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”

May the inquiry will shed more light.

I wonder if LL will be forced to give evidence, like the witnesses.

Letby was one of only two specialist trained nurses on that unit which may account for why she was more involved with the sicker and more at risk neonates. As well as having to supervise and advise lesser trained colleagues, even when she wasn't on duty apparently. The unit even had to get another doctor from a neighbouring hospital to intubate one patient. I've never heard such nonsense. That unit shouldn't have been taking such sick babies (or delivering them for that matter).

It’s more likely that they’re looking at the evidence as a whole, and not cherry picking bits.

I’m going to engage with the inquiry but I don’t see the point in taking lots of time to understand the evidence of people who weren’t deemed credible enough by the defence to be put in front of the jury.

Sometimes 'looking at the evidence as a whole' can lead to lack of attention to detail, which is what people are erroneously calling 'cherry picking'. Of course the more analytical people are going to concentrate on details then build it up to provide a bigger picture. Obviously there is a lot of information to trawl through though.

OP are you involved in criminal justice in a professional capacity?

I haven't seen the credibility if the defence expert being called into question. In fact it speaks to his credibility that he acknowledges that while he could challenge the medical evidence on a good technical level he couldn't speak to Lucy Letbys guilt or innocence as that is how expert witnesses are supposed to testify - within the limits of their expertise. On the other hand, Dewi Evans credibility had been questioned in another case.

Whichever way you look at it, the medical evidence bears scrutiny. I don't know why the air embolism guy wasn't called in the first instance but he was rejected by the court of appeal on legal technicality not the credibility of his evidence or his own credibility as far as I'm aware.

And this is one of the problems of the small pool of expert witnesses that can be called upon in these sorts of cases. There are still far more specialising in the protection of children which is of course the ultimate on worthy causes, versus those who want to examine whether parents or caregivers have been falsely accused and hang their hat on that because the consequences of getting it wrong are too horrible to contemplate in the case of live children especially.

This whole aspect of the case requires scrutiny and so does the "science" because science is not immune to dogma and absolutism.

Maybe this has been cleared up already (I am just reading along) but a judge cannot dictate to the prosecution (or the defence) how they should present their case, that would be highly inappropriate and put the judge's role as arbiter at risk of they just dictate what kind of evidence they will hear.

The reason the defence would not present expert evidence is that they believe:

1. the prosecution would be able to effectively counter or undermine it with their own expert evidence: or
2. they do not believe their expert would be able to effectively support their case when cross examined by the prosecution (experts have the obligation to answer truthfully and objectively and not simply bat for a side); or
3. they could not find a credible expert willing to testify on oath to their case theory.

I am a working lawyer and an academic in evidence law.

I''m not saying Dr Hall isn't credible, only that he wasn't called forth. I understand lots of people are writing to the inquiry and applying to participate, which I think is a good thing. I wonder if he has applied.

The judge said there were lots of expert witnesses in his remarks, so I can't imagine the pool of expert witnesses was big enough for the prosecution but not the defence.

I believe LL is guilty and welcome the inquiry. If any new evidence comes to light it should be investigated, but I doubt there will and I appreciate an inquiry isn't the same as a court case.

Could one of the PPs who work in the legal sphere clear up a question that I've been wondering about for a while. How do barristers decide which reports to use and which experts to call during the trial? Say if the prosecution obtain 5 reports but only 2 of them back up the prosecution case, could they just not mention the 3 others? Is there any responsibility on lawyers to bring up evidence that contradicts their case (either for the defence or the prosecution).

Also, how do lawyers actually assess the reports they receive, given that they obviously can require knowledge of subjects- like in this case, medical treatment of very sick babies or statistics- that presumably they don't have any training in?

Yes, me too, the divide is very noticeable. Certainly there are some people on the thread who I really wouldn't want to be on the jury if I was accused of a crime I hadn't committed and the evidence required more examination from them than just going with their gut feelings and prejudices.

It's actually kind of shaken my trust in the our legal system tbh, and I'm beginning to question whether completely lay juries and an adversarial justice system are appropriate in a case as complicated as this tbh. Reading it has been quite unsettling.

Agreed, @Totallymessed and @DysonSphere. it’s been an unsettling read.

How are these people not credible?

• Dr Shoo Lee, the world-leading neonatologist who wrote the report that the prosecution based their entire air embolus theory on
• Dr Jane Hawdon, the lead consultant neonatologist at the Royal Free hospital in London
• Dr Svilena Dimitrova, a consultant neonatologist who is part of the government-appointed Ockenden review into the NHS maternity scandal
• Prof John Ashton, who had blown the whistle on a cluster of baby and maternal deaths at the Morecambe Bay hospitals when he was regional director of public health for the north-west of England
• Roger Norwich, a medico-legal expert with an interest in paediatrics and newborns.
• John O’Quigley, a professor of statistical science at University College London.
• Forensic scientist Prof Alan Wayne Jones, who is one of Europe’s foremost experts on toxicology and insulin m
• Statistics experts from the Royal Society of Statisticians

That’s not an exhaustive list either. In addition, 3 of the UK’s 4 broadsheet ‘papers of record’ pretty much covering the political spectrum have also weighed in - The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph, and the multi Pulitzer-winning The New Yorker.

The defence not calling expert witnesses does not = no possible credible expert witnesses exist. They clearly do. It’s perfectly possible that the defence made a strategic mistake.

It should be perfectly acceptable for a review to take place given the concerns of such a wave of experts with concerns. Nobody is breaking her out of prison tomorrow. If the evidence can stand up to genuine scrutiny there is nothing to worry about.

