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”

So The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian, both could not be more opposed politically, are pedalling conspiracy theories?

You are not taking this seriously and by doing so are being disrespectful to the families who suffered.

Both, I believe, and it was obsessive. I totally get you might look up parents and ex patients once or twice, but she was looking up multiple families at a time who'd lost children sometimes months apart, and making hundreds of searches- she even searched for some of the families on Christmas day. She did also search for other parents, but the level of searching overall seems excessive to me.

This, alongside taking home so many notes and things she shouldn't have had does seem like unusual behaviour for me.

FWIW, I'm a teacher, and unfortunately during the time I've been teaching, I have had a student die. I have never searched for their family on social media, as it wouldn't be appropriate. I would expect a nurse to have similar professional boundaries.

Does this prove she's guilty? No, not on its own, but I do think that it shows that something odd was going on, and it could possibly point towards some sort of motive.

@placemats you have not answered the questions above.
I have full respect for the families and glad they have justice. However the hospital must also be held accountable. More will come out from this.

@BigWordAtlas Very well said.
It's so essential we question the system and ensure it is robust. Any one of us could be on trial one day.

"David Wilson, emeritus professor of criminology at Birmingham City University, an expert in serial killers, said shift patterns were always a shaky form of evidence.
“The weakness of that sort of statistical analysis was really as plain as a pikestaff,” he said.
“What the defence never did was challenge the fact there were other incidents during that time period when Letby wasn’t on duty, and in fact there were (at least) nine other neonatal deaths on the ward during that period.
“So the prosecution present the table and it looks like the common denominator is Lucy Letby, but they don’t present all the collapses or deaths during that period because that doesn’t necessarily suit the argument that they are trying to make.”
He added: “Statistics and the law both speak English but they speak it in a very different dialect.”"

From The Telegraph

This is what I was referring to @FarmCFer

This thread would be a lot more interesting and thoughtful if people read the articles. Multiple questions and points have been made, which are answered in the article!

The point only is that is room for reasonable doubt. Which surely most people would agree should not be present for a whole life tariff, the most serious sentence a judge can send down.

@placemats

If the case had been built on the shift pattern data then he might have a point. However, anyone who has followed the trial or read the transcript with know that the case wasn’t built on the shift pattern data. The reason why it was presented at all was just to prove she had the means and opportunity to attack those babies.

As I have said before, people (especially the ones relying on information fed to them by third parties like Richard Gill) fail to understand how this case was built and the overwhelming nature of the evidence. It isn’t one smoking gun. It is thousands of tiny puzzle pieces to make an overall picture. Even if you remove one or two then it still makes a compelling case that Letby did it.

Oh FFS. Lucy was white, young, and while beauty is in the eye of the beholder, she wasn't an ogre.

It's uncomfortable for people to examine their own implicit bias in this so they'll just say 'no it isn't so'. But this is what it is.

https://triedbystats.com/
This website is interesting and for more discussion search Lucy letby science on Reddit for a subreddit discussing the trial

I know…. Did you follow the trial?

People on this or another current thread kept comparing ‘young, white, pretty’ LL to Beverly Allitt, to whose repulsive appearance they attributed the difference in response to their convictions. I wasn’t living in the UK when BA was tried,so I looked her up. To find photos of a perfectly ordinary, pleasant-faced young white woman who was in her 20s when tried — she didn’t look that unlike LL, actually, if we omit the 80s hairstyle.

If having a weird mum is indicative of being a murderer half of MN should be locked up!

Brilliant! 👏👏👏

Imagine if she’d had a weird MIL!

Where's he getting his information from? There is nothing (I can find) to substantiate the claim that there were "at least 9" other neonatal deaths on the unit in 2015 and 2016 for which LL was not present.

It's actually really difficult to find a primary source for the number of deaths that actually occured within the Countess of Chester Neonatal Unit, and the mainstream media reporting has been shocking - you can literally find different Guardian articles citing wildly differing numbers of deaths.

This is the only primary source I can find (an FOI request pertaining to MBRACE data on perinatal mortality):

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/neonataldeathsandfois#incoming-1255362

The second link (FOI4568) is a table of perinatal deaths linked to the Countess of Chester produced by MBRACE. However, MBRACE presents data according to where babies were born, regardless of where they died. Many of those babies if very sick or premature could have been transferred out and died at another location.

So you cannot establish from that table alone how many babies died within the Countess of Chester neonatal unit. What you can see is that figures that have been popping up along the lines of "25 deaths" etc have probably come from somebody misinterpreting the MBRACE table and including both late fetal losses and stillbirths (neither have which have any relevance) in their numbers.

The BBC panorama documentary stated clearly that 15 deaths occured within the neonatal unit across 2015/2016 and that LL was present at all of these. There were no other deaths for which she was absent. Did the Panorama investigation get this wrong?

