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.

A neonatal nurse would not do a scan.

Wow, every single one worked with her and saw her do it?
😏

@mnahmnah

*She actually carried out a miscarriage scan on me....

*We can never be absolutely sure,....

* Ok. I’m obviously wrong....

* I was a bit too emotional to be paying that much attention....

This is how people get falsely convicted.

These threads on Lucy Letby have me questioning whether there'd be this much challenge of her conviction if she weren't an attractive, educated middle class nurse. There was a 10 month long trial, the media only reported on a small percentage of the medical notes/evidence that was put before a jury. The jury overwhelmingly found her guilty, and took a very long time to deliberate too. All that's happening now is a bunch of academics, lawyers, statisticians, medical professionals who want their 60 seconds of fame coming out with media sound bytes. They've all admitted to not having reviewed medical notes or seen all the evidence shown to the jury - yet are questioning the veracity? They're as bad as patient Googling symptoms and thinking they know more than doctors. They've never even met her!

No one stood to gain from her conviction. People's lives have been torn apart - not just the victims families but all the doctors and staff. Millions of pounds spent on this investigation. To think this is all a conspiracy against a lovely innocent nurse is the real batshittery. Most crimes in this country and worldwide are convicted based on circumstantial evidence! How come no one is picking apart all the other cases...If any of the detractors was ever a victim of crime, I hope they question the conviction of their assailants in the same way. I guess it's easy to do when it's not your baby that's been murdered.

I personally am more interested in human behaviour and the psychology side of it all that's why. The science is there to back it up but when you put it all together is when you see her guilt. The note isn't proof but it's an insight into her thought processes. Some amount of blame is to be expected yes, but to the extent of writing "I killed them on purpose" I'm not sure. I also do wonder why she wrote she'll never get married or know what it's like to have a family. You don't get sent down for life and never get to marry and have kids for being negligent or making mistakes on an already substandard unit. She knew at that point they were onto her and what was going to happen.

If you watch the panorama programme Dr Stephen Breary describes her as perfectly happy to come into work after they'd lost two of the triplets whilst the rest of the staff were all traumatised. You'd think she'd show it then if she was blaming herself especially since nothing untoward happened on the ward til the minute she came back from Ibiza. But no she was totally unfazed by it all according to him.

Wow, for someone who is apparently interested in human behaviour and the psychology of it your understanding of human behaviour is incredibly stunted.

The rest of the staff were traumatised while she was happy to return to work, guess what, that's a normal variation of human behaviour.

Not everyone acts the same. People can experience the exact same experience and one will act one way and the other will act the other.

She said she was writing what people were thinking of her

@Nc209 Not sure you have any frame of reference to say it's a normal variation of human behaviour considering that level of deaths on a premature baby unit was practically unprecedented.

Doctor Stephen Breary described her response and demeanour as "incredible" and said she was "quite happy and confident to come into work on the Saturday" he obviously felt something was off. I'm just going by what he said, take it up with him if you disagree. Funny how the one suspected of murder is the only one not traumatised by baby deaths, but then Lucy was used to it by then wasn't she...13 deaths in her last year working there, she was on shift for ALL of them.

@Firefly1987 What does "traumatised" look like? Doctors and nurses aren't "traumatised" by death like regular people are. It's part of the job and expected when you work with very sick patients. You work, go home and overthink or cry briefly, then you go back to work. A nurse who can't deal with death is not a good nurse. If other staff were genuinely traumatised, then it is them who need to work on their resilience and coping strategies.

I listened to the Daily Mail podcast of the trial, and I've read a few articles too. I'm starting to doubt if she's guilty now. One of the things I've never seen explained is that she is supposed to have injected some of the babies with insulin, but how did Letby get the insulin? Isn't it meant to be signed out by two nurses? If she stole it then was there less of it than there should have been? Did no one notice?

@HollyKnight watch the panorama programme. They'd lost two healthy babies in days. They're not robots, jeez. How offensive to suggest they needed to work on coping strategies because the serial killer of the unit was an empathy void. The extent of the deaths were way out of the ordinary, some staff had decades long careers and had only seen maybe one death until LL started working there. So no it's not commonplace like you're making out, at least it shouldn't have been.

