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 judge in his summing up said words to the effect that if the jury were sure of deliberate harm in one case that could legitimately influence their reasoning on how likely it was in the other cases.

To take this outside of the LL case I find this very terrifying, being able to find someone guilty on pretty much no evidence, other than , they did A so must have done B as well.

This would explain the guilty verdicts for the insulin poisoning, no evidence it was her, just we think she is guilty of X, so she is guilty of this as well.

She never wrote a condolence card for the triplets.

This is like the so called confession note. She scribbled lots of words, thoughts and phrases on a post-it note. She wrote the three names and then something like I am sorry you're not here for your first birthday. There's no reason to think she was referring to all of them or doing more than a thought dump.

She was writing a year after two of them died. There was nothing sinister or particularly relevant to the case here.

The doctors were asked if they had any evidence at all that Letby had done anything except to be on shift when babies died. They said no, and that they were concerned for her wellbeing, not that she was at fault.

It was only in 2017 that one of them claimed he had seen her act suspiciously, right months after she stopped working on the unit.

In these circumstances the hospital could hardly allow them to continue a campaign against Letby. When the story the doctors had to tell change, the hospital changed its handling of the case.

Why the story changed - we don't know.

Thank you for that, Oftenaddled, because I have just been off down a rabbit hole trying to find information on the card the pp was referring to and not come up with anything.

It’s interesting how easily things become mixed up.

Yes. She and the mother described the same event an hour apart. The doctor on call was summoned to help and his records support Letby's version. But either Letby or a parent getting the time wrong once is hardly surprising. It doesn't suggest murder.

Here it is @TheCountessofFitzdotterel

You can make out "today is your birthday" etc some distance from the names (which are of course blanked out).

https://static.standard.co.uk/2023/04/18/20/COURTS%20Letby%20%2018363957.jpg?width=1200&height=1200&fit=crop

She didn't send a card for their first birthday. She was already a year off the ward by now and obviously distressed.

If she had for some reason forgotten that two children died, not three, I'd have thought it would make her look less guilty if anything. You'd remember murdering them!

The idea that this was a draft because she was planning to kill the last triplet is sinister but obviously wrong - it was a year later.

And here is the cross examination, from Sky News

The prosecution is now focussing on a note Letby wrote on a yellow post-it note addressed to the three triplet boys.

"I am writing how I was feeling at that time, and it was their birthday and I mentioned all three of them," Letby says.

The note reads: 'Today is your birthday and you aren't here. And I am so sorry for that.'

"Why were you including [the other triplet]?" Mr Johnson asks.

"I've written three names, I also wrote [colleague]."

The prosecution asks the question again.

"I can't answer that," Letby says.

"Is that because in your mind there was a terminal end in store for [other triplet] if he stayed with you?"

"No," she replies.

"Was that your objective to kill all three?" Mr Johnson asks.

"No."

Johnson was well aware that the note was written after Letby was stopped from working on the ward, because he asked her why there existed photos of her smiling on days out around the time she wrote notes showing such distress. Awful stuff.

I don’t think she wrote a condolence card for all three triplets. I think she wrote a note that was found in her home. I don’t think that means anything.
In my view, she has effectively been exonerated on baby P the second triplet because Dewi Evans has withdrawn his claim that he was killed by injection of air via the nasogastric tube. The conviction was on that basis. On the liver trauma to Baby O, other experts since the trial and the original pathologist at post-mortem believe it was natural causes.
The evidence of the mother of Baby E is troubling. However, there is no direct evidence of foul play and plenty of evidence of poor treatment.
This commentary is interesting:

https://jameganx.notepin.co

Baby E is a very doubtful case

The doctor present at the death found it so straightforward to explain that she didn't request a postmortem.

The consultants who suspected Lucy of murder did not ask to have Baby E's case reviewed after they received the results of the unit review.

The x-ray taken before Baby E's death did not show any sign of NEC (which was put on his death cert). Nor did it show any sign of embolism (which Letby was accused of). There is no evidence that Letby harmed him. There is plenty of evidence that he had an internal haemorrhage, which has multiple explanations in premature newborns. But the hospital advised no postmortem needed.

