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.

If those other deaths are deemed natural causes, how is that evidence that she didn't kill the other babies?

Well exactly 😆😆😆

No, I'm saying it is useless as evidence because there was an investigation and those other deaths were deemed non-suspicious and not unexpected. Whereas the ones LL was on trial for were deemed suspicious and unexpected. The defence can't just make shit up and say "actually some of those other deaths were suspicious too" when they have been ruled natural causes.

🙄

The reason why some were deemed suspicious and others not is the issue. Others were deemed natural causes too at first until they decided "oh actually, if we look at it another way, it could also be an air embolism, a punch to the liver, intentional insulin poisoning etc" They would need to do that for all of the deaths for it to be unbiased, but we know the doctors only focused on alternative theories for the ones LL nursed.

Exactly Holly Knight
And how tf is that fair
Free Lucy Letby

How about reading the whole thread and understanding some of the legitimate concerns about LL's convictions?

Emotive phrases like "Little throats" and "Little abdomens" do not negate those legitimate concerns.

Me too, and we voted the other way. I guess that means medical family members don't equate to evidence.

The more I've read about the evidence on which she was convicted: stats, duty rotas, glucose levels in baby's blood (which can depend on other factors as well as insulin) the more uncertain I feel about this case.

Obviously none of us know if she is guilty or not; only she does. But in terms of whether the evidence really does pass the reasonable doubt threshold, and whether it was a safe conviction.... I just don't know but it leaves me feeling very uncomfortable. As a PP said, this is potentially the miscarriage of justice of the century.

I think it’s an unsafe conviction. As a student midwife in the 1980s I was once left in sole charge of 6 ventilated babies in NICU. The only other person in the unit was a qualified neo-natal nurse who was looking after 20 babies in SCBU.
Absolutely terrifying. The COC hospital obviously had staffing problems, ineffective management and was taking babies far too ill for the unit.

Yes and it’s amazing that even with injuries to “little throats” and “little abdomens” these deaths were originally put down as natural causes. Which makes me think that the injuries can’t be as bad as since otherwise made out, so possibly explained by CPR and a rough intubation????

That’s exactly what the defence can do. Test the prosecution claims by probing not only the evidence relied on by the prosecution, but also the material they are not relying on, such as material to do with deaths LL was not charged with. So what if it was deemed non suspicious, the prosecution deeming something does not make it so.

If other deaths were deemed non suspicious with good reason (and the defence would have the opportunity to explore that through the disclosure rules) then obviously it would be right that LL would not be able to point to those as evidence there was some other murderer on the unit. If on the other hand there was even the tiniest hint of a suggestion that one of those deaths was suspicious, (and again, they have the opportunity to explore that regardless of what the prosecution says) then they would be able to make a lot of headway with that at trial, if they could show LL couldn’t have been involved in that death.

In any event, I thought the defence theory is not that there was some other child killer stalking the unit, but rather that there was malpractice and scapegoating. In which case, the deaths she wasn’t charged with would not need to be suspicious in order to help the defence. They would be able to, and did, question at trial why the prosecution had drawn the line where they did and point to those other deaths and ask the jury to consider whether they might all have been the result of malpractice etc not murder.

Sorry for the length, but this is getting frustrating and I’m trying to explain as best I can that a) there are robust disclosure rules which in the vast, vast majority of cases prevent miscarriages of justice, but we don’t see evidence of it on the news because it goes on behind the scenes, and b) there’s equality of arms and the prosecution can’t just say something isn’t relevant just because they are the prosecution.

Finally, I’m a criminal barrister. I’ve not mentioned it before on this thread because I don’t like to unless it’s necessary, but I’m saying it now because I don’t want another poster jumping up crying ‘but haven’t you heard of the Birmingham 6?’ or somesuch. I know about miscarriages of justice. And I can’t be sure that in the future something might not come to light which shows something was hidden/distorted/not presented properly to the jury. But at the moment I’m really not seeing it.

And neither is the Court of Appeal. But I’m keeping an open mind.

You are not her criminal barrister though, so you do not know why those other deaths were not considered evidence. I imagine her team have a better idea of why they thought bringing those other deaths into the trial would not have helped or maybe even harmed her case. And if it was the judge who said no, he also had his reasons of which you and the rest of us aren't privy to.

@eastegg And I can’t be sure that in the future something might not come to light which shows something was hidden/distorted/not presented properly to the jury. But at the moment I’m really not seeing it.

To be fair to you perhaps you haven’t looked at the scientific evidence in detail. Either way this case has shown up a clear divide between lawyers who understand science and those who don’t. Those who can see the deep problem with the current system for any case that rests on scientific data. There is a major confusion between what counts as ‘evidence’ in court and what constitutes valid scientific evidence.

Science is not a democracy. You cannot determine scientific fact by oratory and a show of hands as to what seems superficially plausible to lay people. No-one in this trial seemed really to understand the medical data presented so they couldn’t see how flawed it is - (not merely the jury, but the prosecution, defence, the judge and the the CoA - both the judge and CoA made scientific errors in their findings).

In this case the issue is not whether there is new evidence - but whether the scientific evidence presented to the trial was a. Valid and b. Interpreted accurately by the court.

