New Development in the Letby Case?

[thiswilloutme]

This headline popped up in my news feed, so I had a closer look.

The Expert, a retired Canadian Neonatologist, whose 30yr old paper was cited as part of evidence that LL killed the babies by means of injected air - says that his results were misrepresented. He was willing to testify to that in the appeal, but the judge ruled his evidence inadmissible as he had not been called in the initial trial (how bonkers is that?).

He was so concerned about the potential miscarriage of justice that he asked permission to convene (pro bono) a group of international experts to review ALL of the medical data re. the deaths. He said he would only do this on condition that WHATEVER they found would be made public. Letby agreed to this.

Each case was assigned to two experts, who were given all of the medical data for that case. IF they disagreed on their conclusions then a third expert would be called in. This only happened in two cases out of 17.

They are due to publish their conclusions on Tuesday.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/lucy-letby-evidence-conviction-0mqwglpbq

Something just isn't right here.

I think it is definitely NOT "beyond reasonable doubt" if this report disagrees substantially with the prosecution experts. If experts can't agree then how a lay jury is expected to come to a fair decision is a tough one.

If, OTOH, this panel all agree that the babies were deliberately killed then that might close down all of the ongoing push for a new trial.

I agree.

If there’s eventually a retrial I won’t be surprised if it’s a not guilty verdict

This man wrote the only substantial academic paper on the symptoms we see when babies suffer air embolism. It mentioned a very distinctive rash seen in some cases.

The prosecution used the paper in the trial. The defence argued that there was not enough evidence of what happens when babies suffer air embolism to defend against their arguments.

The prosecution won the day, and they argued that Letby had killed babies by injecting air into their veins, causing air embolism. They said this rash wasn't the only symptom they were relying on, but the other symptoms they mentioned happen in lots of other conditions.

Dr Lee wasn't allowed to appear at appeal because he had not been called at the first trial. So he has updated his article with all the cases of this rare condition since, and he has split out the data to show the problem with the prosecution's case.

The prosecution was relying on his description of one form of air embolism, but saying Letby had inflicted another. There are very few case reports of infants with air embolism injected into the vein, but none of them has ever shown the rashes the prosecution described. Lee can explain the science behind the different symptoms as well as showing the data.

He is literally the world expert on air embolism in children. And Letby's defence was right. Until he produced his updated article, the prosecution could only invent symptoms or presume they were like other air embolisms.

The defence is now arguing that the prosecution expert witness simply kept juggling the facts to frame Letby instead of doing his job and telling the court what we know about the science. It's hard to argue against that. I hope she will get a fair hearing.

Thank you for such a well articulated explanation.

I listened to the podcast on each day of the trial and read a lot of the reporting of the evidence. I also had a NICU baby and was biased and horrified by the case. I'm not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that she's guilty despite that being my initial starting point. I listen to many different true crime podcasts and I don't think I've ever doubted a conviction before so I'm not generally a loon that supports serial killers!

Thank you. I am not generally interested in true crime at all but I do work with statistics and alongside people in science communication. I read about this case in the blocked New Yorker article and couldn't quite believe it so followed the Thirlwall Enquiry when it started - I only really looked at the original trial in retrospect. I find it all very disturbing.

It's nice to hear from people who don't assume this is about sympathising with baby killers. I can completely understand that your experience would make the case seem even more horrific.

I hope we find that there never were any murders - surely that might bring a little comfort to the families, as long as there was certainty.

@Oftenaddled thank you

That's interesting @Oftenaddled - I have a sibling who is a mathematician and they tried to explain probability theory to me 😱.... I'm mathematically literate enough to realise that unexplained SMALL clusters of events don't necessarily have the same cause - probability is only reliable with larger data sets.

Ie the chance of throwing heads or tails still remains 50:50 even if you've just thrown 9 consecutive heads. The naive use of stats in this case was very worrying, especially as there is no forensic evidence to link her to the deaths.

Well, we will find out today what the report says.

He was willing to testify to that in the appeal, but the judge ruled his evidence inadmissible as he had not been called in the initial trial (how bonkers is that?)

