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.

I think leave to appeal should have been given. I think we need to be as sure as possible that there has been no miscarriage of justice and that she isn't a scapegoat for a failing NHS.

Maybe she's guilty, maybe she isn't. Has there been a miscarriage of justice? Well, stranger things than that have happened. The New Yorker article is certainly thought provoking and raises some very good questions, which need answers.

I personally think she is guilty. But I don't think she should have been found guilty.

Purely because to me it seems obvious there's a lot of reasonable doubt and circumstantial evidence floating around

She was never actually caught doing anything. No CCTV, nobody has said they witnessed her outright doing anything. No history of MH issues, arrests, odd behaviour, etc etc

It all doesn't add up or seem right that she was found guilty

But for what it's worth, I think she is when I see the way she acts. And again, that can all be explained by my own mind interpreting things a certain way

If innocent, this woman would have had years of coming to terms with the very real possibility she would be more hated than some very famous murderers when she didn't commit the crime. Can you imagine how that must feel?

I’m also a nurse and sadly I think that it does attract people who see it as a way to access vulnerable people.

I don’t think there’ll be a retrial though, well they’ve said not, now. Whether something else is looked into in the future is another matter.

Or a woman who wasn't white, blonde and pretty?

The violence the babies suffered that the post mortems didn't find? Are you suggesting that the post mortems were wrong? If so, there's certainly cause for questions.

From a scientific and statistical standpoint the article makes compelling reading. I have followed the case closely and I am concerned this could be one of the biggest miscarriages of justice the UK has seen.

Even if they did. Many of the babies didn't have verdicts of guilt attached to their death.

Which hints that the jury saw that some cases there was reasonable doubt and babies did just die when she was there by coincidence?

For those that are posting about how she was acting.

Amanda Knox didn't act the way that she was "supposed" to.
She was found guilty then subsequently found innocent.

My main concern about this is that the system has to be totally transparent and at the moment it is not.

For me doubts remain regarding the awful method of statistics used, the improbable method of insulin poisoning and air embolism. It smacked of airy fairy nonsense.

I have listened to the podcast that sets out all the evidence over many, many hours and is basically a transcript of the court proceedings, my thoughts are:

• what about the babies that died when she wasn’t on shift? Is there anything that could be deemed suspicious about those deaths?
• why was so much detail of the catastrophic failings of the hospital omitted?
• insulin bag point mentioned by PP
• evidence is all circumstantial
• this is a highly emotive case which is likely to tug on the heart strings of the average person (see many many “evil” posts) which could influence a jury to think someone is pure evil and convict on that basis
• I don’t think “behaviour” can be attributed to guilt, I cry easily but go into complete shut down when things are seriously emotional
• Would someone who is actually guilty really write down “I’m evil, I did this”, I have often blamed myself for harrowing things which aren’t my fault because I feel guilty and responsible

I’m not saying I think she’s innocent, but I certainly think there’s reasonable doubt on her guilt.

It’s interesting in that all of her internet searches she never once searched air embolism.

She's a nurse, it's not like she doesn't know about air embolisms

No but if you’re convinced enough that you’re not going to get caught to write “I am guilty, I did this” on a post it, likely you’d also be searching for further info or anecdotes about air embolism?

I have read the New York article in the EU where it isn't blocked and I have to say I believe having read it there is both a disturbing lack of transparency surrounding this case and that there are serious concerns over the way it was conducted and therefore the verdict.
I don't know whether she is innocent or guilty but there is so much red tape and subterfuge surrounding the case that I am concerned that the trial was not conducted transparently and fairly.

She has another trial coming up there are going to be certain things they can't make public right now

I’m a midwife, I know it can kill people.

But surely if you were planning on killing somebody this way you’d be curious for more information, how much air, is it detectable, what symptoms might they have, have patients been killed this way before and if so was the nurse caught, if so how were they caught.

So if you’re a midwife then do you have any other opinions? I’m sure there was another nurse or midwife on another thread who thought she was guilty.

Good.
Finally some common sense.

Are you sticking up for her? She does not deserve anything. She's a baby killer

She deserves a fair trial, and there do seem to be doubts over this.

Unfortunately it’s these sort of sensationalist attitudes and derision of anyone with a different opinion that make me very nervous she has not had a fair trial.

I'm not convinced of the safety of these convictions.

You can shout at me and cry 'shame' as long as you want.

The babies in these cases were enormously fragile - in a chaotic, understaffed unit lacking experience of very premature babies they were always at risk.

I think it is more convenient to be able to blame one individual than to prise apart complex factors that may have been involved.

I remember the Sally Clark case and how absolutely we were told that it was not possible that both her children could have died from cot death and that it was certain that she was in fact a murderer. They were wrong.

I followed it too. In fact that there’s little in the article that I haven’t already thought myself, other than 2 new pieces of information: 1. That the defence had an expert medical witness whom they didn’t call who was to cast doubt on the cause of death theories posited by Dewi Evans and 2. The defence tried to have Evans’ evidence thrown out in the basis of a previous judge’s withering dismissal of the quality of his evidence in a previous case. I think it was correct not to throw it out on the basis of another case, however, the judge in that case aptly summarised Dewi’s bad science.

I think this will end up in a retrial in about 10 years. I agree that it may end up one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in U.K. history. I also predict Dewi Evans will end up on the Roy Meadows pile of discredited expert witnesses. How anyone cannot see his totally unscientific speculation for what it is astonishes me.

I understand the emotional need for scapegoats and the lure of misogynist witch hunts. The public love nothing better than the image of an evil woman.

However - facts must always come first: both in science and in court.