This was articulated by plenty of posters on the previous (now locked) thread. No one there was able to provide any genuine good faith response beyond “omg you love baby killers!” 🫠 or “You just think she looks nice!” 🙄 but okay I’ll bite.
Disclaimer: Before the breathless “omg you love baby killers!” pearl clutchers get started, no one (literally NO ONE) who is questioning the trial thinks LL is a proven baby killer, obviously. That’s rather the point. To add, this case didn’t happen in a vacuum. We all live under the same justice system (in the UK) and we are all affected by issues within it, as are our own children. All of us are very much entitled (and indeed have a responsibility in a democratic society) to hold our justice system to rigorous high account. It does not help the parents to put a head, any head, on a spike as a murderer if that’s not what actually happened. If failures elsewhere caused these poor babies to die then this is extremely in the public interest, but it is also in the interest of the parents. You are not a hero for the parents or anyone if you seek to shut down any questioning of the justice system in a democratic society.
Now, just two for starters:
First point: The infamous insulin tests - the actual lab that returned those tests explicitly state in their guidance that the tests are not definitive and should not be used forensically, as they can return false positives. There is a second, more thorough, test that should be done in the event of a positive result. This step was not taken for either test. Presumably the doctors at the time didn’t find cause to be worried because A: the above small print + the fact that both of those babies are alive to this day and B: one of the results showed enough insulin to kill a grown man, let alone a vulnerable pre term neonate, yet the baby did not die. This would seem to support the idea of a false positive result as per the testing labs guidance. It was only years later, when it was far too late to do a second test, that different doctors decided that these results are hard evidence of attempt to murder. The jury weren’t made aware of this. Does this seem right to you?
Second point: The air embolism theory - The medical expert who wrote the air embolism in neonates paper that the prosecution heavily relied on has stated that these deaths do not fit with air embolism in any diagnostic sense. Side note: he was not called to the trial despite his research forming basically the entire basis of the air embolism argument. Again, the jury did not know this either. Does that seem right?
These points (btw they’re independently verifiable for your pleasure) aren’t the only issues with the case, but they are fairly fundamental I think. They call into question whether anyone was murdering babies. The salacious idea of a serial killer nurse is of course much more dramatic and sells more papers than the much more likely, but sadly banal, possibility of a spike in vulnerable neonate deaths due to sepsis in an absolute shit show (pardon my French, but it was) of a hospital, underfunded and well beyond breaking point.
As per the RCPCH review in 2016 the COCH neonatal unit had extremely stressed (often in tears) overworked and under qualified staff and too few of them, a serious lack of appropriate equipment, it was cramped, cots too close together (huge infection spread risk), and there was raw sewage backing up into the NICU (of all places). COCH was a hospital absolutely on its knees. It should never have had most of those infants as patients based on its level 2 status alone, which it notably got downgraded from the instant Letby was taken off the ward. If you ask me, something is rotten in Denmark and it’s not just the raw sewage in the NICU.
Truth is I’d genuinely love to have a conversation with someone who engages in good faith and has solid, reasonable, explanations for the many issues myself and others are seeing in this case. It would be a great comfort to me to be able to go “ah okay, looks like she did it after all” and return to never thinking about this, just as I did until a few weeks ago. I have not found that person yet. All I see are ad hominems, claims that the New Yorker is a trash rag with no editorial process (a frankly laughable claim that only makes the person saying it look stupid), and emotional blackmail - I.e you shouldn’t ask questions or think about those uncomfortable things in case you upset the parents etc. This just makes me even more concerned about the tone of this whole thing, the case itself as well as the highly emotional response to any questions being asked, no matter how reasonable, evidenced, or sedate. If you are emotionally attached to the idea of LL being guilty, to the extent that you’d prefer to stop your ears and go lalala than hear anything at all that remotely threatens that idea, you should really have a good think about why that is. I say this genuinely. It is worrying.
(Just FYI I may not engage as much with this thread as I did with the other one as I’m travelling with work atm)