Lucy Letby in the news

[Viviennemary]

I've just been watching the BBC news and apparently some experts have been questioning the validity of Lucy Letbys conviction. I must say when I read the details of the trial she did sound 100% guilty. But it would be a tragedy if she is innocent Personally I don't think she is but who knows. Somebody on the news said the only person who knows is Lucy Letby.

:@BreatheAndFocus
The lab instructions say that that test isn't suitable to make that deduction. How can it be conclusive if the lab instructions say it isn't suitable for the investigation for that?

Letby 'agreed' because it was an 'agreed fact', they were told that that was the only thing that could have happened. No idea why the defence agreed with it.

It was also odd that the prosecution expert tried to mislead the court by saying accidental administration was ruled out and no insulin was being ordered for any baby on the unit at the time. But for child F, insulin was being given to his twin the entire time and they were in the same room. The judge noticed that and made them clarify that they just meant on the 4th or 5th, child E had died on 4th.

What happened to the rest of his insulin? They never said. And why did the prosecution not try to claim that she used his twins insulin to poison him? Surely that would have been the easiest way for her to do it? Instead they tried to make out that there was none on the unit.

I do believe in Shipman's case , he started doing it for humane reasons until his ego and greed took over . He probably thought he would never be caught because he was way smarter than anyone else .

. Even Letby herself agreed that the baby had been given insulin but denied it was her who did it.

She was wrongly told the evidence was clear so she had to agree. She’s not an expert on insulin tests - how could she stand up against being pushed into agreeing with that?
Obviously it was a huge tactical error and handed the prosecution a massive gotcha but honestly, in a long trial like that, how hard would it be to stand your ground day after day after day?

In the original witch trials they wore the women down by keeping them up all night. Exhausting Letby was a much slower process; after years of waiting for the trial her mental health was already in pieces at the start, the multiple charges meant it went on and on and she performed badly under cross examination and reacted in ways that were used against her.

My DS1 was born at the COCH in 2011 at gestation 26+6, weighing 1 and a half lbs. He was looked after in the NICU for 40 days at which point he had become so unwell that he was transferred to Alder Hey in the hope he could have surgery to repair his bowel, due to NEC. Sadly the staff at Alder Hey felt it was not in his best interests to undergo the trauma of the surgery and a decision was made by me and my DH to switch off his life support. He passed away a short time later, aged 41 days. The statistic of his death was recorded at Alder Hey even though he had only been there one night, the rest of the time he had been at COCH, and would have died there had he not have been moved in the hope of surgery.

My memory of the COCH NICU was that it was very tired, in an old building well past its best. The nursery were DS’s incubator was situated had no windows, and was very cramped. We had been prepared for the up and down nature of having a baby in NICU but DS had been doing well up until then, considering his low birth weight. They introduced a new type of richer milk to him to build him up, but he did not seem to tolerate it - this was the beginning of his decline.

I think what I’m trying to say here is that very sick babies can deteriorate and sadly can die. Especially when they were as fragile as ours. We had no doubt that the staff were looking after him as best they could. Maybe that type of milk caused his underdeveloped bowel to die, but they probably thought they were doing the right thing at the time, and I can’t blame them for that.

Prosecution say ‘this baby has been given insulin. Do you agree?’

Is she supposed to say ‘no I don’t agree’? Would that have gone in her favour? I doubt she is an insulin expert any more than I am. All she can really say is yes if you say so. I didn’t give it to them, though.

I am so very sorry for your loss @RoseLavenderBlue

It must be painful beyond words.

@RoseLavenderBlue I am so sorry to hear that, how terrible for you. 💐

You have VERY much misunderstood my post. I was referring to people repeatedly correcting the poster who’d had a miscarriage. How many times do you think someone who’s gone through that needs to be Mumsnet-splained it probably wasn’t LL. Hence the ^^ meaning the post above.

It’s got nothing to do with the conviction so calm yourself.

Didn’t she write those notes when she was already aware that they suspected her? So she had heard that they suspected she’d killed them on purpose and her thoughts came out and include that as well as her saying ‘because I’m not good enough’. It is garbled but I certainly wouldn’t be writing coherently in that position!

I think I read in the news a couple of days back they there were a number of other deaths in that time period, when she wasn’t on the rota?

+1

I read they kept insulin in a fridge on the unit. There was a list online of how many vials they’d received. I can’t answer all your questions but while the test might not be the official one - and I agree they should have done an additional test - how else could a baby have a high level of insulin and low C Peptide? C Peptide is the indicator of how much insulin someone is producing. The baby’s C Peptide was low (but normal) and yet there were huge amounts of insulin in their body? That’s only possible if insulin was given externally (else the C Peptide would be high too).

I can’t answer all your questions but factitious dosing of insulin is usually via the skin and in smaller amounts. There was a minor story about this some years ago - a parent accused of giving their child extra insulin and that being the cause of their supposedly unstable Type 1 diabetes that the consultant team couldn’t fathom. But, if it were true, these extra doses would be tiny. You don’t need much extra to cause a hypo.

