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 am not a medic, but I agree that it seems odd. More to the point, there was no illustration of how she might have achieved this injury, or why, given that there is no suggestion that she attacked any other child in this way and had (the argument goes) already worked out a pretty failsafe way of murdering babies without risking outward signs of abuse.

Is it just me or is the tone of that article a bit "Well, I suppose we have to write something, but we must make sure it sounds as though there are just a few tiresome nutters with too much time on their hands meddling in areas where they have no right to be because LOOK AT ALL THE EVIDENCE and she said herself she was evil....".

Until recently that was the tone of the comments on here as well. Juries and courts never make mistakes and she must be guilty (I assume all younger MNers who don't remember cases like the Birmingham Six).

It's interesting that this thread has seen much more measured debate.

Yep. Even the headline “killer’s convictions”.

I read that latest article and thought much the same. The opening half of the piece seems to want the reader to believe she’s guilty but then the second half is more nuanced and offers a bit of counter evidence but not quite enough to be compelling or convincing.
I believe experts are currently asking for the scope of the enquiry to be made much wider and more encompassing so as to really investigate Lucy’s guilt/innocence but to date there has been silence so it will not happen and will stick to its narrow remit. Maybe there is still some pressure being exerted.

I think I've mentioned before I was late to this terrible party as the whole "dodgy medical hypothesis and dogma" thing is still too close to home 30 years after I encountered it personally and discovered how quickly one can end up living in the upside down - or in Lucy's case - jail for the rest of one's life.

I was a coward. I avoided the trial, thinking well, after Sally Clark et al, lessons must surely have been learned, and the Pavlovian response I have to authority, which is basically fear and paranoia reminded me I'm nobody and my thoughts and opinions are worthless.

But I still have an anarchic streak, and that bit of me cracked. I opened Pandoras box and boy, it's very apparent lessons have never been learned. It's all still a battle of professional egos and sod the collateral damage, which includes those babies and their families. Aside from the awful likelihood that a young woman will die in prison based on hypothesis and supposition, the babies families are in a permanent hell already, and the fundamental dodginess of it all is like having fuel poured on the flames all the time.

It takes a long, long time to come to terms with losses for any reason. The sheer sadism of coming back to the parents after several years to say "we know it's awful your children died, but it wasn't actually what the post mortem and medical evidence said, it was murder" when patently there were huge doubts about the evidence is just beyond comprehension.

Going back to the article, there is an emphasis on many former colleagues testifying against her - does anyone have a comprehensive list / number to hand? I only ask because I think - but correct me if I'm wrong - there's a subtle distinction regarding being called as a witness for the prosecution, and actually volunteering to do so in legal terms. Also, can one say they don't want to testify in such circumstances or would that be illegal?

I would Google but I have stuff to do, and sometimes I find the legal stuff a bit confusing.....

To be fair it's the BBC.

The centre ground. Many of those engaging with it will not have been aware that there were any doubts being expressed from anyone credible at all. But it is very huge that the mainstream BBC is giving it any attention. After the original trial most everyone in the media simply just put their hands over their ears and just kept repeating: Nothing To See Here. So this is a major step forward.

To me this reads a bit like a tentative and reluctant toe in the water (pushed a bit by all the excellent coverage in The Times and The Guardian (and therefore being obliged to address it) before eventually they go a bit further. They have explained, albeit briefly, the opposing statistical analysis, and made reference to Dr Shoo Lee's original paper and his dissent from the prosecutions findings of air embolism (although not including the crucial difference between pulmonary vascular air embolism and venous air embolism and neither have they included the Appeal Court's extremely peculiar permission of inaccurate scientific evidence and terminology to stand against that of the true expert in the field who was limited even in the scope of what he could argue. A strange sort of bloody-mindedness prevails our judicial system and it has been truly shocking to see, but I digress and it is too detailed to have included in a simple evaluative article I guess).

Overall I felt it wasn't too bad an article it fairer than I thought it would be!

