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”

@newrubylane

What a fantastic point Re expert jurors. I think this is hugely needed in a case like this and is something the justice system needs to take a strong look at.

The trial podcasts were literally made by 'so-called journalists with their own agendas'.

This place is unbelievable.

A few days ago there was a thread gunning for the woman who had a seizure, lost control of her car and ploughed into the school accidentally killing those children. They came up with all sorts of conspiracy theories for how she was rich and paid for legal advice and lied about the seizure. They wanted the records opened and the parents to.read her private med records - as if the CPS lawyers can't be trusted to do that.- and her charged.

But on here - a convicted killer and you all think she didn't do it.

God this place.

Maybe because broadly speaking anything outside of the agreed facts didn’t support her case?

Are you calling all the experts in medicine, neonatology, statistics etc who are quoted in this article “conspiracy theorists”? Was the Post Office scandal a “conspiracy”? Was Sally Clark’s wrongful conviction a “conspiracy” or is it actually a fact that miscarriages of justice can and do happen?

I'm wondering why the defence didn't flag up that the rota wasn't the full picture and then go on to present the full data set? Or did they?

Playing devil's advocate here.

Imagine you were accused of a heinous crime that you hadn't committed. Like this.

Imagine you were told, by every one including your legal team, that you were guilty and that evidence existed that proved it. There is no point in claiming innocence. You're guilty and that's that.

How would you react?

Am genuinely interested in how people think they would feel.

@Kittybythelighthouse thanks I didn’t realise his legal responsibility to report straight away under GMC rules.

Of course it is stupid the cases are not comparable. I am not determined that she is innocent but I do feel they have not been able to prove her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. To imprison somebody for the rest of their lives without concrete evidence is incredibly worrying.

That is your reading of it. I don’t see it that way. Armchair detectives don’t worry me as much as the actual detectives on this case, who stupidly misinterpreted common nursing shorthand as “serial killer hidden code” and got the door swipe data, which evidences entry into the ward, wrong all throughout the investigation and the first trial.

Absolute bollocks. They have to be reported accurately and precisely which they were. I don’t care what people here defending her say, there is no way she would be getting the level of support she is if she was a person of colour, fat and conventionally unattractive. Either here or in the general public. Not that anyone will admit it.

There’s lot of misinformation on here. Lucy’s defence has addressed all these points and they’ve been discussed. Her barrister has done a great job but unfortunately there is a huge weight of evidence against her. People don’t seem to understand the case properly. There isn’t one piece of evidence to challenge- there’s thousands of pieces of evidence all
pointing in the same direction. Her defence would have to challenge a huge data set.

Also a reminder that Operation Hummingbird is still ongoing. They are still assessing 4,000 cases to see if there could be further charges. There have already been further cases flagged.

And people also don’t understand that not all these babies died. The collapses were what started the suspicions. Healthier babies on the unit had begun to collapse at random. Some of these have been left with disabilities. Some died. The collapses stopped when Lucy was off the ward. They began again when she returned. They stopped again when she was removed again.

I think that there's going to be a public enquiry so that may bring other factors to light.

Not the same situation at all but when my son died in an accident in 2022 I quite often wrote my feelings down and if you were to read them now you would think I had murdered him lol "I killed him" is one thing I wrote but he was hundreds of miles away when he got hit by a car but in my mind I killed him because I didn't stop him from going away (had no reason to stop him btw) people write all sorts of shit while they are going through something traumatic and if she is innocent (I have no idea either way) then being arrested for that would be traumatic so it makes sense to me that it could just be her ranting or trying to get her head around what has happened. I have no doubt that the things I have written would, on paper make me look guilty of killing my son because it's just thoughts and feelings being poured out and actually it's very therapeutic

@ihateteatime only just saw your post after I had written mine lol but it seems we are both guilty of murder because of what we wrote, I'm sorry for your loss x

Where are you getting this idea that the podcast had to be reported accurately and precisely? During the reporting restrictions they could only report what the jury heard, but they did not have to report everything. This was not an official court podcast, just so you know, it was a Daily Mail podcast. Of course they had their own spin on things. It would be impossible to avoid that even if they weren’t quite blatant about it.