You know what else happened in 2015? There were 12 stillbirths. This was more than any other year before or after that (9 in 2014, 2 in 2016). So what do you think that increase was about? Maybe it had something to do with the absolute shambles that hospital was in during that period. Maybe it had something to do with the inadequate care that hospital was providing at that time. I wonder how many of those babies who received poor care on the unit had already received poor care during their birth. Don't you think that could have contributed to the rise in deaths on the unit?

You’ve very little insight on how health care teams cope. You need people who can come into work - agree with @HollyKnight anyone struggling would be supported to be more resilient. You can’t have the entire team in tears unable to work. The expectation is that you continue to care for the other patients.

None of those babies were "healthy". Stable, yes, but not healthy. A 3-day-old 6-weeks-premature triplet weighing 4lbs is still a vulnerable baby.

It IS a normal variation of human behaviour.

I did study psychology but even without that it's obvious in life that not everyone reacts the same way to traumatic events. Surely you would even notice that on the news etc if you haven't experienced it in real life.
Not everyone has the same reaction to the same event.

If you do genuinely have an interest in human behaviour and the psychology of it then as a bare minimum you should understand that.

Also as @HollyKnight asked, what does 'traumatized' look like? You could have 2 people working in a war zone and one could have an intense emotional reaction while the stressful things are happening but go on to be otherwise fine, the other could be cool, calm and collected and then a long time afterwards can have a delayed onset of PTSD.
Many doctors had symptoms of PTSD after the pandemic, and I'm sure plenty of them didn't seem to be 'traumatised' during the worst of covid and carried on normally.

Yes I agree. The lack of signs from her childhood etc as to the cause of this behaviour is what first made me question whether she could be guilty. I read a lot of true crime and there’s usually severe trauma in the backgrounds of people who commit terrible crimes like this. It doesn’t come out of nowhere (that I’ve come across anyway). So I followed the trial out of interest to see what the evidence was, expecting to hear something damning. But it never came. And then I assumed that we’d maybe hear lots about her past after the trial ended. And again there’s nothing.

So I then started looking in more detail at each piece of evidence to see if it held up. And the more I looked the shakier the whole thing became.

Deciding a person must be guilty based on demeanour is a massive red flag that a miscarriage of justice has bern done/is about to be done. As evidenced by numerous cases in the past.

People think they know how people “should” react in certain circumstances but in reality different
people react very differently especially in traumatic situations, and not everyone showed their emotions outwardly in times of stress either.

People deciding people are guilty because they are acting “odd” is a recipe for disaster.

No one stood to gain from her conviction. It's a really good point, @renoleno, and a question I hadn't asked myself. The hospital had already started an investigation into the high number of baby deaths, they'd admitted there seemed to be a problem but weren't looking for criminal activity. There was no motive to scapegoat a nurse or to pick on Letby.

I think plenty of people stood to gain from her conviction.

@renoleno it isn’t an argument. Equally, you could point out that more than fifteen babies a day die in developing countries and no one cares about that. If LL is innocent then we should care. If babies died needlessly - whether through negligence or murder, we should care.

I assumed she was guilty and hadn’t given much thought to the case except sorrow for the parents of the babies before I read the thread mentioned above. I’ve actually become really interested and now read and listen to whatever I can/is available.
Objectively looking at the massive amount of current evidence from experts in their respective fields it leads one to have to acknowledge a failing unit taking babies younger than the unit was even licensed for, huge understaffing, leading to ill nurses taking shifts, doctors not doing their rounds and failing to call consultants, 2 doctors each making a huge and nearly fatal mistake with a baby, sewerage leaking via a tap on the ward leading to a known infection being on the ward, too many babies (overcrowding). There were 6 more similar deaths but they were discounted as she was not on the ward. The standing doing nothing was standard checking procedure. The attached maternity ward also had an identical simultaneous spike in deaths/issues and experts are saying high problems in maturnity units usually lead to spikes in the corresponding neonatal units. I could go on and on but suffice to say I have been shocked at what is now being unearthed. Most of the ways the prosecution allege she killed have been discredited by experts and the other is deemed unlikely and impossible to prove.
No-one is interested in her blonde hair and blue eyes and this can actually be detrimental as you have just shown.
I don’t know if she is guilty but the case is very deeply flawed.
I feel so much sympathy for the parents and their ongoing nightmare but I would prefer to find out my baby had not been murdered if that were the truth.

