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.

The whole life order was entirely the correct sentence given the verdict. The judge would have been negligent not to pronounce it.

But that choice, made by the judge after the verdict was in, doesn't in itself provide any evidence of LL's guilt; indeed, it follows from the verdict. The verdict is the issue under discussion here.

Why do you think some of the verdicts couldn’t be decided? Doesn’t sound like even the jury were convinced of her ‘absolute guilt’ to me?

It doesn't need to be either or.

Letby could still be guilty of some murders AND it still be true that failings of a poorly run unit were concealed by attributing all deaths to the one cause.

That's why they're calling for the remit of the inquiry to be widened. It doesn't help bereaved parents or future children cared for there if the culture and practices of the unit are not to be widely examined without prejudice as to the cause(s) of these deaths.

It's so weird that babies stopped dying so frequently once she left the hospital.

What an odd coincidence 🙄

I know she wrote in her diary = I did it etc

Would someone who actually had killed babies write that and keep it?

I always saw that more of confused mumblings because there were deaths on her watch, so she's writing along the lines of oh god what if it's me because I"m a crap nurse etc.

I honestly do not think she did anything. There was another nurse abroad whom got convicted, same thing, and it was found to be wrong. Yes it's a huge coincidence she was always on, but not really when you think that she was doing all of the overtime. I was always on at work when we had major evacuations - so does that mean I was the cause of them?

You mean when the unit increased staffing, fixed the sewerage coming up the sink, stopped taking babies they weren't equipped to deal with, and sorted out the shit management.
Yep. Complete mystery.

But I think the point is that it was virtually every serious collapse over the relevant period.

Really? As a midwife I looked into it ages ago and seemed you had to do a minimum of 2 consecutive PG courses as well as be scanning 2 days a week. Each course seemed to be 9 months. Friends who have done it and qualified as midwife sonographers took 2 years part time to complete the training. Maybe it’s been shortened since then. But it’s a very hard course apparently.

So how do you account for the fact that those factors didn't kick in when Letby was off shift?

A close family member worked in a neonatal unit for many years and told me that massive staff shortages, inexperienced staff and government cuts led to multiple human errors when caring for very poorly babies, sometimes resulting in deaths that might not have otherwise happened.

Having been told this I do wonder whether this made it easy for LL to get away with murder or whether there was some sort of massive failure in the neonatal unit and LL was scapegoated to cover up such failings.

Plus she wasn't always on. They ignored several deaths that happened when she wasn't.

Her own writings said she did it. She was at every single tragic baby death (and baby harming,) and I just don't see how it could have been anyone else to be honest. I am pretty sure she did it - and the people crying 'did she really do it' are conspiracy theorists.

This is the Dutch nurse mentioned in the Channel 5 programme. A lot of similarities
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucia_de_Berk_case#:~:text=Lucia%20de%20Berk%20was%20charged,toddlers%20and%20some%20elderly%20persons.

Or perhaps it’s indicative of how scrupulous they actually were, and that they only returned a guilty verdict for the babies they were certain (beyond reasonable doubt) Letby had murdered.

Nobody who is commenting here knows more than - or even as much as - those that were actually involved in the trial. Stop pretending you do. It’s embarrassing, and hugely insulting to the families of those poor babies that Lucy Letby murdered.

They did. That's the whole point of those questions the stats.
There were other incidents that happened where babies deteriorated but they weren't included in the evidence presented to the jury because Letby wasn't on shift.
Aka the prosecution cherry picked the evidence to suit their case.

Are people in the UK able to read the New Yorker article about the case yet? After reading that it really seems there is a decent possibility this conviction is unsafe. These were not healthy children who died out of nowhere, they were sick and vulnerable babies being cared for by overstretched staff in an overstretched department in an overstretched system.

I will not be at all surprised if in 15 or 20 years (because that’s how long these things take sadly) this is declared a miscarriage of justice and an absolute scandal for the NHS.

I think that shows how conscientious the jury was. They didn't approach this on the basis of "If she did one she did all of them", or "she must be guilty or she wouldn't have been charged." They examined the evidence closely in each case, and if they weren't satisfied beyond reasonable doubt about any individual case, they didn't convict. But that means that they felt really certain when they did convict. And, unusually, we are talking about two different juries, so a relatively large number of randomly chosen individuals who heard the relevant evidence all agreed.

My feelings have leaned towards scapegoat/coverup... but it is impossible to know for sure.

I do however know that if I was on the jury, I don't believe I could have said she was guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

(Although obviously they knew far more about the case than I ever will)

Lucy Letby? I thought she was a neonatal nurse, nicu nurses don't do pregnancy/miscarriage scans..

She was convicted without real physical evidence.

Would anyone like to be jailed forever if they were innocent?.
Also those saying these days just look at what happened to Andrew Malkinson.

By your logic, then if it was a child of yours who'd been accused of murder, then you'd want any doubtful evidence re-examined

You don't know what motivates the judgement of the poster whose views you oppose.

And you're not biased?

I followed the case and the trial closely and have never believed she was guilty. I've taken a lot of flak for it online and in RL but imo it's becoming clearer with every passing month that her convictions are far from safe.

I believe she was scapegoated by the hospital trust as a way to explain massive systemic failures in the unit. As pp have said, there is no actual evidence any of these babies were murdered, though there may have been negligence on the part of some or many individuals and almost certainly collectively on the part of the trust. From a statistical point of view, the prosecution was a shitshow. The linchpin of the case seems to have been that she was the only one on duty for all of the deaths. But "all of the deaths" was then defined as all the deaths the police found suspicious, and the reason they found them suspicious is because she was on duty for all of them. Tell me you're looking for a scapegoat without tell me you're looking for a scapegoat!

I'm beyond relieved that all of these concerning aspects about her convictions are now coming out publicly - far too late and far too slowly, but better late than never. I have no doubt the convictions will be quashed eventually.

Ithis case has so many factors contributing to an UNSAFE environment for the infants. Yet this unsafe environment is exactly what would have allowed LL to kill these babies without fear of being found out. Having worked in an unsafe environment myself I witnessed and reported a ridiculously overt daily narcotic drug theft. Once I reported it many people came forward with their little piece of the puzzle …I saw this and I thought that…. And clearly drugs were being stolen in a brazen way. I believe Lucy was doing something…I don’t believe in the coincidence of her being present for every death. She could do it because everyone was overwhelmed by the workload demand and her seniority and willingness to work OT made her look like a great nurse.

Letby could still be guilty of some murders AND it still be true that failings of a poorly run unit were concealed by attributing all deaths to the one cause.

This is a good point. But since there is no direct forensic evidence that any of the children were murdered, the whole case against LL is the sheer number of deaths. If the CPS had brought 15 individual prosecutions, one per death, a jury would look at the evidence in each case and find it pretty unconvincing, because several nurses could have "done it" (even if there was evidence of foul play).

I believe Lucy Letby