The Guardian today on the safety of the Lucy Letby convictions

[Kittybythelighthouse]

This article was apparently months in the making but it was delayed by the reporting restrictions https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/09/lucy-letby-evidence-experts-question

“A Guardian investigation has interviewed dozens of these experts and seen further evidence from emails and documents. Those raising concerns include several leading consultant neonatologists, some with current or recent leadership roles, and several senior neonatal nurses. Others are public health professionals, GPs, biochemists, a leading government microbiologist, and lawyers. Several of those still working in the NHS have asked to remain anonymous, fearing the impact if they are named.

These experts said they were acutely aware of the suffering of the families involved and did not want to reopen their trauma, but were so troubled they felt compelled to become involved”

I have big concerns regarding her conviction. I think people are fixated on having someone to blame. A proper investigation needs to be carried out regarding the exact cause of the deaths and any direct evidence linking her to them as it all appears rather tenuous. Silencing an alarm and standing observing a patient's desaturation to see if they improve or have established a pattern that requires intervention is something every nurse has done, myself included on countless occasions.

Even then, there’s doubt over whether or not that’s actually what happened. Jarayam’s account was contradicted by Nurse Williams in the retrial for baby K and he has changed his story three times. At best he can’t be sure that that is what happened and no one else, no other evidence, corroborates it.

I do not believe that he saw her “red handed” as he now claims, in an act of attempted murder, because if he had he would not have gone back to his office without saying a word and allowed her to continue the rest of that shift unhindered. He would not have written “baby self extubated” on the notes for the transfer team. He would not have sat on his hands for a further year, sending emails and having meetings with HR. He would have gone to the police. Indeed, as a doctor it was his legal and moral responsibility to do so.

Definitely food for thought there.

Interesting.

i am no expert but do work legal adjacent. Right from the beginning I thought while the evidence presented does appear overwhelming, it’s all circumstantial as far as I know. No one has actually witnessed the crimes, it’s all well she was in the room for most of them, she wrote weird notes and checked families on social media.

i do acknowledge that I probably am biased having worked in the nhs- pretty impossible for me to accept that a nicu nurse could murder so many babies.

It’s one of the most troubling potential miscarriages of justice I can think of. If shes innocent she and her family must be going through absolute hell.

Her diary entries were damning. Why on earth would you write such things if you were innocent?

One of the expert witnesses was on the radio the other day. I haven’t followed the case but he spoke about the threats he has received, why people find it so hard to believe that she is guilty and the work that went on to secure her conviction.

I can't remember where it was published; but the US article into this - which was removed from access in the UK after an hour or so - is a fascinating read.

Some of the evidence against her is strong, but I do wonder how safe the conviction is.

He spoke about the fact that people who murder ‘in plain sight’ are able to get away with it precisely because they appear normal and are often well liked.

Hmmm I wonder how many people would be challenging the conviction if she wasn’t young and pretty ( and white). I would be interested to know what the death rates were like before and after her arrest. Presumably if she’s innocent they’ll be similar.

Because she was in anguish, terrified, confused, panicking and spiralling massively. I’m lost as to how people don’t see this. I wrote ‘I killed him’ after my dad died; I didn’t

She also wrote she’d done nothing wrong.

I find it really odd how literal people are about those notes. Do they think everyone who says in exasperation ‘I’m going to strangle him!’ Should be locked up as well?

I keep hearing this and I don’t think it’s that she’s young pretty and white. It’s more that there’s absolutely nothing to indicate or point towards such violent crimes. Bev Allitt was young and white. She was also barking mad. That does not appear to have been the case here.

Her diary entries were damning. Why on earth would you write such things if you were innocent?

Not really. Certain lines were cherry-picked, but taken as a whole the diary entries were rather jumbled pieces of reflective writing from someone clearly undergoing a crisis. They certainly were not a confession

This is covered in the article, which points out that they're far from a straightforward admission of guilt:

Much was made of notes written by Letby. Despite these saying: “I AM EVIL I DID THIS” and “I killed them on purpose because I am not good enough”, which the prosecution relied upon as amounting to a confession, she has never formally made one.
The notes also included the words: “Kill myself right now … hate my life, fear, panic, despair, WHY ME? I haven’t done anything wrong,” suggesting a state of extreme distress.