@Kittybythelighthouse I'm not saying they weren't credible, I'm saying the defence didn't deem them credible, for whatever reason.

As I said, I will keep an open mind during the inquiry.

I watched a Thai drama with a criminal case in it and they had 3 judges instead of a jury. I think I'd prefer to see that. While I can see juries make our system seem "fairer". This is people's lives. Would I want 12 randoms deciding my fate? Not sure I would!

Juries are unpredictable and they are emotional and this was an extremely emotional case. I do think Judges are in the main better at putting aside their personal feelings. They also fully understand all the legal terms, definitions etc.

Months of having drilled into them, these babies died and LL killed them. I can only imagine how horrific it was to hear it and I can't swear I couldn't be swayed in the same scenario.

Sorry if I come across as splitting hairs (I'm aware it's sometimes my irritating superpower and don't intend to be confrontational) but I think what alot of us are discussing isn't the credibility of the defence experts or their evidence but whether or not it would have been helpful to the defence which is a small distinction perhaps but possibly an important one based on legal practice.

One might think any defence us better than no defence at all but in an adversarial system it may not be.

Hopefully someone legal can see what I'm getting at here and maybe expand further.

Ah, the no smoke without fire approach. Particularly unhelpful in this sort of case. Because every fire has three possible causes - spontaneous combustion, arson or accident. Which is why very careful forensic examination is required.

Clearly the defence didn't think they were helpful to the defence because they didn't call them up.

Well yes, but that doesn't mean the evidence wasn't credible, it simply means what you state.

Fair enough. I appreciate that.

On a different note, I think it would be difficult for LL to ever give credible evidence now because she has been so damaged by the process and incarceration. I don’t know if she is innocent or not but she will no longer present as the vivacious, friendly person she was previously described as. I think her broken, medicated persona could well make jurors assume her guilt. It’s all such a mess and potentially once again tarnishes the images of both the police and justice system.

To say that the statistical evidence was moot is untrue. That shift chart presented in court tied all of the cases together and would be convincing AF to a layman. That is why the defence should have called a statistician to demolish it.

From the brief video snippet of the police interview, she was so quiet and subdued as to be almost whispering. So I doubt she would ever have been vivacious after being charged.

'notice the non medical and less mathematical people (of which categories I fall into so I am not looking down on that) are also most likely to hang onto soft, less cognitively challenging evidence: the note, eye witness memory (of which much literature has been written as to it's fallibility and selectivity) handover notes being taken home, bland bedroom, close relationship with parents, parents behaviour, shift rota etc etc. The sort of stuff that easily fills press pages and blogs.

That has been very noticeable on the 30 pages of thread.'

The whole issue is that those other factors, the note, her character etc are only relevant to be looked into at all if a crime actually took place

This is the trouble with 'medical murder' cases. It's not the usual issue of a murder took place who did it? But the issue is was anyone murdered at all or did more babies die from natural causes by statistical chance or due to poor care?

https://rss.org.uk/RSS/media/File-library/News/2022/ReportHealthcareeserialkillerrorcoincidenceestatisticalissuessininvestigationnofsuspecteddmedicalmisconducttSept20222FINAL.pdf

If she didn't do it then I'm not saying someone else did. I'm saying maybe no babies were murdered at all. It is equally just as much a tragedy if no single person was responsible for their deaths.

Is this case really different from Morecambe Bay or Telford where babies died due to poor care or indeed from the maternity unit in this same hospital which had a high mortality rate and yet no midwife has yet been accused?

There is considerable doubt in my mind and I sway towards believing that these deaths are tragedies caused by a failing unit and that LL has been scapegoated and made to carry the can for institutional failings

• I know absolutely that this can and does happen. Dr Bawa Garba was a shameful case of a woman of colour just returned from maternity leave being scapegoated, thrown under the bus and convicted of gross negligence manslaughter for institutional failings with senior colleagues happy to stand by and let her take the flack and she was a Dr. Nurses have even less protection in a broken system.
• this unit was proven to be failing. That isn't even in dispute
• once things start to be looked at through a certain lens then which events are regarded as suspicious is biased from the start and it's not at all difficult for a witch hunt to start. Lucia de Berk, Daniella Poggiali, Colin
• proven healthcare serial killers like Shipman, Allit and Cullen appear to me to have one MO (morphine, insulin, digoxin) rather than a variety, there is some direct evidence to be found rather than just speculation (Dr Devi's report on the putative causes of death honestly looks like wild speculation to any medical person) and they have other indicators in their background usually childhood trauma and drug misuse.

Obviously it doesn't really matter what any of us think either way but I shall not be surprised if eventually she is exonerated having had her life destroyed

It does bother me that the defence didn't try to challenge the stats or the medical report but the system clearly is not infallible as Roy Meadows was not challenged over his piss poor use of stats that convicted Sally Clark and Angela Canning amongst others. He was actually lauded and acted as a go to expert witness in child abuse cases for years. Finally he was struck off by the GMC

Mark and Nicky Webster had their 3 children adopted away by the family court due to what later proved to be false medical evidence of NAI (in actual fact rickets) and the medical evidence was not effectively challenged. There are other similar cases relating to the 'triad' of pathological signs thought to be indicative of shaken baby syndrome for many years until it was proven this can occur in other mechanisms of injury that are accidental.

Even the Post Office scandal was due to a failure to interrogate the assumption that Horizon was infallible.

So no reading the trial transcript does not convince me. It's their job to make a case and they clearly did a good job but it doesn't mean I am going to swallow it whole in the light of all the many many times courts have been wrong.