That said, it is getting rather frustrating now that people are still coming out with statements like this:

"A circumstantial case can be a powerful case but in order to understand it, you have to look at the totality.

"You can’t just pick one little bit and say, 'Oh look at that, that’s unreliable,' or 'That doesn’t prove anything'."

Firstly, we've gone beyond this now. No one is pointing to just one or two anomalies, and the circumstantial evidence is extremely weak and in the case of the staff rota based on such fallacious premise as you could not present in a university essay.

Also saying that 'the defence must have felt it wouldn't have helped her case to allow Dr Lee's evidence' in so casual and off-handed a manner illustrates all that is wrong with our current judicial system. A woman's life (and my personal view is that a person's reputation can be more precious than a life, because to be quoted forever as a killer past your death and into iniquity is something akin to the religious concept of the eternally burning fires of hell) is on the line.

Scientific evidence that might challenge and shed light, ACCURATE scientific evidence is what should always be heard. This was a case which should have included robust, independent, forensic scientific evidence via scientists and statisticians. Why does nobody appear to want this in our courts or why do we no expect it, especially in cases of this magnitude? Long retired doctors who aren't specialists in their field shouldn't be good enough. Call me naive, but I feel it ought to be mandatory. You have the prosecution with a ton of 'experts' on hand. The defence must call any able to present scientific evidence that is available to them. It should not be negotiable, how can we arrive at truth otherwise?

Simply I think her defence did not understand the evidence. Assumed the evidence for the defence was watertight. And thought she is going down, best just try for the lightest sentence possible or win the Jury round through sentiment, so Lucy, go on the stand and defend yourself and maybe appear sympathetic. Also bring the nice sounding Plumber in. Keep it simple. No need for all that extra confusion of counter scientific evidence when the prosecution have a lot. But who decides the worth and integrity of the evidence presented? And why cannot an expert in the very same field under discussion give testimony?

I opened Pandoras box and boy, it's very apparent lessons have never been learned. It's all still a battle of professional egos and sod the collateral damage, which includes those babies and their families. Aside from the awful likelihood that a young woman will die in prison based on hypothesis and supposition, the babies families are in a permanent hell already, and the fundamental dodginess of it all is like having fuel poured on the flames all the time

Yes, it is really shocking to see that literally no lessons have been learned, so poor sweet Sally Clark died under terrible and incredibly tragic circumstances for absolutely nothing at all. All in vain. I wonder if she were alive today what she would think? There's also a strange (and terrible imo) symmetry in that Mr Evans supported the doctor whose flawed statistical testimony was chiefly responsible for SC being put away and here we have very flawed statistical evidence being used again by a supporter. Odd? Yes. Why are continuing to support such flawed process. Why don't we learn and what in it?

And I agree 100% that now the parents now can never have closure and are in metaphorical hell. I have an illness that is passed on genetically, and I was unaware I had it before having children. One of my children is now manifesting it and another showing possible signs and the guilt is hard. I'm aware my guilt is misplaced, but it doesn't make it easier.

I imagine these parents, perhaps previously feeling their baby deaths were out of their control, may have nonetheless felt some misplaced guilt, but that was magnified x 1000 when someone from a place of authority told them it was the nurse they entrusted their child to who all the time. They would be tormented with intrusive thoughts that they may have had an opportunity to intervene, ask questions, raise doubts, demand their child be transferred elsewhere, that they missed the 'killer vibes'. How could they have missed it? Why weren't they more proactive? Why didn't they trust their instincts? Why did they leave them alone?

This is what I know I would have been tormented with, and to do that on weak evidence is, yes, frankly cruel. Also the loss of children to murder of abduction causes severe stress on marriages. Simply wrong to blow up these people's world like this and not ensure all the evidence was scientifically robust.

Dodgy writing, my fingers are numb today.

Bear in mind that the BBC have to present balance. It has been said that the reason they took so long to report expert concerns about the case is because they, like Dr Phil Hammond at Private Eye, were having trouble finding medical or scientific experts outside of the prosecution witnesses to present the opposing view (that she was properly convicted). That in itself is very telling. There is no letter signed by a multitude of leading experts on the other side of the argument and I wager there won’t be. In the end the BBC quoted a lawyer, but there is no suggestion that the letter of the law was not followed so that doesn’t really give weight to the other side of the argument.

