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.

Where did I say I am certain she is innocent? I am certain her conviction is unsafe.

Medics won't know about this. It's lawyers who know about finding expert witnesses.

So what do you imagine was presented to the jury over all those weeks if not evidence?

There seems to be a slow but growing voice of opinion that this could be a horrendous miscarriage of justice. I think posters have a good point when they state that not many are prepared to defend publicly a 'baby killer' so will have been reticent in coming forward with opinion.

As time has passed more and more statisticians and medics are coming forward showing how complex evidence can be manipulated or misinterpreted.

There has been a well acknowledged problem with our legal system in handling extremely complex fraud cases and so we have to say an adversarial court system with unqualified jurors may not be ideal. It is like a layman walking into a paediatric conference where two academics were arguing over a paper with reference to correlations, p values, t tests etc. or methods of detecting blood sugar levels.

Thrown into the mix is the fact the neonatal ward was failing generally at the time with a toxic work culture. The enquiry into neonatal deaths is stalled because people are not happy with having to assume the babies deaths were murders and should be reviewed holistically in terms of a failing NHS department.

The parents of those babies must be horrified at the possibility of a miscarriage of justice and all the anger channeled at Lucy is possibly giving way to confusion. The parents can't reach closure like this.

Also the jurors must now be tormented by the fact that there is debate now about the conviction and I wonder how they now feel?

I agree with all of this.

I was bored recently and came across the trail of Harold Shipman and watched it. He’d changed the will of one of his victims so that was the motive, financial gain. There isn’t a motive for LL.

I was also watching something else recently about a murder trial case and was astonished at some of the info that they weren’t allowed to use in court. For example that the defendant was arrested for robbery (it wasn’t that) but of course knowing that info would give you an insight in to how they behave and it was kept from the jury. I wouldn’t like to be tried by a jury that’s for sure!

Its like having character references for jobs etc.. if someone is an upstanding citizen and never been in trouble etc it paints a different picture to someone who has committed several crimes. A bank isn’t going to want to hire someone convicted of fraud so that’s why I was surprised certain info is omitted about the trail in the documentary I watched - not LL

Who do you think lawyers are asking to be expert witnesses for medical testimony?

Anyway, barrister Mark McDonald, referring to the LL case, said that such is the problem he has finding U.K. medics prepared to testify - they generally come from abroad.

Data, not evidence of murder. You’re mistaking quantity for quality.

10 months of evidence! And no one to testify in her defence except a plumber. All for some people to say there's no evidence of her guilt 🙄jeez can't imagine why the jury took so long to come to a verdict when there wasn't even any evidence to go through apparently.

It was reported that the insulin was in a locked fridge, the keys to which were held by the nurse on duty - a nurse might be able to surreptitiously take some. The implication was their system wasn’t very robust. She didn’t inject the insulin. It was said she put it into a feed bag which were in the same area

No, you wouldn’t necessarily notice insulin missing. Insulin is measured in units. It would potentially take a very small number of units to harm a baby, and 1ml of insulin has 100 units in it. As you can imagine, it would take a tiny volume of insulin to cause harm.

Criminologists literally spend their careers investigating the characteristics and psychology of serial killers. Inevitably there is normally severe childhood trauma, significant mental health issues, character problems etc. Not here.

There isn't a motivation at all. There isn't a trail of psychiatric problems and there are plenty of character witnesses to support Lucy as of good character. It simply doesn't make sense. There is no evidence of sadism (e.g. Myra Hindley or Rose West), past cruel behaviour to other humans or animals, no history of violence

From a criminal profiling perspective this literally makes no sense at all.

@mids2019 we don't know though do we because they've released very little about her life growing up. There could be all sorts we don't know about. I've already highlighted some unusual behaviour but it's all been dismissed. Anything we find out about her behaviour will be dismissed because people just refuse to believe she did it.

I have read that there was a medical expert prepared to testify but the defence didn’t call them. Ive only found out from this thread that the insulin administration was an ‘agreed fact’ between the prosecution and defence - and yet there are what seem to be glaring questions about the validity of the testing used.

Apparently her QC is shit hot. So what on earth has gone on here?

Ive never felt comfortable with her conviction. But it has just occurred to me - could the defence team have known she was guilty? Did she confess something to them? I don’t know what the rules are about barristers defending someone they k ow is guilty. I’d be interested to know if someone else does.

Definitley not sarcasm. Have you read the N.Y post article?
Even if you haven't , the state that hospital was in was shocking. Sure they have to blame someone

Nothing you've said about that interaction makes her sound abnormal.

She DID have a reason to write the notes, she was being accused of harming babies.

Nope I can believe that people could be so heartless. I'm just not convinced by it in this case.

The other thing is that during what is supposed to be the midst of a killing spree - a nurse who has taken a long time to qualify to do what she dreamed of doing -suddenly turns to multiple murder - shows no sign in her texts of - stress, anxiety, crisis of conscience, terror of being discovered, paranoia that people are onto her - nothing at all but chitchat and jokes.

It’s perfectly possible for psychopaths to appear outwardly normal, but they are not inwardly normal as well.

Was the insulin an agreed fact though? Once scientist has said so but I have not seen it confirmed.

The defence did not challenge the air embolism or the insulin evidence as they should but I am not 100% sure insulin was agree fact.

Dr Shipman was a paragon of virtue. Respected and liked by his patients who thought the world of him.

Isn't it itself a coincidence that a failing neonatal department managed to hire a psychopath that had no prior convictions, acted as a competent friendly nurse.and presumably actually aided some patients?

Was Letby a psychopath that could hide her traits through a degree and manage to get a role with very ill babies with some dubious clinical practice to satisfy a life time urge to kill babies?

I have questions .

Only on the outside. On the inside he was a man who got his patients to change their will in his favour and then gave them morphine.

LL has no inner darkness. The only time she expresses mental anguish is when she has been accused of murdering babies.

@Tworoads it is evidenced there was a problem with bacteria. Your opinion that the plumbing was fine is wrong.

@Mirabai I’m sure I read it somewhere in this thread. I can’t trawl through 18 pages atm to find where it’s mentioned but I googled and found this

https://www.scienceontrial.com/post/criminal-justice-in-england-disagreeable-facts

I’m happy to be corrected if this is not robust though.

Similar thing happened in the maternity hospital in my area in 2012. Three babies on the neonatal ward died within a short period of time. They found all the babies were infected with pseudomonas. They did an investigation, tested the water and discovered it was in the pipes. Anyone who washed their hands or used the tap water for anything was just spreading it to all the babies. They had to rip out and replace all the plumbing. They tested the main hospital after that and found it was in the plumbing there too. Most people survive these infections, but not tiny premature babies.

I said it was an agreed fact. I always thought it was but maybe not. I'll see if I can find info later.

The article I’ve linked above does say that it was.

Agree @HollyKnight
All (think all - it’s a requirement) wards with immune compromised patients routinely test water for pseudomonas- it can close a ward if positive. But hey people who’ve stayed on wards for 2 weeks know more than clinical staff ..