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.

What? Defence teams with a guilty defendant still call expert witnesses for the defence.

Phil Hammond of Private Eye has put out an appeal for qualified experts who do agree with the medical evidence. None have come forward.

Because they haven't seen the evidence! Why on earth would any credible expert want to come forward on this basis?

And even if there are experts who think they might agree, she has been found guilty so presumably they may also feel that justice has been done without the need for their input as requested by the media (rather than the criminal justice system)..?

She was caught dislodging breathing tubes. Honestly, she's guilty.

She is as guilty as sin! Just check out the way she searched every parent of the child she had just killed on FB ! Even on christmas day! She is evil personified!

No she wasn’t.

If she was caught dislodging breathing tubes why was she not removed from duty and charged with attempted murder there and then?

What? Defence teams with a guilty defendant still call expert witnesses for the defence.

Not if it's likely to undermine the defence case under cross-examination they don't!

A jury is comprised of random people. At least some of whom may well be as reactionary and unthinking as this poster.

It’s so easy to see how juries can come to the wrong conclusion, in any case, never mind one as complex as this one.

You ask rather stupid questions and then complain when you don’t get the answer you want. No-one is obliged to you.

That is a very big question. Phil Hammond had some good suggestions albeit expensive. A jury purely of medics is not a good idea due to the issue of groupthink, bias, influence, but you’d need experts from other fields anyway - in this case forensic scientists, microbiology, statistics etc.

A very basic necessity going forward is to better evaluation of medical evidence before the trial.

Even the actual Prosecution witness doesn’t believe his own batshit theory on air injected into the nasogastric tube any more.

Well no the whole point is to support the defence case. In principle, the duty of the expert witness is to the court but it doesn’t work like that in practice, and if you talk to lawyers - they regard “their” experts as supporting their case.

It would be funny if it didn’t impact the lives of the babies’s parents and LL so dreadfully.

You need to go & look at the Thirwell inquiry documents. There is one that another neonatal nurse states some babies pulled their tubes out several times themselves & it was not an unusual thing to happen. Now that’s not me saying it that that is in evidence.

Well no the whole point is to support the defence case. In principle, the duty of the expert witness is to the court but it doesn’t work like that in practice, and if you talk to lawyers - they regard “their” experts as supporting their case.

@Mirabai I don't really understand how this point differs from mine? Experts obviously can't/won't lie, so the defence therefore won't put them on the stand if their answers under cross-examination are likely to end up undermining the defence case.

Have you ever searched for anyone on Facebook? Did you kill their child?

No she wasn’t!
Breathing tubes were dislodged. If every time that happens it has to have been done deliberately there must be murderers walking round unnoticed in pretty much every hospital.

In the future students are going to be taught about the crazy things people convinced themselves happened in the Lucy Letby case and they will be in disbelief that so many intelligent and educated people were so credulous.

I think one problem can be that honest, thorough and conscientious scientists may leave room for doubt where the prosecution experts in this case were recklessly certain. It was false to say the only cause of the insulin test results was exogenous insulin. A defence witness might not have been able to absolutely rule out the possibility of exogenous insulin. The jury might have gone with certainty from the prosecution plus an admission of possibility from the defence.

In this case would support the defence. The defence narrative was poor of itself but that’s another issue.

Very true. It will be instructive for both medical and law students alike.

I did wonder about this. If your expert witness has all the requisite knowledge but you are worried they are going to perform badly in court it could make sense to take the gamble of not using them. Dewi Evans on the other hand has 35 years experience as an expert witness (he says). No matter what the limits of his knowledge he is clearly extremely good at sounding plausible and coming up with the sort of soundbites that stick in the mind of a jury. I am not convinced that the existence of professional expert witnesses like him is really good for justice as they might potentially have the edge in a performance situation over someone who knows more but speaks with less confidence and authority.

I think the Tortoise podcast about expert witnesses touched on the concept of unconscious bias, not necessarily in relation to the LL case but the things that can, perhaps wrongly, believing on EW over another.

It’s not the wrong question to ask someone who claims that LL is innocent. I want to know how they know this for a fact.

You’re rather rude and I don’t think my questions were stupid, difficult to answer maybe but not stupid.