However, the article doesn't mention the keeping of patient notes (against all hospital rules) or the seemingly obsessive searching for the parents of babies who had died online, both of which seem less easy to explain and also do seem to suggest a motive of sorts - the article makes a big deal of saying that no psychological explanation was ever given, but in the trial it was suggested both that she enjoyed the drama and found some pleasure/excitement in the parents' grief, and also that she had a relationship with a doctor and the deaths gave her attention and sympathy from him. Clearly neither were proven (or are provable) but it's not true that no motive at all has ever been posited.

Have you ever worked in an environment where the slightest error- one check forgotten, one miscalculation, one dosing dilution, one not noticing a reading on the many monitors, one injection slightly too fast, one not realising a lab hasn’t come back or something wasn’t flagged?

these are babies on the brink of death. Even if you do everything right they can die. Every action you do can cause them to deteriorate and die.

it can be mentally horrific. You go home after a shift and spend the 12 hours before your next one going over everything you’ve done, and every time you start your shift you double check you’ve not made anything worse the day before, that no one’s died, or going to die.

i am not a note writer but would often mentally blame myself- if a patient died was it because of my care?

if you do make an error or don’t pick up on something that results in a death then it is very difficult to go back and work without thinking have I done something? Will I kill this patient?

to me the note writing is someone under incredible stress working in an inadequately staffed high risk ward where they are becoming obsessed with the care killing patients. Not that they actually killed them intentionally, but they feel responsible for the death.

Do you mean the post it notes? These were written after she had been first arrested and knew what she was being accused of. This is after a year of (from her perspective) being hounded by Jarayam and Brearey. The notes read to me like the outpourings of someone in great psychological distress. They also don’t quite say what people think they say. “They went I killed them” is not the same thing as “I killed them”.

However, the post it notes and all other circumstantial evidence are irrelevant if no murders occurred in the first place, which is a definite possibility.

He didn’t speak about threats, as far as I recall. He did seem to be upset that people are questioning him on social media and in the print media. Unfortunately scrutiny goes with the territory if you’re going to work in a position of such grave power. He also didn’t address at all why people “find it hard” to believe she’s guilty. He’s very well aware that many of his peers do not agree with him, as evidenced in this article, but he side stepped that entirely, making it about something no one is saying I.e: “she’s white and pretty so she can’t have done it”. No one serious is saying that, yet there are very serious questions. He doesn’t want to face them.

However, the article doesn't mention the keeping of patient notes (against all hospital rules) or the seemingly obsessive searching for the parents of babies who had died online, both of which seem less easy to explain and also do seem to suggest a motive of sorts

Was the searching before or after she was accused?

I don’t think the searching for families on social media is odd tbh.

you’ve had a relationship with these people, which suddenly ends with death. It’s not acceptable or possible to turn the professional relationship into a personal one, so the only way to see how parents are doing is sm. if she’s spiralling as well thinking her care isn’t good enough she may be checking for validation- have they said I was a good nurse, are they blaming the hospital for the child’s death?

The New Yorker. Accessible here. https://archive.ph/AWpyz

All well and good but totally irrelevant to the actual concerns about the safety of these convictions, as he well knows.

Did you read the article? No mention of her being young, pretty, or white. Lots of esteemed professionals with valid concerns.

I can understand searching for the parents.

Assuming innocence for just a moment, it’s a huge event. I’ll make my own confession here and admit I obsessively search some people on FB, it’s partly a bad habit to be honest. I had a horrible manager just before the lockdowns and was on the verge of leaving my job because of her. Luckily I didn’t! But she made my life very difficult during my first pregnancy. I left that job in September 2020 (officially the December of that year) - I STILL stalk her on FB!

I can see that you’d search for someone out of a bit of a morbid curiosity. Again probably doesn’t reflect well but I read an article about a fairly high profile murder from the 1980s and I searched the sibling of the victim on Fb. It can be an idle sort of thing and when you’ve searched for someone a couple of times FB ‘remembers’ it.

I don’t think for a moment I’m alone in that!

I haven’t read the article no… I’m just musing about it. I do want to know what the death rate is though. I am very familiar with the events in Grantham when Beverley Allit murdered those babies because my parents were both employed at the hospital at the time. I am also an investigator with experience of the ways the media misrepresent trials / cases to suit their own agenda.

As some us have been saying all along!

I really resent the way some MN posters shout down any suggestion that she isn't an evil baby killer who should rot in hell. The last thread was terrible, some really aggressive posters.

She might be innocent! Its perfectly reasonable to question the verdict.