“Going back to the article, there is an emphasis on many former colleagues testifying against her - does anyone have a comprehensive list / number to hand? I only ask because I think - but correct me if I'm wrong - there's a subtle distinction regarding being called as a witness for the prosecution, and actually volunteering to do so in legal terms. Also, can one say they don't want to testify in such circumstances or would that be illegal?”

Some of her former colleagues were called to testify for the prosecution. I think 4 doctors? I could be wrong. 2 of those doctors were granted anonymity - that decision has been criticised as usually anonymity is reserved for people testifying in cases of for e.g gang activity where they may be at risk of retribution. It’s hard to see why LL’s colleagues needed anonymity or could be at risk due to testifying.

It was recently reported that some of her colleagues wished to testify in her defence and were told by the trust that they couldn’t. Joanne Williams, a fellow COCH nurse who was actually called by the prosecution spoke quite adamantly against Dr Jarayam’s version of events in the Baby K retrial. It was essentially her word vs Jarayam’s in the retrial. Many of LL’s nursing colleagues have stood by her. Lucy Letby was well liked by most of her colleagues. Some of them even attended the trials.

As far as I know only one nurse has spoken against her and that nurse was a trainee at the time of the events and only present in COCH for a very short time. She also didn’t actually see anything incriminating - Letby with her hands in a cot as a baby was crying - you’d see the same any day with any neonatal nurse on a NICU.

The support of Letby’s nursing colleagues (or lack of suspicion) is important in my view because nurses spend far more time closely working together than they do with doctors, especially in COCH where the consultants were only making twice weekly ward rounds and were actually criticised by the RCPCH review of the ward for this. Everyone knows that nurses know what’s happening on the ward before anyone else. The idea that she murdered so many babies in such novel and cumbersome ways on such a crowded and cramped unit without any of her nursing colleagues having anything negative to say about her speak absolute volumes to me.

And yet another article

The ‘ignore the armchair detectives’ sets the tone for Snowden’s piece and then there’s a lot of inaccuracies in the piece itself, most notably the failure to acknowledge the other suspect deaths in the numbers coupled with the fact she was one of two most senior nurses and doing extra shifts. There definitely is a current swing to more pieces defending the conviction. The question is why.
Interesting too he is so disparaging of anyone with the temerity to pose awkward questions.
I didn’t know there was a problem finding experts to support the prosecution’s many hypotheses, thanks for sharing.

He also contradicts himself in that article. Did he sit in court every day during the original trial or the retrial? I ask because what actually gets reported is so very little of what will have been heard and seen.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/31/lucy-letby-spike-baby-deaths-explicable/

Interesting.

The support of Letby’s nursing colleagues (or lack of suspicion) is important in my view because nurses spend far more time closely working together than they do with doctors

This is an interesting comment and it presumes that a nurse would in fact come forward if they had suspicions regarding another nurse. I was part of an allegation of rape against an elderly woman which was alleged to have occurred in the middle of the night on a mixed ward. It was a big deal as you can imagine. Turns out the night duty staff were nowhere to be seen and she wasn’t found for a long time. Do you think any nurse on that ward was interested in providing a statement ? We weren’t even investigating their conduct but the concerns about internal discipline issues ( re sleeping on nights) was more pressing than assisting that particular investigation. So it might be there’s an undercurrent of self preservation in silence from colleagues.

These are two very different scenarios. In every other medical murder case there are fellow nurses who have gone on record saying that they had odd feelings about that nurse, or they saw something odd this one time. There is nothing incriminating in saying “I always thought Letby was strange” or “this one time I saw her behaving oddly”. None of them did. On the contrary, she was well liked in the ward and at least one of the nurses was told by the trust that she should not testify in Letby’s defence as a character witness. Letby must have been very clever indeed to murder all those babies and attempt to murder so many more without raising any red flags amongst her fellow nurses in such a busy and cramped unit.