I’m perfectly calm, but people aren’t going to stop correcting incorrect information and nor should they.

I think there are too many questions surrounding her conviction, as have already been addressed on various posts.

I watched ‘The Jury’ and both sets of jurors were shown the same trial and one found the defendant guilty and the other found them innocent.

I’m not saying she’s innocent, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if in the future she is acquitted.

Very true. It may be the case that she'd get less sympathy if she weren't white. That's a totally different question to whether there are problems with the conviction or not.

But yet the hospital didn't think it was concerning enough at the time to warrant investigation which tells me that they didn't believe the test result.

The alternative is that they believed that the baby must have been given insulin and they just ignored it and didn't bother to investigate, which is obviously extremely concerning because wouldn't they want to make sure it didn't happen again to another baby?

Oh i'm just throwing questions out there, not expecting you to know the answers 🙂

I'm not sure what your point is with the last paragraph, can you clarify?
Does it matter if it's usually done under the skin or it's usually done with tiny amounts? That doesn't mean it can't be done another way or with larger amounts.

I started watching that pile of crap programme and had to give up after one episode as it did not reflect how jury trials are conducted in the UK at all accurately. Having served on a jury a short time before this was aired I thought it was terrible.

Wouldn't it have been funded by her union as opposed to legal aid? Many nursing unions provide legal assistance. That's if she was part of one of course, but I'd assume she would be.

@shallweorderpizza @Mirabai Thank you 💐

Well, no, she could have said she didn't know.

The defence had also agreed though. It was considered an 'agreed fact'. So then most likely they would have said 'but even your defence agreed that this happened'.

I agree that the hospital should have done more investigating. I don’t know why they didn’t initially.

My last paragraph was in reference to your quote about the test not being able to determine factitious use. I was surmising that perhaps they said that because factitious use would usually be tiny amounts, so usually it might be harder to say whether a very small ‘excess’ of insulin in the blood was suspicious or not, whereas the level found in the baby in Letby’s case was exceedingly high - ie couldn’t have been there naturally and so was very suspicious. Perhaps that was why the lab changed what they said at the trial? That with that very high reading, it could only have been given externally.

So you'd actually like her to be let out and back on a ward caring for your babies? Yeah I think not. To whoever was talking about night shifts-the deaths followed her from days to nights (or vice versa can't remember which way round) they followed her everywhere and stopped when she was not on the unit. You can't blame this on the bloody plumbing. The downgrade of the unit wouldn't have made any difference since most of the babies would've still been cared for there. One death in seven years since they got rid of her! Utterly damning. Even by baby A people (including LL herself) were saying she was having a bad run.

I thought mumsnet was switched on when it came to human behaviour and traits like narcissism etc. which she clearly has. Now I realise MN is switched on when it comes to male behaviour but is willing to overlook the glaring red flags when it comes to this woman. It might not be race but gender, if this was a man no one would be worrying about "ooh it's a miscarriage of justice" or tying themselves in knots to defend him writing "I killed them on purpose" and "I'm evil" and taking 250+ handover sheets home. The jury THANK GOD got this right. It's not over yet either because operation hummingbird will uncover MUCH more about her and the extent of her crimes. I'm just gobsmacked people could believe she's innocent.

Interesting. Most people haven’t served on a jury so it’s hard to imagine what it will be like in reality. What are your thoughts? It would be interesting to hear from someone that has served as a juror.

As far as I am aware the lab didn't give that explanation or any explanation at all.

@SunnyWavess Very many people will have served on juries, but the kinds of cases will vary widely. For starters, groups of jurors cannot discuss any aspect of the trial separately from the others. Everyone on the jury has to be present. You can only discuss the trial in the jury room. If someone goes to the loo, you have to stop the discussion. The TV programme showed jurors in pairs and small groups discussing witnesses and their evidence. As soon as I saw that I thought the "experiment" was rubbish and basically engineered to make interesting telly. I don't think the "jurors" were told what was expected of them as if they were an actual jury.

Most of the evidence in the case I was on was circumstantial as it was about historical offences and there was no physical evidence. After the first day I remember thinking I was certain the complainant was telling the truth. What I couldn't square was that the defendant was guilty as they didn't seem anything other than a normal, straight up person. I did have a lightbulb moment walking to the court the next day though and it took others on the jury differing amounts of time to come to the same conclusion. I don't mean I think I'm anything special, we're just all different with different experiences, knowledge and aptitudes. To this day I don't know what a couple of the jurors were actually thinking because they didn't articulate it for discussion. We had to have rounds of anonymous voting and pick off charges one by one. The defendant was found guilty of some of the charges and not of others because we couldn't be sure. And that is what juries are told "beyond reasonable doubt" means, you have to be sure the person committed the offence.

It was a horrible experience - it requires a lot of focus and I found it emotionally draining. The details were harrowing to hear and go over. Aspects of the case stayed with me for a long time.