

Unlike the thousands of salacious headlines and articles about evil serial baby killer May she rot in hell hanging is too good for her

The case of Clive Freeman is very worrying on this front. He has terminal cancer, refuses release because he wants to be cleared, but will be much more expensive to the state if his conviction is quashed while he's still alive.

No - the conviction rate for rape is a 62%!

which wou,d be impressively high were it not for the fact that only a derisory percentage of reported rapes are taken to trial (and of course only reported rapes can even be considered for prosecution - ie under reporting)

I don’t think it’s a case of not being able to get an expert witness. They had one. He was going to appear. They didn’t call him last minute.

Given that the prosecution did try to advance other explanations for the babies’s deaths during cross examination and they all got picked apart, I would guess that the issue might be that Myers didn’t think having an expert witness would help Letby’s case.

I would think it was possibly unusual if all the cases were insulin poisoning because then she would have just one thing to educate herself on but when you're trying to defend several different apparent causes of harm or death then I think it would be difficult to educate yourself about everything.

She also said she'd been diagnosed with depression and PTSD, perhaps she was living in a state of things being hopeless and was paralysed by that.

Maybe she and/or her defence team didn't think that those two cases were the strongest and they focused most of their time and energy on the injection by air methods as that seemed to be the most common method she was accused of.

Obviously the jury found the insulin cases to be the strongest as they were the only two initially to receive a unanimous guilty verdict.

After those two were announced the judge allowed them to reach a majority verdict on the rest and only one further charge reached a unanimous guilty verdict.

But perhaps the defence didn't realise how damning those particular ones looked and didn't focus as much on them when they really should have, it was their job to do.

She probably doesn't know how this legal stuff works. She has to believe what she is told and that everything told is the truth. She can't offer up an alternative without it being backed up in some way.

"Maybe it was a lab error."
"Where's your proof?"

"Maybe a colleague did it."
"Where's your proof?"

"It didn't happen."
"Where's your proof?"

The proof they have is what the experts have said. And that as "proof" is a matter of opinion.

LL accepted the lab results were indicative of exogenous insulin and that none had been prescribed. People have interpreted that as her admitting the babies were poisoned but not by her. For me the failure to carry out further testing to forensic evidence standards is problematic.

I think the general advice to defendants is to say as little as possible when being questioned by the prosecution. If she had already accepted that unprescribed insulin had been administered and stated it wasn't her then the only way she could have elaborated would be to point the finger at someone else. To have offered any other alternative would have given the prosecution the opportunity to further discredit her.

Was it ever said if those 2 babies had been prescribed insulin at any point ? Or should they never have had any insulin administered at all?

I am still on the fence, but leaning towards innocent.

There have been so many cover ups by institutions, ranging from the church, the police, the government, the post office - I can easily believe a cover up from the NHS.

Maybe she was a scapegoat, maybe not, but if she's innocent then I hope we eventually find out.

There’s different figures, 62% is the conviction rate of cases that make it to trial. It’s around 6% for police reports >> conviction at trial.

I saw a thread on Reddit (big pinch of salt) that one of the babies had received insulin early in their admission. I haven't got round to trying verify that yet.

That is correct.

So to flip it then 'isn't it scary to think that if you're repeatedly raped by your husband there would be very little point even reporting it - it's very unlikely to get to court and if it did there's no hope of a conviction'? I thought we might have moved on a bit from that narrative by now.

Moved on from what narrative? It is simply the truth that the vast majority of rape cases do not get prosecuted and do not lead to convictions. This is a fact. It is not my “narrative”. If it troubles you, you can lobby your MP, or volunteer at a rape crisis shelter. We won’t change it by not mentioning it.

Anyway, according to the above logic there was clearly enough evidence in the Letby case to lead the jury to convict on most of the charges.

This doesn’t follow at all. Rape conviction stats are not equitable to ‘nurse accused of baby killing’ conviction stats. The reality, if anything, is that if you’re actually a rapist chances are you’ll get away with it. Whereas, if you’re accused of being a baby killing nurse, even if innocent and there’s no real evidence, you probably will be convicted.

And the defence offered very little in response, presumably because the witnesses they had lined up were likely to end up damaging rather than strengthening her case.

Why are you ‘presuming’ this? There is no reason at all to presume this. There are potentially dozens of reasons why they didn’t, or couldn’t, present certain witnesses. It is possible that they were blocked from doing so for a labyrinthine legal reason that has not yet been shared with us, to give one possible example.

It is extremely odd - no matter what your position is on this - that the defence didn’t present anyone at all, besides the janitor. To me that doesn’t point to anything except a weak defence. Even the guiltiest person, in a slam dunk case, with the worst imaginable lawyers, will have people presented to argue their side. The idea that they didn’t do so because they thought the case was a lost cause (as has been suggested upthread) is not just silly, but it also points directly to a weak defence and therefore an unfair trial. No matter which way you slice it, it is odd in the extreme.

She might have been desperately trying to find something to prove it wasn't her but she could have been focusing on the wrong thing. As I said if all the accusations were related to insulin then it might have been easier.

I've often seen documentaries etc where prisoners will talk about how they're keeping busy reading stuff for a future appeal or to try to have a future appeal and they could be at that for years and years.

It's the defences job to do it though. I'm not sure what Lucy Letby would have had access to when she was awaiting trial, surely she wouldn't have the internet or access to unlimited phone calls and would only have limited books. It would be up to the defence team to do the research and talk to the experts all over the world if they have to to come up with other theories.

I don't know this case. But I have no doubts that there are people in prison for things they did not do. I really do believe it is down to the jury's ability to think critically and the prosecution/defence's ability to match the jury on their level.

In things like LL trial, how familiar you are with the workings of hospitals also plays a part. There are things that you just don't understand unless you've experienced that environment.

Article here from Feb last year with stats from year 2021 - 2022. Conviction rate for reported rapes in that year was less than 2%.

www.saunders.co.uk/news/virtually-all-rape-victims-are-denied-justice-here-is-the-roadmap-to-failure/

Re: No experts for defence

I agree with @xile

The general shitty lynch mob media culture which has arisen over the last 10 years means experts and academics may not want to put their name in the line of fire unless they're completely thick-skinned or publicity seeking.

As soon as their names were out there, there would be details of their families and warping their reputations and claiming they were protecting or defending a killer.

Put your name to something and there's a photo of your house and daughter out there the next day.

Especially if the "word is out there" that the media is invested in the case going a certain way.

Even the senior hospital bosses (who may have been responsible for the understaffing and general chaos - didn't initially didn't think LL was responsible) were tracked down.

Richard Gill (call him a crank or conspiracy theorist by all means, but would be open to a discussion of reasons) says he was tracked down, visited at his home address, and sent some fairly heavy handed emails when he tried to offer his scientific opinion.

Ditto with others.

And they're not even employed by the NHS.