I think you know you’re wrong not to think critically about the verdicts. That’s why you started the thread.
Please also remember that one of the jury (as in the case of Andrew Malkinson) thought she was innocent on eleven of the charges.

No when I started the thread some people on the news were saying the verdict was wrong. Then I have listened and read some other information amd I'm still convinced the verdict was right beyond reasonable doubt. Baby with breathing tube pulled put. Baby in distress and Lucy Letby doing nothing. Experienced doctors and consultants expressing their concern about her and management silencing them

I wouldn’t bet on it.
Unfortunately, she sounds exactly like an appeal court judge.

What about baby C? It doesn’t concern you that the evidence for murder comes from the day before Lucy Letby came on shift?So if it was murder it must have been someone else

Rest assured I'm not. Though I would quite like to be. Probably not clever enough.

Doctors did not mention any evidence that Letby was causing deliberate harm until well after she worked on the ward.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/13/doctor-who-helped-convict-letby-no-objective-evidence/

What would you expect the hospital to do?

On Baby E, I’d just like to add that despite the prosecution line that she only cried for herself, Lucy Letby found it a traumatic memory seven years later when giving evidence.
https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/05/lucy-letby-stunned-by-death-of-baby-she-is-accused-of-murdering

One of the things the neonatal nurse I know said to me after listening to the podcast was that she had the overwhelming impression that the doctors at the unit did not like LL. And she wondered if this might be connected to the fact she’d slept with/had an affair with one of them. Which I thought was an interesting point.

im not saying they went on a witch hunt to get her for something they didn’t think she’d done, but could it have clouded their opinion of her, made them attribute stuff to her they wouldn’t have with someone else.

I think it’s more likely to be because she put in Datix detailing fuck ups and because she stood up to their bullying. They cannot have been happy they were forced to apologise to her or be faced with report to GMC.

Brearey originally called her “nice Lucy” so I wonder if they merely came to dislike her.

I thought the claim she had an actual affair was just another of these ‘facts’ that has grown from insinuation. Afaik she referred to loving one of the doctors and there were the jokey texts from other nurses about her going commando, but is there evidence beyond that?

I don’t think it’s ever been properly explored, something to do with the fact the doctor wasn’t on trial and it had no bearing on the case. Possibly it never crossed the line into a physical affair but there was definitely lengthy text conversations between them (and possibly a day trip out somewhere) that i wouldn’t have been impressed by if I was this doctors wife.

maybe she was fixated with him and was a pita, maybe he led her on a bit and then got cold feet. Will probably never know. But hospital wards can be quite tight knit units. If he was fed up with it all then others may have sided with him. Or if it was ongoing some may have been peeved about perceived favouritism, etc.

never shit in your own backyard when it comes to workplace romances is a motto which has served me well.

The nurse and the medic went on day trips to London, met for walks and meals together in their free time away from the hospital and swapped hundreds of messages

from press reports at the time. I’d say that’s an affair. 🤷‍♀️

apparantly they both said in court it was a friendship. But he talked about how she had more feelings for him than he did for her. Sounds messy.

Dates of all deaths in 2015/2016 at the Counter of Chester Hospital (letters refers to individual babies):

8 Jun 2015 (A)
14 Jun 2015 (C)
22 Jun 2015 (D)
4 Aug 2015 (E)
4 Sep 2015
27 Sep 2015
23 Oct 2015 (I)
13 Dec 2015

8 Jan 2016
18 Feb 2016 (K)
6 Mar 2016
23 Jun 2016 (O)
24 Jun 2016 (P)

Interestingly despite there being 13 baby deaths there in a 12 month period, there was not another baby death there for a period of six months from the moment LL was removed from ward duties.

First there were 17 deaths in total over 2015 and 2016, only 7 LL was charged with. No explanation for the increase for the other 10, which even on their own, represented an increase of 100% on previous years.

As has been repeatedly explained, the deaths stopped as soon as the unit was downgraded and the age and weight of the neonates increased.

The point you make illustrates the lure of false correlation in statistics.

This demonstrates why the statisticians are up in arms about the unfairness of the trial.

If you believe that’s evidence murder, it isn’t, then that will influence the amount of evidence you require to find someone guilty of murder.

I don’t think it matters very much because he wasn’t on the staff until 2016.