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”

@Bigcoatlady We don't know the background of any of the jury. However I do know doctors, teachers, nurses and solicitors who have been members of juries since the rules on exemptions changed. Some of them have done long trials.

Why did she have the initials of the babies that died in her diary and medical notes under her bed ? Very strange behaviour

You are dead right no one understands stats.

The Guardian article doesn't help there as it conflates the shift table with the cluster data.

The shift table data as used in Lucia de Berk's case and correctly criticised by Richard Gill was not used in this way in the Letby case. In the de Berk case it was presented to the jury and they were told there was an odds ratio of 342000000/1 against it being a coincidence that she was the only person on shift. This is misleading given the availability of other explanations for the death and the fact the data provided by the hospitals was not complete.

Primarily because of this issue the prosecution in Letby's case explicitly did not make claims like this. They presented the table as is and invited the jury to draw relevant inferences. At one level it places her at the scene which is critical.

Wider issues with the table, like whether it is complete, are complicated by the fact the CoC classification varied during the period the deaths occurred in so some still births were included in the deaths for that period, hence the varying overall death rate. The defence, of course, could raise these at trial.

But the challenges that arose in the de Berk case, that she worked across hospitals and different grades of unit, don't arise.

The cluster data is much more problematic as this is inherently statistical. The prosecution had to convince the jury the very fact there were more deaths in 2015-16 than in 2013-14 or subsequently was suspicious. Again though, they did not do this by reference to Bayesian probability. They did it by presenting the descriptive stats only and asking the jury to draw their own inferences as to whether it needed explanation and then making the case that the spike in 2015-16 could best be explained by deliberate killing.

This is a deliberate tactic BECAUSE bringing in statisticians has caused misleading evidence to be adduced in the past. the interesting thing about it is that now no statistical analysis is offered and the jury have just been given the data and asked to derive their own inferences (which I completely agree may well be wrong) the statisticians are equally enraged.

Remember when bad statistical evidence has been adduced in the past it has been from people claiming to have relevant expertise. The role of the prosecution is not to be the expert but to hire the expert, and what seems to be annoying the statisticians is 'well yes but we didn't mean no expert we meant a different one'. That's an impossible ask.

I would also like to add to my previous post that in cases like this even forensic evidence at the time of the event wouldn’t necessarily indicate guilt as you would expect Lucy’s fingerprints to be on the baby’s tubes/medicines. Unlike murder cases where there is no good reason for the defendant to have blood spots or DNA on their clothing/weapon, there would be a good reason for Lucy to be in the nurseries, handling the babies, handling their medical equipment. This makes the sort of ‘hard’ evidence you’re all searching for borderline impossible.

This is a really good example of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.

I think we're agreeing? I think its highly suspicious. I do think some of the evidence is problematic. That doesn't mean I would either retry, or even that I would not have convicted had I been on the jury. I wasn't. I don't know.

I think the babies must have been killed and anyone who says otherwise hasn't understood the case. That makes Letby the most likely culprit. Even though she is the most likely culprit I can't say I find the diary or FB searches useful evidence and question whether they should have been admitted as they are not conclusive either way. But that's irrelevant if she clearly deliberately injected insulin into babies.

I find the discussion of absence of motive very odd. I have no idea what I would find a plausible motive for killing babies so the fact I don't understand why she did it seems consistent with what I would expect.

At least one of the items she kept was a hand towel with the doctor's temporary notes of what medications he/she used during a collapse, and then apparently binned. It would had to have been taken out of a bin afterward.

This was highlighted during the trial.

These were not all things taken home accidentally in her pocket.

Even if they had been, at what point do you try to be a bit more careful about taking home handover notes, blood gas records etc. - after 5, 10, 20? Probably not 257 and counting.

She also had a shredder in her home and could have shredded them if she didn't want to return them to the hospital/thought there was no point in returning them, she didn't.

She shredded her bank stuff and other documents though.

I read that to say

"How will things ever go back to the way they were - they won't"

There is an apostrophe there that wouldn't be in went.