There seems to be a systems failure as much of the bad science should have been weeded out before trial. Going forward the case indicates a need for fundamental reform of the way cases with complex scientific and technical data are tried.

It is extremely difficult for a jury of even legal professionals to understand complex science and medicine, not because of lack of ability but simply they have not been trained for years in that area. The same applies to statisitcs, even explaining something like a t test to establish significant difference in the average result or occurrence of events is difficult, similarly the strengths and significance of correlatiin.

This I simply a problem with the legal system that has no easy answer.

What can't be denied is that the legal process especially it's adversarial nature can be flawed in such complex cases and there are doubts in this that the bar of beyond reasonable doubt can be reached as this discussion shows there is reasonable doubt and with further enquiries into the actions of the hospital there will be more doubt.

I think it's very striking that the coroner's reports never found any evidence of foul play. I'm not convinced she is is innocent but from what I've read on the case I'm not convinced she's guilty either.

@YogaForDummies exactly this.

It's difficult, after such a long and emotive trial, not to focus on the 'is she guilty/not guilty?' question. But actually, the issue that is being closely examined is whether the conviction is safe.

It's entirely possible that she is guilty, but that at the same time, the conviction was unsafe. So, right end result, but the process to get there was flawed.

Or she could be not guilty, wrong end result and the process to get there was flawed.

The point is, everyone involved, LL herself, the families involved, all the healthcare professionals, everyone deserves an accurate, accountable process.

Like I said earlier, the only person who truly knows whether they are guilty or not is LL. Doesn't matter a jot what any of us think or say on here - we can't know. But I do think the ambiguity around the complex technical evidence and the fact that many experienced professionals disagree quite profoundly with the interpretation of it, shows that this issue needs to be examined.

Worth bearing in mind though that a lot of the professionals saying there is an issue with that evidence haven’t actually seen all the evidence. They aren’t really in a position to say definitively whether the evidence presented was valid or interpreted accurately.

Worth bearing in mind that much of trial data is available online. And one of the key medics highlighting these issues, Professor Michael Hall, has seen all the medical evidence.

The air embolus and insulin theories rest on data that is available in the public domain.

When quizzed I think about Baby M and where the “air” from a potential air embolus had gone to Evans said in court that it might have dissipated into other blood vessels during CPR. There was something said in court about how there was no sign of the air during an imaging when you’d expect there to be.

Evans was asked what evidence he had to back his theory up and he admitted there wasn’t any and when pressed on this just said that it would be very unethical to give babies air embolisms on purpose to study how they showed up.

Which I do get. But he basically admitted on the stand he was making a theory up which has no evidence behind it 🤷‍♀️

For balance Myers did point this out clearly to the jury, telling them the air embolism theories were based on guesswork and the jury still convicted. So I assume we’re happy with other evidence.

I do agree with a previous point made by another poster that this isn’t really about whether she’s innocent or not, it’s about is it a safe verdict. I do not know if she’s innocent or guilty. But I can see there are concerns which appear valid about the evidence.

@Mirabai I would say that you are far more invested in this case than anyone. Mother? Father of LL? @eastegg is a criminal barrister and yet you suggest that eastegg doesn’t know what she’s talking about???
The trial took place. The court of appeal reconsidered and yet you think none of these learned and experienced people know what they’re talking about. I feel you have too much involvement for a bystander.
I wish one of the mothers/fathers of the deceased babies were on this thread.
I don’t think, because of you and one or two other people (same?) like you, I have ever commented on a thread that has been so aggressive.
I feel you are hustling. Have read the thread and you are certainly unusual in your commitment. Why?

So @eastegg is a barrister so her expertise is law. Her expertise is not medicine and that’s fair enough.

I’m invested as it’s a very interesting case. It reveals the car-crash interface between medicine and law and we need to figure out what to do about it.

Why is there anger at anyone who would question our legal system when unfortunately in the last miscarriages of justice have occured. Do we just all have to be silent with an assumed infallibility of our justice system? Where would that have got the postmasters recently?

It is good in an open democracy that debate can be held about potential miscarriages of justice without feeling that even discussing this means you somehow sympathise with killers or in some way morally culpable yourself. That is worrying in my humble opinion.

@Tworoads people can have a different opinion to you without
A being over invested
B a relative or friend of LL

You are coming across as very biased avd really don’t know as much about the running of a ward/ care of neonates as you think you do.

edit for typo and to add clarification

If you can say with such confidence that the medical data presented at trial was flawed, why were the defence not able to present medical/scientific evidence to the C of A sufficient to convince them of that? I see that one answer you suggest is that the C of A judges don’t understand it. Those judges are perfectly capable of understanding properly presented scientific evidence of great complexity. It’s laughable to suggest otherwise. And if they didn’t, that’s on the scientist presenting it, not them.

What will have actually happened is that they understood the scientific argument, but decided it didn’t affect the safety of the convictions.

Except she was writing the notes as suggested by a therapist. There's so much wrong with her conviction, it stinks

As I understand it, the defence weren't able to present any real challenging medical evidence - I suspect this includes scientific evidence, because in these cases if someone stands up & challenges the prosecution their career is on the line, people lose good careers due to providing this sort of evidence.
The documentary is really interesting