Lucy Letby - what's happening

[Viviennemary]

In the last few days I've heard conflicting news stories. One an ex coroner saying she is innocent. And another piece of news saying the Cheshire police want to charge her with more crimes believed to have been carried out at two other hospitals she worked at.

I think enough money has already been spent on her first trial. I don’t think there will be much of a public appetite to have a retrial to silence conspiracy theorists and armchair critics who weren’t in the court room and didn’t hear the evidence.

There is a new trend of certain people trying to cast doubt on convictions in the US, too. Something called the innocence project, or something. Probably originates with clout chasers and narcissistic people who need attention.

There's no evidence whatsoever of any tissue damage caused by any hard object. You're stating a random unproved hypothesis - what could make a baby bleed - as fact.

There is plenty of evidence that the child was vulnerable to intestinal hemorrhage, and no record of significant trauma to his throat, even though doctors examined him after his mother's visit.

The police would be involved if there was evidence that someone had shoved a hard object down your throat, leading to the haemorrhage.

And there was no such evidence for Baby E.

‘Dr Evans said: "There are number of bits equipment that are relatively rigid.
"There are plastic tubes used for suction, there could have been interference with that.
"Or there's the introducer, a thin wire surrounded by plastic, it's more than sufficient to cause trauma if it was used inappropriately.
"I can't be certain about what caused trauma, but it was some kind of relatively stiff thing, sufficient to cause extraordinary bleeding."
He added: "There is no evidence at all that this was a natural phenomenon, it's not something I have ever seen in my decades in neonatology."

It is telling that you both seem to think an appeal (which is a legal right once conditions are met) is special treatment.

People contesting miscarriages of justice isn't some new woke American trend. It goes back to the Old Testament at least, for heaven's sake.

So you are saying that expert witnesses in neonatology were wrong? What makes you in a position to dispute their evidence?

Dr Evans:

Tubes and sticks exist
There was bleeding
The evil nurse must have pierced the child with a tube or stuck

He's a walking parody. Lots of words. No evidence.

If police see my butter knife beside me will they presume someone stabbed my throat with it? Or should they look for a wound or mark in my throat?

Where is their evidence? They never cited any evidence of a mark or wound on the throat. There was no post-mortem. It's just speculation, sorry.

LL has requested an appeal which has been denied. Nobody has taken away her rights.

I have no idea why some people think her conviction isn’t safe. They obviously didn’t follow the whole trial. I listened to the entire podcast of her trial at the time and I don’t doubt her guilt.

That’s not how the legal process works. And remember that there are other babies who she probably killed which the jury were unable to reach a guilty verdict on because the evidence wasn’t sufficient.

Juries don’t just reach their verdicts on a whim.

If that's the Daily Mail podcast, you might want to be aware that Caroline Cheetham who hosts it received payments from Chester police before, during, and after the trial. Not an independent source:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/11/letby-podcaster-in-conflict-of-interest-row-over-payments/

But if she or anyone else had evidence that anyone or anything lacerated baby E's throat, I'd be interested. Because bleeding from the mouth is not evidence of that, and not is crying

Ideally the legal process would work on evidence - but never mind. The point is that you said there was evidence this happened. There isn't.

One thing which confuses me is why wasn’t the ‘evidence’ of these these experts who are now casting doubt on the conviction used as part of the defence? As I recall, the only defence witness was a plumber who confirmed that there were problems with the plumbing and contamination at the hospital. The defence would have known the arguments the prosecution were going to put forward so I don’t get why they weren’t countered.

Indeed, and they weren't so there wasn't.

We don't know but here's some good guesses:

davidallengreen.com/2024/07/the-lucy-letby-case-some-thoughts-and-observations-what-should-happen-when-a-defence-does-not-put-in-their-own-expert-evidence-for-good-reason-or-bad/

The defence should have known the arguments the prosecution was going to put forward. They exchange medical reports before the trial. But the prosecution expert witness changed his evidence during the trial. This means the defence reports, which were written to disprove the prosecution case, would have become less useful.

After reporting restrictions were lifted, it became known that various experts had tried to raise concerns during the trial. But they wouldn't have been able to do so in public without being in contempt of court

The route Letby's new lawyer is taking - showing how each individual death or incident likely occurred - is much more expensive and requires more specialists. Fortunately, leading international experts are taking it on for nothing. But I would say it needed the verdict for that to happen - people wouldn't sign up free with levels of expertise for a case that shouldn't have needed it until there was a danger that there had been a major injustice.

@Oftenaddledbut a prosecution can’t just change or introduce new evidence randomly during a trial. There is really tight judicial legislation around this

So, in case I've confused things with terminology, by evidence here I meant that Evans and Bohin changed their expert opinions on many points, moving away from the medical reports they had written and which had been given to the defence.

Here is an example - just picked this one because it's easy to find and explicit in the exchange between Evans and Myers

Child P suffered his first collapse at about 9.40am the next day.
Dr Evans said: “I think he had an extra dollop of air.
“I don’t think he would have collapsed but for him having an additional injection of air into his stomach.”
The retired consultant paediatrician said the effect was to “splinter the diaphragm” of Child P and compromise his breathing.
Ben Myers KC, defending, pointed out to Dr Evans that he had previously said he was “at a loss” to explain the 9.40am collapse and had suspected splintering of the diaphragm took place the day before.
He said: “You have simply shunted it along the line to – as it happens – when nurse Letby was on duty?”
Dr Evans said: “I was not putting anyone in the frame.”
Mr Myers said: “I make it plain – what you are doing again is coming up with ideas and theories to try to support the allegation rather than working in the facts we have.”
Dr Evans said: “That is incorrect.”
Mr Myers said: “What you have done is invent an extra dollop of air to try to take your theory over the line.”
Dr Evans replied: “I have not invented any dollops.
“The idea that I could get it all perfectly right from looking at all the notes is simply unrealistic.
“I was not able to speak to any member of the local staff, I was never going to get everything 100% correct.”
He said he had come to his latest conclusion after following the evidence in the trial.

https://www.chesterstandard.co.uk/news/23407900.lucy-letby-baby-boy-died-after-nurse-forced-air-feeding-tube/

So obviously if Hall had prepared a statement based on the information about the day before, it wouldn't be much use with this change of mind.

But surely the evidence would have been ruled inadmissible if it wasn’t deemed valid?

Do you actually know anything about the innocence project?
A project that has been running since 1992 and has freed or exonerated (you may want to look up the word) 250 people.

You can see Evans admitting to making a significant change during the trial there.

If you are saying it should have been ruled inadmissible, I'm genuinely interested, but that didn't happen. The prosecution was allowed to change its account, during the trial, repeatedly.

Wasn't it Evans that was caught out and said 'well something musty have happened' (paraphrased).
He also wasn't sourced by the prosecution but put his services forward, and this is a man that has been told off by a judge for making the evidence fit what he wants it to say.

And he admitted he changed his mind after listening in to and in response to what other witnesses had said. I was surprised he was allowed to hear what was going on when he wasn’t on the stand.

I picked two cases at random and those guys were innocent. It wasn't a grey area or nit picking, they were both exonerated by clear DNA evidence.