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.

My suspicion is that there is less of a 'credibility' gap than an 'understandability' gap for judge and jury. In cases with limited physical evidence, it would be interesting to ask jurors after a year or two, how much of the circumstantial evidence they could explain.
If some of the expert witnesses appearing for the prosecution weren't so arrogant and self-serving we might have fewer concerns.
As has been seen in other cases (Andrew Malkinson most obviously springs to mind) some people supposedly tasked with delivering justice are very relaxed about the innocent left to rot.

Thanks @kkloo that’s really helpful.

Honestly I don't buy that explanation..

Even if they didn't think he was credible the alternative was putting her on the stand with no other witnesses apart from the plumber, which looks worse than putting up an expert who might not appear to be as credible as they hoped.

It just made it look like "there's no possible way we can even try to defend her, we can't even come up with any kind of even obscure unlikely explanations for any of these. We've got nothing. She did it. She's guilty as sin".

It's very interesting!!

It’s fascinating, important, and devastating to the prosecution case.

It’s also in line with the diabetes specialist who developed the insulin test used by hospitality, Prof Vincent Marks, himself an expert witness in high profile trials involving insulin including the Von Bulow trial - who said that insulin readings of themselves should never be taken in isolation due to the problem of false positives.

If you put those two experts on the stand (Marks is long since retired) the trial could have had a very different outcome.

So many people refer to the New Yorker report. It’s been banned in the UK so how are posters viewing it?

From what I understand Dr Hall was sat in the Court waiting to give evidence on behalf of the defence but was never called.

I’m hoping to discover the reason he wasn’t called yet Benjamin Myers KC called a plumber to the stand as his only witness.

Something doesn’t add up here

You can view it with a vpn or the various archived versions online.

There's some detailed information here about why the plumber was relevant:
https://lawhealthandtech.substack.com/p/ll-part-3-death-already-lived-in

Even if the KC considered it to be a slam-dunk to prove reasonable doubt, it seems strange not to build on that evidence.

I read it while abroad. Had no particular interest before that. Assumed she must have been actually proven guilty. The article is interesting, meticulously researched, but also quite unsettling. There are archived links up thread I think.

Baby's blood is tested for infection markers and cultures are grown to see what bacteria they are infected with. Any bacterial infection would show on these tests.

There were links to it on Tattle and Reditt. I’ve had a quick look and it seems the links have been removed. Probably to comply with the Court Order which has ordered a media blackout until the retrial of the case of baby K has finished.

You’re not missing much. This report may as well have been written by Richard Gill - The statistician who considers himself above medical consultants and professors. But defence KC, Ben Myers, didn’t want his “help”. He has since received a letter from Operation Hummingbird stating if he comes anywhere near the Court he will be held in Contempt.

Dr Hall did not feature as a witness in Court. I know because I attended the trial from start to finish. Therefore he is not relevant to the case.

I don't think they were all tested. I was asking about this earlier in the thread but I don't think anyone responded.

No post mortem was ordered for Child E.

necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) - a serious gastro-intestinal disorder - was entered as the cause of death on Child E’s death certificate.

The doctor told the court: “At the time I felt (Child E) had NEC which had led to his collapse and deterioration so I discussed that with the coroner and we agreed for that to be put as (Child E’s) cause of death.”

Sounds like they just guessed 🤔An educated guess of course, but no blood test was mentioned even though a blood test would have shown bacteria and infection.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/lucy-letby-doctor-baby-post-mortem-b2226699.html

And for child J the Dr Evans agreed that he could not rule out infection, although the other Dr said she had excluded it. So it sounds like there was no certainty at all for at least some of these babies https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-64640370

Blood tests for infection are routine for these babies. I find it hard to believe a twin died unexpectedly and no one bothered to look for infection.

As the third insulin case was not part of the trial, I don't know why Mr Hall would know anything about it.

So for child E are you saying that they tested the blood and that there was no sign of infection in the blood test but that doctor discussed with the coroner about putting Necrotizing enterocolitis down as the cause of death anyway??

In the second link for Child J it said that trial tests showed no signs of infection (not sure what trial tests are) but even Dr Evans said he couldn't rule out infection for sure.

I don't know what blood tests, child E had, I've not read his notes, nor am I a doctor. This is why medical experts are needed to read and interpret each baby's medical records. There will be a lot of medical investigations done which aren't revealed to the general public, if they come back negative they may not be of much interest to the media.

https://www.science.org/content/article/unlucky-numbers-fighting-murder-convictions-rest-shoddy-stats

That would be the same Richard Gill who helped clear a falsely accused nurse in Holland (following information from whistleblowers) and another in Italy. The enquiry should listen to him, if only to learn how to ensure that statistics are handled responsibly in future cases.

A genuine question, if you were there for the entire case, how did you keep track of the evidence given? It seems an overwhelming ask to many of those of us who weren't.

Yes I didn't think you did or that you were a doctor but you seem to be stating with certainty that these tests would have definitely been done and ruled out infection.
But it doesn't seem to have been the case for some of the babies at least.

Have just come across this - listening to first episode now

The article was written by Rachel Aviv. A journalist for the New Yorker. A 100 year old highly regarded publication. Internationally it has a gold standard reputation for meticulous journalism, particularly investigative journalism. You won’t find a single reputable journalist anywhere that says otherwise. Not even in the Daily Mail. It’s frankly silly that people keep having to repeat this in this thread to counter stupid smears from people who have clearly never heard of, let alone read, The New Yorker, or any actual journalism in their lives.

Quoting myself here because it seems that that is exactly what they did @sebanna

I looked this up some more.
It was suspected that the baby had sepsis.
A blood culture result showed a negative result.

When the baby died the parents were told there was no point in a post mortem because it wouldn't tell them much and the coroner recorded the cause of death as necrotising enterocolitis.

In the article it links to a study which says that that most paediatric patients (86%) with severe sepsis or septic shock will return a negative blood culture test."

So it seems that the blood test is extremely unlikely to be accurate if the baby has severe sepsis, which is presumably why they could ignore the earlier blood test when they recorded the cause of death, and decided that it was NEC due to all of the other symptoms the baby had been showing all along.

https://lawhealthandtech.substack.com/p/ll-part-13-the-demise-of-baby-e

I've just got to part 14 of the substack series and it's absolutely wild.

So a doctor told the trial that NO babies were being prescribed insulin at the time nurse Lucy Letby allegedly poisoned a child with the medicine.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-63745926

That child was child F

Even though his twin child E who was in the same room was receiving insulin????

To what extent was the neonatal poorly run over a number of years? There was obviously personal animosity against Letby by her peers at the trust and there may have been those who wanted her out and tried to show her as incompetent though not necessarily malicous.

is the trust going to do everything in its power to salve its reputation? It seems Leggy worked in a sub optimal environment and isn't it in the public interest to know the all the facts about working practice and decision making in the deprtment?

is the trust going to do everything in its power to salve its reputation? It seems Leggy worked in a sub optimal environment and isn't it in the public interest to know the all the facts about working practice and decision making in the deprtment?

Absolutely it is.

Pointing to problems with the hospital is a bit of a red herring. Other hospitals in the area, unsurprisingly, had very similar staffing and resource problems without a comparable rate of nfant deaths over a long period.

Is there anywhere we can sign something that requests a retrial on the basis of potential miscarriage of justice? I think this whole case is so deeply troubling in terms of wider legal implications. As a public, we should be holding our criminal justice system to the highest possible standards, and clearly here they fall drastically short.