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.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3d93kpkl83o

new developments

How do you think seven babies died and seven more almost died?
I am curious to know.
Do you put it down just to coincidence?
Are you prepared to completely exonerate LL of all 14 instances?
How do you account for it?
There are question marks over her placement at another hospital.

And the post-lockdown appetite for conspiracy theories and true crime is huge, so it's a guaranteed money-spinner.

Conspiracy theories have always been popular (MI6 killed Diana, for example and the moon landings were definitely faked), as has true crime - though in the proper olden days "true crime" was more about reading newspapers detailing event and attending the occasional hanging.

I am, however, impressed with the "juries are always right" people. I can't imagine having such faith in a system which has been shown to be mistaken. Repeatedly. And in circumstances which are familiar (Sally Clark, for instance).

I don't know about notes or desaturation or anything like that. I do know statistics a bit, though I'm not an expert. I think "statistics" like these should be banned in criminal trials. Because what happened here wasn't a cold analysis of the statistics - it was cherry picking cases and data which fit the idea of Letby being a murderer.

Do you put it down just to coincidence?

Exceedingly poor care. I don't think those babies were murdered. I think at least some were victims of malpractice / corporate murder. But I also think that is true of other babies who died in that ward, but were excluded from the investigation because Letby wasn't on shift the day they died.

So there was no murder? No baby was murdered? Despite the injuries to little throats? Little abdomens? All 7 babies died from natural causes. 7 more almost died from natural causes.

All just coincidences?
You are amazing!
You are wrong about CoCH delivering poor care. I was a high risk mum-to-be and my care was excellent throughout. This was my third child so I have experienced ante and post natal care elsewhere.
You are so fixated on her innocence! It’s astonishing that so many intelligent women can overlook so much on here!
I almost believe that some of you are related/friends with her.
Totally bizarre.

All 7 babies died from natural causes

According to their autopsies - which have not been re-performed to lead to another conclusion - yes.

The "do you think you know better than the judge/jury" comment gets thrown around a lot, but I'm curious - do you think you know better than the pathologists who performed the autopsies?

@Tworoads you’re fixed on her being guilty.
you can’t possibly know what the care was like based on just your experience.

You are absolutely right. You know so much more than me.
I imagine the infant mortality rate is just as high these days in the neonatal ward of CoCH.

@tworoads you are talking absolute nonsense. Do you really believe your one experience of care in childbirth is sufficient to counterbalance the fact that the neonatal ward was downgraded? Anecdotes are not data.

Most people aren't "fixated" on her innocence (or guilt). Personally, I worry about cherry picking, misunderstanding and misrepresenting data. That has lead to many miscarriages of justice (eg Sally Clark) and hundreds (if not thousands) of deaths (OxyContin and other licensed drugs). The use of statistics on this case seems to be worrying to actual statistics experts. So I hope you'll excuse those of us who think your one-off experience of a completely different department is insignificant.

She was there for all the suspicious deaths/incidents because she was the one causing them and the statistics reflect that fact-why is it so hard to understand?

Because the definition of "suspicious death" used by the police was "deaths Letby could potentially have been involved with". They started with the premise that she did something wrong.

That was also what was presented at trial. Cherry picking data to suit their preconceived ideas and presenting that data as neutral fact. It has absolutely no place in any kind of investigation and certainly not in criminal trials.

Is there evidence of that (suspicious deaths equalling ones LLcould be involved with? Surely such manipulation would become obvious. Could it not just be similar to BA, where they identified her as the common presence in deaths?:

”I learned from Superintendent Clifton that the police had built up a case against Beverly Allitt, who was the only person connected with all of the 13 cases they suspected had been deliberately caused. The first hurdle they had to overcome, however, was establishing not who the criminal was, but whether there was any crime at all. Dr Porter was pretty sure there was, at least as far as baby Paul Crampton was concerned. Dr Nanayakkara's view, on the other hand, was shared by many of the other experts the police had consulted, because, individually, there was nothing specifically that pointed to illness from an unnatural cause. It appeared that almost no one except me was prepared at the beginning of the conference to stick their neck out and say that foul play had definitely been committed on Ward 4. I did this on the basis of the Guildford findings in the case of baby Paul, who had been injected with a huge dose of insulin on three or more occasions.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2270251/

@JemimaTiggywinkles I think the experts involved know how to run a trial. Of course they are going to show a list of times she was on shift. The defence would've pointed out times she wasn't on shift for suspicious incidents if it would've helped her-the fact they didn't speaks volumes. The only thing to infer from the fact they didn't is she was on for those not put forward for the trial too. Just wasn't enough evidence.