Good article. Some quotes for those who don't subscribe:

The investigation began after doctors noticed an uptick in “inexplicable” deaths on the neonatal unit, with nine deaths recorded in 2015 rather than the usual average of two. There was also a rise the following year.

But John O’Quigley, honorary professor in the Department of Statistical Science, at University College London (UCL), said it was a “serious statistical blunder” to compare the deaths to the average across the country.

Instead, he said, doctors should have compared the death rates at the worst performing trusts, which would have shown that the Countess of Chester was not an outlier.

Crunching the number shows that Burton, Mid-Cheshire, Blackpool and Burton all had similar upticks in the surrounding years.

Writing in The Telegraph, Prof O’Quigley said: “There was in fact no evidence of anything extraordinary having taken place and that the belief in an inexplicable spike is based on an elementary, and very common statistical misconception.....

.....He said the same applied to the Countess of Chester. Although deaths were high, it was not unusual compared with other poorly performing trusts.

His findings are based on data from MBRRACE-UK, an organisation set up for the surveillance and investigation of maternal deaths, stillbirths and neonatal deaths.

So they weren't comparing like with like i.e., underperforming trust, with underperforming trust.

They were instead comparing the underperforming CoC trust with other good performing trusts.

Everyone thought Shipman was a lovely, caring doctor as well though.

I don’t know enough to say whether Letby is innocent or guilty, but her colleagues liking her doesn’t mean she isn’t guilty - she could be a wonderful nurse, hardworking and helpful, and also be murdering babies.

But Harold Shipman was practising completely independently, not working in close proximity to multiple other healthcare professionals.

And I can't remember whether I mentioned this on here or another thread, but I think it's interesting that there was no evidence of her having researched methods of harming babies surreptitiously, despite some of the alleged methods being extremely unusual. As a HCP I have a good idea what sort of things would harm my patients; I have no idea which of these would be undetectable/easily missed at post mortem.

That’s not the case. Shipman was not well liked by his colleagues and peers and had other red flags in his past etc. Letby stands alone amongst serial killers as having an apparently squeaky clean past and being very well liked and socially well adjusted. Some mention Bundy, but he was only superficially charming. People who knew him well reported red flags in his past and creepy episodes etc. The police excavated Letby’s background and life (literally, they dug up the garden and all) and have themselves noted that she was apparently very normal.

I also don’t know whether Letby is innocent or guilty (no one ever can know 100% except her) but I do think the convictions are unsafe and should be reviewed.

The thing is though, the prosecution case against Letby explicitly didn't rely on statistical evidence or the idea of a statistical anomaly as evidence.

This is because of what happened to the Dutch nurse, where such evidence was erroneously relied upon. The prosecution knew that such evidence is unreliable and easily manipulated. The jury's decision that she was guilty was not based on whether this event was statistically extraordinary or not.

So while of course it's good for lay people to know that the statistical side of things isn't particularly relevant, it doesn't constitute a legal error in the actual prosecution case.

It's a shame these articles don't raise this point for their readers to know.

They SAID they weren’t using statistics, while using statistics, just dishonest and really poorly presented ones. The moment you start introducing the idea of probability, the claim that Letby is guilty because there are too many deaths to have happened on her shifts by accident, you are relying on statistics. The very fact that people don’t understand that proves the point that specialist input is needed.

As for the claim, the jury’s decision was not based on this piece of evidence, we are hearing this again and again about almost every piece of evidence, every time someone points out a problem with it. Chart showing Letby present? Decision wasn’t based on that. ‘Confession’ note? Wasn’t based on that. Door swipe records? Insulin tests? Air embolism theory which the actual paper author said Evans was misapplying? Facebook searches and ‘trophy’ handover sheets which turn out to have been related to all the babies she cared for not just those who died? It was based on the whole totality of evidence, apparently, but a whole is made up of parts and almost every part turns out to be hollow.