The answer will be within the RCPCH report following their investigation into the unit. But it is not in the public domain and the RCPCH have no reason to make it so.

EDIT: Earlier in this thread I stated that 2 babies died in the unit in 2013 and 3 died in 2014. 8 babies died on the unit in 2015 and 5 in 2016. This was my source for these figures: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/18/police-investigating-baby-deaths-at-countess-of-chester-hospital

This is the sort of post I come to MN for. Informed and illuminating.

Thank you.

@Tinylittleunicorn thank you for your post. Very well put.

I think that’s the main thing to take away from this. It isn’t a case of ‘I think she is innocent.’ It’s more - ‘I am not convinced of her guilt.’

I am a teacher and am no saint: have certainly done social media searches. I had a student murdered many years ago and have occasionally searched for her best friend. The whole point of Facebook and other social media is this to a large extent and it can be addictive.

People do have strange takes on things - this insistence that she bought a house near the cemetery rather than it being affordable and near work for instance.

It does trouble me. Miscarriages of justice tend to happen when there’s pressure for a conviction - Michael Shirley was convicted of murder in the 1980s and was innocent. There was also Colin Stagg (I think?) who was generally assumed to be responsible for Rachel Nickell’s murder. Then you have sally clark and that’s quite close to home here. I also have a very uneasy feeling Michael stone is doing time for two murders he did not commit.

Just to add, the Guardian article linked above which states that 15 babies died across 2015/2016 implies that their source was the RCPCH report, but the link to follow to the report itself is in fact broken.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the "cherry picked statistics" (if not entirely made up statistics) seem to be coming from those who are questioning the safety of the convictions.

The actual exact figures seem not to be clearly established in the public domain. Whereas I have to assume, the opportunity to establish these figures in LL's defence, if they would have aided her defence, was present at her trial.

Claims that she was absent from up to a dozen deaths (which in and of themselves would represent an absolutely astonishing increase in mortality using MBRACE data as a proxy) seem to me to be both fabricated and wildly implausible.

The hospital is of course culpable too and should be held accountable no matter which way this goes.

Apologies typo - 13 babies

This is a really stupid suggestion from Dr Hammond. How on earth are a jury of ordinary people meant to weigh up and assess different often heavily technical arguments from experts with phds and years of experience? That’s why experts are rightly meant to challenge the evidence and each others perspectives and agree how to present to the court. This is broadly the mechanism by which science develops. And medicine. The use of expert witnesses and testimony in trials has been tested and developed over decades and I remember the what I think was the Bowman ruling from over 20 years ago on this. This campaign is not good, it’s idiotic at worst, misguided at best.

you don't know that the NHS is understaffed and struggling and has been for many years?

I don't think you got my point (?)

If you are saying it's been that way for years, then you are agreeing with me.

I doubt the understaffing etc. just started in 2015, therefore the spike in unexpected & unexplained collapses and deaths in 2015-16 is extremely unlikely to be down to only that.

(And I'd be very interested to know when the unit became one that took that "level" of babies; because - again - if it was before mid 2015, the spike in unexpected & unexplored collapses and deaths can't be attributed to only that either.
Nor can the reduction of unexplained & unexpected collapse and deaths when it was downgraded, as such).

Re. your comments on medical negligence, incompetence etc.; absolutely, it happens.

But that happening, across all areas of medical practice, is not mutually exclusive with the existence of medical professional serial killers.

If the unit was understaffed etc. before mid 2015, why did collapses and deaths from "negligence" start spiking in mid 2015?

Also, as you pointed out, incidents of negligence/malpractice/incompetence etc. tend to be glossed over, covered up etc.

So why did the consultants in that unit repeatedly, continually, arrange.meetings about the spike, alert management, express concerns, and later suggest (on the advice of a neonatologist) that the collapses and deaths be referred to the police.
That's the opposite of what you'd do if you wanted to cover something up. They didn't know if any of the investigations would point the finger at them (internal or police).

And it's not like the management would have recognised a cover up, or investigated of their own accord, or referred to the police; quite the opposite. They resisted, side stepped and delayed that for as long as they could. They told the consultants they didn't want the police in the unit, they told them the reputation of the trust needed to be considered, they threatened them with disciplinary action, they threatened them with bring reported to the GMC, they told them to draw a line under it and stop raising it. The board also claimed that management misrepresented the scope of the internal investigation to them.

It's there in black and white in the communications.

I understand that there are conflicting responses to FOI requests for the exact figures, which is why there are conflicting numbers reported in the media. Happy to be corrected if anyone has found definite numbers.

I don’t think Hammond, or anyone, is part of a “campaign” to change the justice system. He’s just opining (in a twitter post) on how he feels it might work better.