The defence would've pointed out times she wasn't on shift for suspicious incidents if it would've helped her-the fact they didn't speaks volumes. The only thing to infer from the fact they didn't is she was on for those not put forward for the trial too.

That's not how it works. The defence can't just present whatever they want as evidence. It has to be approved by the judge. The judge isn't going to approve something that isn't relevant. The times she wasn't on shift aren't relevant because she's not being accused of those incidents.

The onus is on the prosecution to prove she did something. The purpose of the defence is to challenge that proof. There is no point saying "Well, she wasn't working on these days when the deaths she's being charged didn't happen" in response to the prosecution saying "She was working on these days when the deaths she has been charged with happened". That is why it likely wasn't used as evidence.

@HollyKnight It IS a challenge to the prosecution to say she wasn't present for other suspicious deaths, what planet are you on. If they had evidence for her not being on shift when other suspicious incidents occurred it's basically case closed. It's about the most relevant thing I can think of that would disprove her guilt. They don't have that, that's the problem.

She is on trial only for deaths that they think they can pin on her. If they put her on trial for all of them when there isn't enough evidence it would only undermine the ones they believe the have evidence for. Hence why they initially looked at her for more than what she is on trial for, they ended up dropping a number of them because they knew it would only go against their case. By not making them part of her trial, they can not be used in her trial.

It shows a pattern - same thing the prosecution show when they give their version of the stats

If one side can say "she was on shift for these seven deaths" then of course the other side should be able to say "but she wasn't on shift for the other ten (min), bearing in mind the average is three, and there were also increased stillbirths at the time". If a judge did indeed rule this inadmissible, then this suggests they - whilst obviously experts legally - do not have sufficient medical understanding of why it's relevant. Which suggests that in complex medical cases, it would be helpful if judge/defence/prosecution were dual qualified.

Yeah I think it is very clear how little understanding there is of the workings of medicine, nursing, hospitals and healthcare in general, from the outside. But even if the prosecution and defence were better trained, it's still not going to help a jury of laymen understand what things are normal and which are not within a hospital/healthcare environment.

Just announced on BBC news Lucy Letby has appointed a new legal team. Hmm still think she's guilty.

Why? The bad plumbing wasn't part of the prosecutions case yet the defence still used that as evidence (completely non-believable but all they could come up with to sow doubt) and the judge agreed to that. Of course the defence could bring up times she wasn't working when babies collapsed if they could find any!

I welcome it. Anything that'll finally put a stop to the endless conspiracy theories about her innocence!

You’re misunderstanding how a criminal trial works I’m afraid. Just because the prosecution don’t charge her with certain deaths/incidents doesn’t mean they get brushed under the carpet. Anything useful to the defence in relation to those incidents eg that a death could be said to be even vaguely suspicious and that LL couldn’t have been involved in it, would definitely go before the jury if it were available. The system is way fairer to the defence than you seem to think it is.

But they're saying the other deaths aren't suspicious. That's the issue. They looked at all the deaths and decided the ones LL was involved with were suspicious and the rest were not. (Even though the reason they decided those ones are suspicious was because LL was involved with them.) If those other deaths are deemed natural causes, how is that evidence that she didn't kill the other babies?

Who do you mean by ‘they’? The police and prosecution? But the point is that it was open to the defence to use other deaths in any way that might be of use to help LL’s case, whether or not the prosecution deemed those other deaths suspicious. I think you were suggesting (tbh I’m genuinely losing track of what your point was about this) that by not charging her with certain deaths then those deaths don’t come under any consideration at trial and that works against LL. I’m saying it doesn’t, because the defence can still use them if they want. If there’s nothing useful to the defence about them, then that’s just tough shit and not the fault of the prosecution.