Lucy Letby - programme on ITV now

[Viviennemary]

I think this must be a new programme and not a repeat. Experts are being wheeled out to try and say Letby is innocent. I'm not convinced at all. None of them were even at the trial or worked with Letby. It's all theories and opinions..

Some people think the whole case and trial was all theories and opinions too.

The poor parents of those children. Hopefully whoever decided on making this has left them alone.

We've had this discussion before. Working with someone is not a good criterion for judging them. That is why you are tried by a jury of your peers without prior involvement in your case - not your colleagues.

Josh Halliday, who was indeed present at the trial, played a prominent role here, surely? He initially believed in Letby's guilt, but changed his mind.

If you think that women like Neena Modi, Jane Hutton and Helen Shannon needed to sit through 100 days of speculation and pseudoscience to burnish their academic credentials, there's not much more to be said. Those who (for reasons beyond me) like the idea that a nurse murdered babies too much to let go of it won't be persuaded by science or logic.

For everyone else, there's a great review here by Lucy Mangan:
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/aug/03/lucy-letby-beyond-reasonable-doubt-review-documentary-itv1-itvx

Hardly the main point, but I was proud of Britain's women academics, watching this. Inspirational.

Theories supported by more and better qualified experts than the one who cooked up the theories about her doing it in the first place.

She’s still in prison though….all the theories aren’t changing that right now..

That's what the documentary is about.

I'd recommend a watch. On catch-up at www.itv.com/watch/lucy-letby-beyond-reasonable-doubt/10a6860a0001B/10a6860a0001

Thanks for sharing, I’ll watch that tomorrow.

I haven't read in-depth about this case but from the media reports at the time, in my layperson's opinion, I thought something odd was going on there. Letby had a crap defence team. But the evidence put forward by the prosecution was somewhat circumstantial. She may well have had mental health problems and she may have been disliked by her colleagues, but does that mean she did it? Just by being on duty at the time of each incident doesn't make her guilty. There needed to be more evidence to and I don't think Letby's guilt was proven beyond reasonable doubt.

IMO the case is not proven . 3 senior managers at that hospital were arrested and are on bail . One of the consultants clearly said there was no attempt by Letby to.call him when a baby
‘ crashed ‘ yet an email from him was found where he said he was only in the room because she called him . The prosecution expert witness has been discredited . World experts have clearly stated no murders took place . I think this whole hospital was in chaos , they had more babies dying than expected and rather than incompetences attributed to the consultants/ managers they looked for someone to blame . People are so desperate to find someone to blame they are not wanting to see the problems with this conviction. At the very least it needs reexamining .

If you watch the documentary you will also discover Lucy wasn't on duty at the time of every incident.

Babies also died and collapsed when she wasn't on duty.

But the police decided those cases must be natural causes because she wasn't there. They made a few errors to start with and accidently flagged some incidents as suspicious when she wasn't on duty but they recategorised them as not suspicious when they realised she couldn't have harmed the babies.

Basically according to the procecution:

Death or collapse when Lucy was there = murder or attempted murder

Death or collapse when Lucy was not there = natural causes

Spot on.
See also: x Ray shows air in baby’s stomach so Evans says Letby injected it and it’s the cause of death. It turns out not only was Letby not on duty, she hadn’t even MET the baby when the x rays were taken. So Evans changes his mind and says it must have been something else Letby did (for which there was also no evidence.)
The lack of logic and scientific thinking in the police investigation and prosecution case is just embarrassing.

I am by no means a law or medical professional, but how would they go for a retrial here? I assume it’s a long process? Surely this is an unsafe prosecution?

What is likely to happen next? It's very clear that Lucy wasn't given the benefit of an adequate defence. Will there eventually be a retrial or does she spend the next years in prison while we speculate?

Those poor parents.
I won't be watching it.

I can't bear looking at her face.

Her new barrister Mark Macdonald has put a submission in to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, so it’s in their hands now and they are expected to respond in the autumn.