I think about this often and imagine a day decades from now when it’s all overturned ☹️

I guess the problem is, it is possible for her to be a weird and morbid person, and also not have killed the babies.

Is it possible she was clocked leaving with paperwork or not handing in paperwork, and it's something like that that made her a target of suspicion?
There have been cases where people have acted in odd and unsavoury ways in the face of deep personal tragedy, and the result is that suspicion has been cast on them. Even when they were proven innocent.

....But then you get people who were acting really weird and inserting themselves in cases or being extremely interested in them, and they were guilty. Who bloody knows. Terrifying.

Ah, you again.

No, it wasn't in the last thread and it's still not in this thread.

I'm not selecting incidents.

I'm saying that one incident would be so unlikely to happen coincidentally; as to be decisive to me.

There have been cases where people have acted in odd and unsavoury ways in the face of deep personal tragedy

What deep personal tragedy had LL experienced?

Why?

“Strange behaviour” is subjective, coloured by context, and not something we imprison people for. However, your points have already been addressed multiple times. The ‘code’ in her diary is, according to many nurses, standard nursing shorthand. LD means ‘long day’. It isn’t the initials of one of the babies.

As to what was under her bed, it wasn’t ‘medical notes’. She had 257 handover sheets stuffed into several bin bags and shopping bags, one was under her bed, one was in the garage etc. 90% of them had nothing to do with any of the babies. A small number were related to some, but not all, of the babies.

There was also one scrap of paper that was a resuscitation note related to one of the babies. Much has been made of the fact that she “had to have fished it out of a bin” based on the fact that the nurse who hastily scrawled it on a paper towel said, years later, that her normal practice would be to bin such items, but she couldn’t remember in this case what she did with it. Not conclusive of anything accept a wholly imagined bin hoking incident.

Handover sheets are quite dry documents. They are info on meds given etc from one nurse to another when the shifts change. Many nurses have said that they also have bags full of them in their houses, because they end up coming home in a pocket after a busy shift.

Did she ever have concerns about the care, staffing, treatments, other staff. Would she have kept handovers because she thought there might be an investigation into the unit. Don't know why she kept blood gases though, aren't they kept in the notes.

The Royal Society of Statisticians don’t agree with you. Are you a statistician?

Why would the baby's 100th day alive be relevant? Is the claim that LL was into numerology? Was there some pattern running through the other deaths too?

I mean, granted I haven't and would never work in the neonatal medical field, but I would imagine that baby loss is fairly tragic for all involved?

I should have been clearer though, I was drawing a comparison to other highly publicised cases where people have acted in ways perceived as odd, suspicious, or unsavoury, and these are usually involving much more personal losses, like the loss of a child under suspicious circumstances.

It doesn’t say “they went”. It says “they won’t”.
if you read the line above it says “how can things ever be as they used to be”
so altogether it reads “how can things ever be as they used to be, they won’t”
it’s just all jumbled up that’s why it looks that way

We believe who she’s guilty AF have no need to be ‘desperate’. She’s safely locked up for life, by two separate juries and has no leave to appeal. It’s her fans who are desperate.

Why are you being so shirty though @BouquetGarni224 this is a discussion thread, not your own personal stomping ground, why don't you tone it down a bit?

You're reading that note wrong - it doesn't say 'they went', it says 'they were' and follows the line 'how will things ever go back to the way..' 'they were'. It's the end of the sentence not the beginning of the 'I killed them' line.

I suggest you read about the case, the collapses, the timing of the collapses, the events that were happening before them/at the same time.

There are so many posters on this thread making statements/comments and asking questions that demonstrate that they do not know basic facts about this case, but nonetheless feel qualified to write that they think she did or didn't do the murders because ...... (Vague, ignorant impressions).

Sorry to paraphrase and get it slightly wrong but do you see where you're incorrectly linking the sentences and changing the meaning?

People can post in whatever tone they choose to on this forum.

I was unaware there was a MN appointed "tone police" ..... Oh wait, there isn't.