This nonsense about people only caring because she’s white etc. Engage with the actual substance of the conversation if you can, or don’t. You’re creating a non existent argument that’s easy to defeat instead of actually engaging with the points that are being raised. You’re free to not be part of this conversation, just as much as we are free to have it.

Hopefully, yes.

It's the statistical evidence that worries me - and yes, I have done stats to MSc level. Statistics and probability can be very counterintuitive, sometimes gobsmackingly so. What seems to be "obvious" is not necessarily so.

Correlation is not causation was drummed into us. And there was not a perfect correlation anyway - the article says SIX babies died when she was no where near them and not on shift - they were not mentioned in the trial.

Statisticians are raising doubts about the stats used in the trial.

I would like to see a proper statistician predict the odds of any one individual, of a limited number of nursing staff, being on duty when X number of babies minus 6, died. given the number of hours each baby spent in ICU and how many hours each nurse was on shift.

You’re accusing the neonatologists, medics, statisticians, in the article of spreading misinformation? Why would they do that? Are you suggesting a conspiracy theory?

Lucy Letby worked in that NICU without issue for three years before the spike in deaths. The spike in deaths (which wasn’t even the highest relative spike in the UK at that time) stopped after she was taken off the ward BECAUSE the unit was downgraded at the same time and could no longer take neonates of such serious acuity. It seems like you’re the one who might be spreading misinformation.

I think the question of perceived innocence based on appearance is relevant, we all do have unconscious bias’ unfortunately.
I do wonder if it was a male nurse who was on shift at the same time as the deaths, or a woman perceived as unattractive whether the prosecutions put forward motive of being an attention seeker or infatuation with a doctor would have been as convincing.

Who is saying she didn’t do it? All I’m seeing is an article wherein a lot of medical and statistical experts express concerns about the safety of the convictions and a lot of people echoing that in the comments.

“a convicted killer and you all think she didn’t do it” Sally Clark didn’t do it. Lindy chamberlain didn’t do it. The postmasters didn’t do it. Miscarriages of justice happen.

Just briefly on this- the Court of Appeal don't 'think she's a killer' (or think she's not a killer). An appeal is not a re-trial where the Judges replace a jury. Their job is to determine whether anything happened in the trial which makes the conviction unsafe ie something unlawful/completely unfair happened.

The Court of Appeal decided Dr Lee's evidence wasn't admissible because the defence had the opportunity to adduce it at trial and chose not to, not because the evidence itself was rubbish (in fairness the article does also quote a partial criticism of the evidence, but it doesn't read as though this was the deciding factor).

A failed appeal doesn't mean the Judges agree with the verdict. It also doesn't mean they agree (or disagree) with the Prosecution witnesses. It doesn't mean they would have made the same choices re which witnesses to rely on if they were the lawyers in the case. It doesn't mean they think the jury were right to accept the evidence of a particular witness. It simply means they agree that the trial process was fair and lawful.

@Kittybythelighthouse

No, I’m accusing posters of misinformation and deliberately only half reporting events. The Guardian article is careful to say that the experts they spoke to didn’t have access to the full medical records and data used at trial. How can they give an informed opinion without this.

And the unit being downgraded is not relevant. How can you not understand this? The sudden, unexplained collapses stopped when she was taken off the ward. Not deaths of sicker babies. This is not what this is about. It is about the statistical outliers where babies collapsed for no reason- babies who were otherwise well or recovering, some of which then died.

I get the feeling from comments that most people don’t have the first clue about the case.

I have no idea of her guilt but your post is 'absolute bollocks'. It's a podcast by a right wing media enterprise. To suggest it's some paragon of neutrality is incorrect and ridiculous.