That isn't quite right. To get an appeal, Letby needs new evidence. This must be evidence that was not reasonably available to the defence at the time of the original trial. The Court of Appeal took the view that Dr Lee's evidence could have been called by the defence and therefore was not new.

They also argued (wrongly in my view) that Lee's evidence did not undermine the prosecution case. One paragraph in the Court of Appeal's judgement stands out for me in this regard. They say Dr Lee's evidence "would provide a basis for challenging a witness who diagnosed air embolus on the basis of excluding other causes and then asserting that it must be a case of air embolus because no other explanation could be identified" but then went on to say that the prosecution experts "made findings which were consistent with air embolus and which collectively could not be explained by natural causes or any other possible alternative explanation", suggesting that this is somehow different from excluding other causes and saying it is air embolus because you can't identify any other explanation.

Given that there is a public inquiry into how she was allegedly able to get away with murder for so long, and given the high profile of the case, I think it is going to be very difficult for Letby to get her conviction overturned.

Speaking for myself, I have no idea whether she is guilty or innocent, but I am very firmly of the view that she should never have been convicted on the evidence presented. Even if we accept that the babies were murdered, which seems dubious, there was no direct evidence against her. The prosecution relied on the chart that allegedly shows she was the only person present when all the suspicious incidents happened. However, that chart suffers from both the prosecutor's fallacy and the Texas sharpshooter fallacy. The only thing it proves is that Letby was on duty when she was on duty. Indeed, given some of the things that have emerged since the trial, it seems it doesn't even prove that.

Obviously I wasn't at the trial and I am in no way a medical expert. Therefore I don't have a firm idea on whether she's guilty or innocent. She absolutely could be guilty but at the same time, she also could easily be a scapegoat for a failing unit. Although she may have also made some mistakes. I just don't know.

I feel very sorry for the parents involved. They will probably never get a definitive answer. It doesn't seem there's anything that can "prove" her innocence or guilt. Only that there may be doubts over her conviction. I'm sure they just want the truth and I don't think they're ever going to get it.

That said, I don't feel we can just leave someone locked up for life if there's a chance the jury were given misleading evidence. I do think there's an argument to be made for specialist juries in (thankfully) rare cases like this.

Both outcomes are horrific
14 babies deliberately murdered/ attempted murder
one young nurse spending life in prison for something she did not do

on balance i would rather LL was set free if there is too much doubt . But then she would be free to work with babies again as a freed person,
this case has got me in a quandary from the start because even if the statistics and medical data is flawed she still could be guilty
gut wrenching all round

The doctor who covers medical matters for Private Eye has written numerous in-depth articles about the evidence in this case. Available here: https://www.private-eye.co.uk/special-reports/lucy-letby.

You can really see how increasingly incredulous he gets week by week about the state of the evidence used for this conviction.

As reading this thread I got a bbc alert. There's been an application to have her case reviewed
BBC News - Lucy Letby's lawyers apply for case to be reviewed by commission - BBC News
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgl5yyg1x6o

Even if she is innocent, I think her life is ruined. I doubt she will ever be allowed to resume her career as a nurse or work with babies in any capacity. There will always be those who continue to believe she must be guilty of something, even if there is proof beyond reasonable doubt that the babies all died from natural causes.

I have not been able to settle on an opinion about whether she is guilty or not but I did follow the podcast and have read and listened to many other sources of information since and I'm just not convinced her guilt is beyond a reasonable doubt. Most of it seemed circumstantial and some of it just seemed a stretch.

It was exasperating to try to discuss it on here and be accused of being an apologist for a baby murderer when I have always been clear that the evidence I have seen raises more questions than it answers rather than convincing me of her innocence.
I hope we get to the truth.

IF Lucy Letby is innocent then I feel sorry for her; there will always be people who think she is guilty and her life is ruined but my greatest sympathy is with the parents whose children died. Either their deaths were a tragic consequence of prematurity and attendant complications, incompetence and poor medical management or murder and they have endured years of uncertainty which looks as if it will continue. I just can't even begin to imagine what they have been through.

I do think there's an argument to be made for specialist juries in (thankfully) rare cases like this.

Definitely agree. Some criminal offences require an understanding of very specialist knowledge, like medical and fraud related cases. It would be better if we could call on people with the relevant expertise. Which would mean paying them properly.

