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”

That’s literally what a criminal trial is OP. That’s why there are agreed facts, fact finding hearings, and experts are bound to provide a truthful and neutral report - they’re not paid to embellish the information in favour of their ‘employer’. How much do you actually know about criminal trials?

I will also add it is the police’s duty to investigate, not the prosecution nor the defence. They simply present the evidence given to them, either to convince a jury of guilt or to attempt to mitigate/exonerate their client.

It’s quite hard listening to laypeople making such untruthful, frustrating statements to be honest, and then being ‘troubled’ by the complete fabrications they’ve come up with!

Understaffing isn't a cause of death. Noone has "understaffing" on their death certificate. There has to be a mechanism by which death actually occurs, whether it was preventable or not. For example, in the case where the baby was incorrectly intubated it's very easy to understand the sequence of events leading to their death and where mistakes were made.

A certain number of difficult to explain deaths may take place on a neonatal unit but when a pattern emerged far exceeding what could be considered normal it would be utterly remiss not to scrutinise what the possible cause is.

Ultimately, expert consensus was that these babies suffered intentional harm and that was the cause of their deaths. That consensus was based upon pre and post mortem findings for individual babies. The case was never made on a statistical basis, there were no statisticians called by the prosecution to give evidence. The purpose of showing which staff were on shift etc was to demonstrate that only LL had the means to cause these unnatural deaths.

If you found convincing evidence that a 100 year old had been smothered to death, would you say "Occam's razor - it's more likely they died of old age than they were murdered"?

I think you’ve misunderstood my point, but managed to attempt an insult anyway. It is indeed the police’s duty to investigate. I didn’t say it was anyone else’s! However, when it comes to statistics or complex medical details, for example, the police are poorly positioned to establish the truth. A statistician should have been called to break down the statistics in this case. The RSS wrote to the judge asking for this. It never happened. This is how the poor reading of stats was perpetuated over and over, both in the trial and on the front pages of the papers.

Yes. It's known as a quip... 🤦

This was never a case founded on so called "statistical evidence". If it had been LL would have been charged and convicted with murder for all of the babies whose deaths she was involved in. She was not. She was charged and convicted where expert witnesses concluded independently that babies had died as a result of intentional harm. If you find a murdered person there has to be a murderer.

You need to challenge the conclusion that these babies were murdered to challenge her conviction. If they were not murdered, I'd like to know what the mechanism of their deaths was. It seems that the defence could not produce a single expert witness to explain how they died if it was not as a result of intentional harm or to counter the evidence given by the prosecution's experts witnesses. One reason for this would be that the evidence of murder was sound.

Look, you do not need to engage with this discussion if you’re annoyed by it. I mean this kindly. The justice system needs to be rigorous, for everyone who depends on it for safety, liberty, and justice. That’s all of us. There are many professionals in relevant fields who have doubts about these convictions. Sometimes that happens with criminal cases and, as a result, there is scrutiny. If the convictions are safe they will withstand any examination that might follow. If they aren’t, they won’t. It’s not something that should personally upset you.

@Tinylittleunicorn
Murder is not a diagnosis of exclusion.

You said:

Criminal trials of this nature should include an inquiry into establishing the actual truth, which the adversarial system does not prioritise. Currently prosecutors and the defence are incentivised to ‘win’, sometimes this is at the expense of the truth. It’s quite troubling.

You’re confusing criminal trials, inquiries, inquests and investigations. You seem to have no clue which does what or who does what. Your posts are an absolute nonsense, sorry.

You’re the one blustering because your attempts at playing armchair detective are being exposed as ridiculous, now you’re playing the ‘no YOU’RE upset’ card.

OP, your posts are nonsense, at least do some proper research before weighing in with complete myths.

Doubt about the conclusion that they were murdered is the point of the article and those quoted in it. Did you read it? There were perfectly uncontroversial post mortems for all of the babies (except one) for several years. Which expert witnesses were and weren’t called to the court is one of the points of concern. Whether or not the babies were deliberately harmed is, as I say, where the doubt is located in this article and the one The Telegraph also published today.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/09/lucy-letby-serial-killer-or-miscarriage-justice-victim/

No it is not. Which is why for a long time these deaths were recorded as unexplained.

Then during the course of a police investigation - itself the end result of a series of investigations which did not yield any satisfactory explanation for the deaths - convincing evidence of murder was found. In those cases were this was found, and only in those cases, LL was tried and convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence making her the only possible culprit.

What a tragedy for those babies who lost their lives towards the end of her spree that murder was not considered seriously at an earlier date.

Again, it is clear by your tone that you are upset by the discussion. You can, and should, move on if so.

OP- your house of cards is falling down under questioning.

Criminal trials in the U.K. are not like the US. You seem not to understand that.

In theory the prosecution should not be aiming "to win" but to fairly present the facts. Experts have a duty to the court not to a party.

However, the OP's suggestion of experts nominated by their professional body may well produce a more truly neutral response.

Furthermore if you listen to cross examination - reenacted in The Trial podcast - it was quite clear the prosecution was aiming to win... I note the repeated use of the Defendant’s full name "Lucy Letby" presumably because of the nice sing song effect it has

I’m upset because I’m disputing your nonsense whereas you’re the one who has started an entire passionate thread about it?

Experts have to be members of professional bodies. This is getting absurd now.

I’d like to point out just how weird and inappropriate the behaviour of her parents was at trial. Her mum did her no favours in behaving on the way she did.

She also had some weird friend who was obsessed with Dr Jayram and was whipping up conspiracy theories online.

Not especially the behaviour of people looking for ‘the truth’.

Okay. One last time. We were discussing how criminal trials in the UK currently operate and that it’s perhaps not the best system. I presented a theoretical alternative, as Dr Philip Hammond did in the tweet we were discussing. I was not describing the current system. How you’ve missed that I do not know.

Agreed @Rainbowsponge You’ve hit nerve by picking apart the OPs inaccuracies. How dare you know more about criminal trials than them!

You are right and it is uncontroversially true. I don’t know why some people are getting upset over it, but there we are!

In any case, while interesting, a hypothetical conversation about how trials could better drill down into the truth has nothing to do with the article, which is the point of the thread.

Hmm. As a lawyer, I find it pretty telling that the defence did not lead any expert evidence suggesting there was an innocent cause to these deaths. It’s one thing to comment (often anonymously) to a newspaper, another thing to say it on oath.

I find it inexplicable she failed to lead any such evidence if there were professionals available to provide it. Unless highly negligent, her solicitors will have searched for someone willing to say on oath that there is an innocent cause for these deaths. The fact there was no one suggests very strongly that there was no one whose evidence they thought would support her defence without doing more harm than good.

I do accept that there may be doubt about some of the individual allegations but I don’t believe for one second she is innocent of all of it.

I actually really see a lot of misogyny in the refusal to accept that she did it. The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. The lengths people will go to to refuse to accept a “nice” young white woman is a stone-cold killer is astonishing.

Nobody is suggesting she is innocent of all of it or of any of it. All the article does is query the safety of the convictions. More specifically, whether or not the scientific evidence proves that there were murders at all. It should not be controversial for people to take an interest in that. Public scrutiny of the legal system is okay, even desirable. Some people are very emotional about this particular case though, which is understandable given the context. As a result discussion can be tricky.