No one is taking away from the grief and horror the others will have to live with. But their needs do not Trump someone’s right to a proper and fair trial. How does it benefit the parents for an innocent person to be convicted for the crimes?
im not saying LL is definitely innocent, but there are a lot of grounds to suggest that a retrial is needed.
In my mind it’s making me think of the Post Office scandal. I know I’ll probably get flamed for saying this, but this could well be a case where it’s taken a TV programme to force the case to be looked at again. That is all I mean by that comment.
l read Lucy Mangan’s review and will be watching the documentary.

Nothing to add but just wanted to say great comment

The 3 senior members have only been arrested because she was found guilty. It’s their inaction after Letby was reported to the multiple times between summer/autumn 2015 and whenever the investigation was handed to the police that has got them a corporate manslaughter charge. If she was innocent there would be no case to answer.

I have no idea if she did anything wrong - but the hopsital sounds dangerously mismanaged and a cause in and of it's self.

NHS does have form for scape goating but also two things can be true at the same.

I don't think her still being in prision means anything about her gulit TBH - there been quite a few miscarriages of justice where concerns were raised for years - Sally Clark was convicted because of flawed statics by a profesional witness stepping outside their expertise - Royal stastical society spoke out against it but first appeal upheld the conviction took second attempt when it became clear some information about deaths had been withheld.

I do think there are increasingly questions about evidence presented at the trial.

I do wonder whether the police have been over zealous in making the evidence fit the crime. Maybe their actions should be the next to be examined.

I also can't understand the sentiment that the parents need closure now and that the case should be left alone even if that means a person has been wrongly imprisoned.

If I was a parent in this situation I couldn't rest if I thought a person had been wrongly convicted, however much I wanted closure.

I have no idea if Letby is a murdered or not but I am concerned that experts are contesting the evidence and that a miscarriage of justice has occurred.

The police looked at all reasons for the deaths, including non-deliberate causes. Each case was looked at by a separate team of detectives and medical experts to decide on deliberate or not before bringing all the cases together IIRC.

I haven’t seen any evidence at all that they looked at when Letby was on shift or not and used that as a deciding factor other than from some dodgy investigate journalist.

Yes the chart exists but unless you know at what point in the investigation it was produced, it’s pretty meaningless.

They not just plucking straws o she was there. It would be based on medical evidence not her presence

I do think she's guilty, I want her to have the case investigated though (if there's the slightest chance) because of the rule of law. I also think that because she's fits into the stereotype of a good person, white, middle-class, a nurse people will always be more shocked and want to prove her innocence more than someone who was working-class, Black and fit the stereotype if aggressive Black women or someone who struggled with substance abuse etc. I doubt if she was any of those characteristics that people would be so intrigued or so convinced by her innocence.

I think it will always be complicated - these babies were already very sick and so I think for an average jury that amount of detailed medical info is a lot and perhaps they needed more neutral advice or education on the basics? Or maybe on this case a jury of experts (but that goes against trial by peers). I also think she's guilty based on the evidence, especially the letters she wrote (why would she write them if she was innocent?). But two things cna be true at the same time, so some people might have bad suspicions and tried to cover it up and the hospital may have also been negligent.

I think it’s going to be impossible to really know all the while medical experts cannot agree . It cannot be beyond all reasonable doubt when there is such disagreement. I think we also need to hear from the defence team as to why only one witness and a plumber were called in mitigation. On such a high profile case it seems unfathomable .

Like others, I do not know if she is guilty or not, but having already lived through a number of awful miscarriages of justice where innocent people spent decades of their lives in prison for crimes they did not commit - and in most of those cases where they would have been executed in a different time - I do not think justice is served by not re-opening te investigation and the trial. In particular, beyond the very disturbing evidence being presented by experts and others now, and the undermining of the truthfulness of a key witness who is now proven to have lied at her trial, I also find it disturbing that maternity services across the country are now being investigated as being inadequate and dangerous. It does make me wonder if they looked around for a nurse to pin their failings on.