I just found this paper on the stats used to convict her, and others, and how they really don't apply to small numbers with the degree of certainty used by the prosecution to argue her guilt.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00258024241242549

"Abstract
A whole branch of theoretical statistics devotes itself to the analysis of clusters, the aim being to distinguish an apparent cluster arising randomly from one that is more likely to have been produced as a result of some systematic influence. There are many examples in medicine and some that involve both medicine and the legal field; criminal law in particular. Observed clusters or a series of cases in a given setting can set off alarm bells, the recent conviction of Lucy Letby in England being an example. It was an observed cluster, a series of deaths among neonates, that prompted the investigation of Letby. There have been other similar cases in the past and there will be similar cases in the future. Our purpose is not to reconsider any particular trial but, rather, to work with similar, indeed more extreme numbers of cases as a way to underline the statistical mistakes that can be made when attempting to make sense of the data. These notions are illustrated via a made-up case of 10 incidents where the anticipated count was only 2. The most common statistical analysis would associate a probability of less than 0.00005 with this outcome: A very rare event. However, a more careful analysis that avoids common pitfalls results in a probability close to 0.5, indicating that, given the circumstances, we were as likely to see 10 or more as we were to see less than 10."

Which seems to be saying that it's pretty much a 50:50 chance whether or not all of the deaths had a common cause. And the maths cannot guess what that common cause might be anyway - it could be failings in the unit 🤷🏼‍♀️

Even if there was failings in the unit it is extremely rare for babies to have persistent collapses

These babies were mostly over 30 weeks and some nearer 40 weeks.

It was not just one baby it was multiple babies experiencing multiple collapses - with no medical explanation

Where is the evidence that shows the rota was incorrect? Myers KC would have been all over that!

As others have said that a jury in cases such as this one should be from the medical fraternity. The lay person would find it difficult to understand some of the evidence.

I just hope the parents get proper closure on their children's deaths.
If Lucy Letby is innocent or guilty there must be absolute proof.

Just glad I wasn't on the jury.

Not "incorrect" but functionally useless as a piece of evidence:

A staffing rota also showed she had been on duty for every suspicious death or collapse between June 2015 and June 2016. [except it didn't -- see below]

The rota was a key part of the case – a striking visual symbol of the case against her. But a number of statisticians have publicly questioned its usefulness.
One is Peter Green, a professor of statistics and a former President of the Royal Statistical Society.

"The chart appears to be very convincing, but there are a number of issues with it," he said.

"A big thing is that it only describes 25 of the bad events which happened in this period.

"It doesn’t include any of the events that happened when Lucy was not on duty."

There were at least six other deaths and numerous collapses.

Prof Green said the chart also does not reflect the fact that Letby was working extra shifts.

"It’s a natural human thing. We all see patterns that are not there," he said.

"The danger is that this evidence can be very compelling to the non-professional, and over interpreted."

Agree with this abstract. Also, there is a real question about the way we allow statistical evidence to be used in criminal cases. The way such evidence is presented frequently suffers from the prosecutor's fallacy. In this case, it also suffered from the Texas sharpshooter fallacy. If it had occurred to the defence to call a statistician, they would have torn the prosecution argument to shreds.

This case has worrying parallels with Lucia de Berk, a paediatric nurse wrongly convicted of 7 murders and 3 attempted murders in the Netherlands who served 7 years of a life sentence before her convictions were overturned.

Speaking for myself, I have no idea whether she is guilty or innocent, but I am very firmly of the view that she should never have been convicted on the evidence presented

This is my view as well.

Did anyone watch Dr Lee’s press conference? Analysis is that none of the deaths murder but all natural causes and/or negligence?

Just cannot believe the twists and turns of this case.

It is difficult for Myers KC to be all over evidence that wasn't available during the trial.

We now know that the unit had another door with a digital lock, so members of staff could enter the unit without being recorded. It has also emerged that some of the door swipe data was mislabelled, with entries being recorded as exits and vice versa. But. even if it was correct, it proves nothing.

The "no medical explanation" part of your post is disputed by the neonatal experts who have provided evidence to CCRC.