Lucy Letby press conference

[Viviennemary]

There is a press conference going on now trying to get Lucy Letby's conviction overturned. From what I read the guilty verdict was sound. All those ill babies dying when she was alone with them. Just a coincidence? Already been refused an appeal.

Agree. Jury system is already flawed at the best of times, as people just want to get it over with to go back to their lives and they decide on a verdict based on all sort of prejudices. And this case proves you really need people on the jury who understand medical evidence, but then you'd have to pay them adequately.

Well actually that's exactly what has happened except the with these experts you won't find any better in the world and they did it independently. This is THE medical opinion.

No it isn’t. It’s A medical opinion. No new facts, just a different interpretation of the same ones, ie no grounds for appeal.

Are you convinced that the interpretation of the medical evidence given at trial was more trustworthy than that given by this panel? If so, can I ask why?

As laypeople we are always going to have some limitations on our understanding of the actual medical evidence. So when there is a conflict of opinion between people with far greater expertise than me, I consider other things too to help me decide who may be more credible.

For example, the credentials of the experts, their possible financial motivations, the stakes for them personally.

In those areas, I find this new panel of experts to be more credible than the prosecution experts. What are you seeing that I’m not?

I’m wondering why these experts weren’t called by the defence during the trial.

They aren't people who usually do legal work

I doubt legal aid would have funded 14 witnesses of that quality.

This case shouldn't have needed such eminent and expensive witnesses. The major problem is that the prosecution witnesses lied, changed stories, presented obvious nonsense, and did not do their duty which is to tell the court about all possibilities, not to argue for the prosecution case.

They aren't people who usually do legal work

Yet for some unfathomable reason they’re all working for nothing now. Extraordinary.

Prosecution witnesses are what it says on the tin - to support the prosecution case. Are you saying they lied?

Meanwhile there is a person incarcerated for murder that according to highly experienced experts on both sides LL is both guilty & not guilty with apparently the same degree of plausibility in both arguments.

The whole thing is absurd & an embarrassment to the process. This case should have no place for pride or power. It should be considered & concluded in fairness to all concerned. If LL is indeed guilty she deserves her incarceration & all it entails. If she is innocent then those in power have to live with the fact they've simply got it wrong. The one thing for certain is all findings old or new definitely need to be addressed & considered appropriately & in a timely manner.

I can’t work out if you’re being disingenuous or if you genuinely mean that.

These are all very busy, very eminent people who have better things to do in their own countries and hospitals than giving evidence in random court cases abroad.
They would probably have assumed, if asked, that someone more local with sufficient expertise could be found.

There’s still an important question to be answered about why Myers failed to call his own medical expert witnesses (including the one he had lined up) but it should be clear by now that no internet randoms anywhere know the answer to that, let alone people on this thread.

That's not true, BIossom, to be fair. In the Moors Murderers case there was a witness to the last murder (of Edward Evans). It was Hindley's brother in law who was the witness. He was the one who shopped them to the police.

Lots of new evidence there. If you look at the insulin cases as one example, you'll note in the report that they draw on publications not written at the time of Letby's trial. Same with Zhou and Lee's work on venous air embolism. New academic research is new evidence. It's how Sally Clark was freed.

But I believe McDonald is going for another ground for review too, a well established one. That's that the lead prosecution did not do his job competently and honestly. And here's the thing. He has already admitted mistakes with one baby. There's a timing error in another, if the report is right. That's easily checked. There are infections and incidents he has conveniently not mentioned. That's easily checked. If those things are in the notes, he has not fulfilled his duties as an expert witness and there are grounds to review the case.

I’m sorry you think caring about truth, accuracy and justice is unfathomable.
Maybe you haven’t spent much time with scientists but they do tend to care very much about scientific truth.

If they had found bodies buried in Letby's garden I'm sure we'd be having a different conversation. Circumstantial information can be okay. But as McDonald pointed out yesterday, outside the medical evidence what we have on Letby is insignificant.

If there were no murders, she's not a murderer

They didn’t care about it enough to offer their services as defence witnesses. Or perhaps they did …

It really is extraordinary we agree on that at least. I've so much respect for what they have done here in order to get to the truth of what happened. Which is in everyone's interest on many levels. Why are you so against it?

Most of them are unlikely to have even known the case was happening.
It might seem like everyone in the world will have known about Lucy Letby but we’re just a little country, we’re really not so important that the whole world follows what’s going on here.

Because it’s too late. The time to put their heads over the parapet was before her trials or as part of the application for appeal. They can’t achieve anything now, they’re just grandstanding and using a notorious case for their own aggrandisement.

Yes, it's extraordinary. Everyone recognises that. These experts must feel that there is an extremely significant problem to contribute (easily) 5 figures worth of time each.

You need to remember UK law on expert witnesses to understand how badly Evans has behaved. An expert witness, whether acting for the defence or prosecution, is supposed to acknowledge the full range of possibilities. That is extremely clear and important in UK law. They are not allowed to cherrypick and leave out inconvenient information.

Unless he was to incompetent to spot them, we should have heard about the problems the experts identified from Evans.

BIossomtoes

The Yorkshire ripper was convicted with physical evidence, that means it wasn't circumstantial - there wasn't any physical evidence at the trail of LL meaning the entire trial was based on circumstances .So was she able to have been in the room.

a knife, hammer and rope were part of the physical evidence, but he confessed to one murder

It's not too late. New evidence is grounds for review. Demonstrating inadequate performance by expert witness is grounds for review.

These experts don't need Letby's case to build their profiles. They are already at the top of the tree and people aren't interested in her in their countries anyway, in most cases

Yet for some unfathomable reason they’re all working for nothing now. Extraordinary.

one of these experts had his work taken out of context during the trail and I do believe he objected to that - perhaps that then handsome bearing on his another's involvement

If you think people at that level of eminence are going to get any noticeable gain in status or anything else from this then you really haven’t grasped what level of status they have already achieved from their work.

At least one of them did and was ignored.

If it really were too late, would that not just be an indictment of the justice system?

There are people in the US on death row who could not possibly have committed the crimes they’ve been convicted of. I mean there is absolutely conclusive DNA evidence, for example, that someone else did it. Yet they remain on death row because they have exhausted their appeals.

That it is too late for the justice system to recognise their innocence does not change the material fact that they are innocent.

Do you think it’s ok to say it’s too late? Say she is innocent but her defence team wasn’t up to the job. Is that her tough luck? Do you think that’s justice? Would you be ok with that if it was you or your loved one?