There is a problem with the 'overwhelming evidence and therefore guilty' argument. We've seen cases where the statistics provided by well qualified experts show that the chances that the defendant is not guilty are 73 million to 1, so therefore the defendant is guilty.
However, the odds of winning the jackpot in the Euromillions lottery are even slimmer, yet people still win it....
Remember the case with Christopher Jefferies also - I seem to remember that after the press had 'decided' he was guilty, it was discovered that his victim's real killer was a fan of sadistic pornography. IF Christopher had been such a fan (which is not illegal), then that may have been another piece of 'overwhelming evidence'.
Bearing this (and the similarities with other cases) in mind, I have no view over Lucy Letby's guilt. She may have been present at around the time of all the incidents and not done anything to prevent the deaths, and written the notes that were found, but in my view, this is evidence that she needs some help with her mental health, not that the evidence proves her guilt.

you know what I have not seen? Medical experts coming out publicly in support of the conviction. Plenty questioning it though. But haven’t seen one opinion piece from a doctor that says they got it right.

one thing that stuck with me was the daily mail podcast saying that the jury were told about the sewage and ‘didn’t buy it’. Im not sure that a jury of non-medical people are in a position to judge the severity of sewage leaks. Especially without a defence expert. I think her defence was shocking. They did a shit job of defending her and that in itself made her look guilty. That they didn’t provide any other narrative for why the babies died is probably what convinced the jury.

maybe they thought she was guilty too, and didn’t want to give her the best defence. Not even picking up the insulin results being falsely used was a major blunder.

I should think Stephen Brearey has some insight into how health care teams cope. It was during an urgent meeting to see what was going on on the unit, he never said they weren't able to work just they were all upset in the meeting except for LL.

@AbraAbraCadabra no one is deciding she's guilty based on her demeanour. I know full well people can act oddly in traumatising situations, I've seen it with my own mother acting blasé when family were sick/dying. I dare say I've done similar and I'm a VERY emotional person. I'm sure Dr Brearey is well aware people can act strangely under trauma, and despite all of his experience it was still incredible to him in his words. Now you can dismiss his opinion all you like, I happen to think he has pretty good insight. And I'd rather a nurse who was caring for my baby was overly empathetic than emotionless and likely to facebook stalk me and keep medical notes, just me.

Regardless of why you're focusing on this particular aspect of the case, it's still just an incredibly poor and short sighted argument. You, and lots of other people as well in fairness, have made an assumption about what this signifies, and it shows no understanding of human behaviour. Yep, its an insight into her thought processes. And as has been pointed out by clinicians in this thread, it's quite a normal thought process for people in this position to blame themselves.

The assumption particularly unwise because you clearly don't have any expertise in this area. As your second paragraph of speculation indicates.

It also makes total sense that a woman of that age who thinks they're going to be punished for causing deaths understands that it would mean being in prison too long to have a baby. This gets weaker and weaker.

A long time ago now, I had a good job that I really enjoyed and had many friends amongst my colleagues. I was in a fairly senior position and I was well respected (I like to think!)

I was accused of something in that role. It was a complete lie - the original statement had holes you could have driven a bus through - but proving it was a lie was much harder than you might think. My line manager provided minutes for an entirely fictitious meeting he claimed to have had with me in which we ‘discussed concerns about my conduct and agreed to a way forward.’ But how could I prove it hadn’t taken place?

And this was where the stress got to me. I started wondering if the meeting had happened and I’d somehow forgotten? I started to wonder if I had done the things they said - maybe not all of them but no one else was being targeted. It must be me being bad at my job at the very least?

I felt embarrassed as well as everything else. I didn’t know which of my colleagues were friends and who was reporting things back to managers. Probably none of them but paranoia set in and I isolated myself. I became stressed and panicked and liable to make mistakes - minor ones but they became major ones.

It was finally proved that I hadn’t done anything wrong but it took a full year and that was a long time. It was literally the first thing I thought of when I woke up in the morning and I dreaded the post coming, obsessively checking my email.

My alleged ‘crime’ was barely anything really. Nothing even close to LLs.

I can’t believe people think she could have had her colleagues suspecting her of serious crimes, the more serious they are, and function and present ‘normally.’