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..

Can you provide a reference to anyone who was convicted of murder without there being any forensic evidence?

You honestly don’t see the difference between cases where the victim completely disappears from the face of the Earth, never to be seen or heard from again so people need to establish why (were they killed and disposed of, kidnapped and in hiding, or just decided to start a new life?), and cases where we know there have been deaths and have the bodies, but the cause of death is in dispute?

Circumstantial evidence like Facebook searches and notes admitting (and denying) it don’t have any meaningful weight if the hard evidence demonstrates that there was no murder to begin with because the death was due to another reason. Someone cant be a murderer when their victim died of natural causes. The science is absolutely central to this case.

To be fair, there are occasional cases with eyewitness accounts, detailed confessions, guilty pleas, botched cover-ups and records of disposing of something likely to be a body.

None of them are remotely like Letby's case, and of course, there is no mysterious disappearance in any of these cases. There is a scientific record to deal with, which is why we can and must rely on the science.

He assembled a panel of world leading experts to look at all the evidence. He was clear with MacDonald that they would produce their reports regardless of what they found I.e even if they agreed with the prosecution. None of these people have reason to jettison their gold standard reputations and highly lucrative careers to free a killer nurse for no good reason. They were instructed by Letby’s team and therefore had access to ALL of the medical evidence plus a hell of a lot more expertise.

Framing medical research that’s been updated to include the intervening 30 years of data as a nefarious “deliberate” act is something else! Did he deliberately contribute to the advancement of medical science? Yes he did. As did the fella who “deliberately updated” ye olde belief that we cure cancer with leeches. That’s how medical research works. For goodness sake.

True, but extremely rare for there to be no physical evidence of malfeasance?

But yes, irrelevant in this case.

I think you meant to say there is no scientific evidence of murder for the purposes of the proceedings instead? Neither you or I know for certain what happened in practice, with or without scientific evidence.

Nobody here can explain LL's colleagues concerns, the Defence's decision not to call EWs, the fact Liverpool baby deaths will also be investigated or a range of LL's odd behaviours.

And yes, putting patient details into your personal social media searches and stalking them is gross misconduct, and a gross violation of their privacy, even more disgusting that LL is a grief vulture. It's sickening.

The Letby case is predicated on pseudo-science. The prosecution has claimed, with theories rejected by qualified experts and incompatible with science or common sense, that there is evidence of harm.

Once that is acknowledged, there is no evidence of murder (as Michael Hall was prepared to argue at the first trial).

But because this case has been so badly handled, Letby's defence has had to go beyond this and instruct the international expert panel to find the real cause of death. The defence has no obligation to provide this, and obviously would not have been funded to do so. So we have the international expert panel working for nothing.

So in Letby's case - there is no scientific evidence of murder.

There is also scientific evidence that there was no murder.

There is no point in scrabbling around looking at social media and scraps of paper, because you can't identify a criminal if there was no crime.

Have you any evidence that conducting social media searches has ever been gross misconduct on the NHS, or was during Letby's tenure?

You seem very certain that searching for patients on SM is gross misconduct in the NHS, but I think that’s just your opinion, not fact.

Regardless, even if it was, it’s not criminal, and doesn’t tell us anything about Letby, other than that she was a nosy FB addict. Which isn’t illegal.

Was Michael Hall prepared to argue that there were definitely no murders? He has said that he has no idea whether or not she is guilty but he disagrees with some elements of the prosecution case.

His reports were prepared to counteract the prosecution expert's, so I can be very precise and say that he was prepared to argue that there was no evidence that murder has been committed as described by the prosecution. That is all he should have been required to do.

An expert witness is meant to stay within the confines of his expertise, so he can tell the court that, for example, the methods Evans
described had no basis in science - i.e. that there is no evidence the murders that the prosecution described happened. It is not his role to state whether or not there were murders.

You can read more about the expert witness system and the decision not to call Hall and others at:

https://jollycontrarian.com/index.php?title=Lucy_Letby:_the_missing_defence_evidence

and

https://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/

Unnecessary processing of patient information which includes their personal data (such as their names) constitues a breach of NHS England policy on confidentiality, binding on all medical professionals working for the NHS. It is also a breach of GDPR because data has been obtained for the sole purpose of it being processed by the NHS to provide health service to the patient, and not to be input into an NHS employee's personal device and social media app to stalk said patient's personal life. An NHS patient never consents to such processing which is unlawful and likely constitutes gross misconduct as a significant violation of the relevant policy. This is not new in the context of any regulated professionals with access to personal data, it is concerning you are trying to minimise it and play the card of "little Lucy was being nosey, no harm here, ain't we all". No. Professionals are not.

Is searching for the parents on Facebook advisable? No. However, if you’re a nurse and you’ve spent a lot of time with a family whose baby then sadly dies, I can see from a human POV that you might be tempted to look them up. Especially if you have a habit of looking people up on Facebook in general, which Letby had. Other nurses have admitted that they’ve done this too.

Should you do it? No. Is it nefarious? I don’t think so. Is* it relevant? Not if there were no murders. *

Was she accessing personal information, dob, address, hospital numbers etc or just goggling the names of the parents on sm which is available to everyone

Looking them up on Facebook.

I'm not sure searching a patient's name on Facebook would count as processing data for these purposes. I note that when giving practical guidelines, NHS trusts don't mention this as a problem in social media use - e.g. https://www.rdash.nhs.uk/policies/social-media-employee-usage-policy/

But more to the point: it's not gross misconduct, is it? And not relevant to a murder case in the slightest.

Oh OK, the same as anyone else in the public then.

Yep.

I’m pretty confident reading a Facebook post for personal curiosity is not processing data so is not covered. If she had been accessing medical records without just cause, however, that would be gross misconduct.

And again, I’m not suggesting that searching everyone including patients on facebook is a good idea. I’m saying it’s not illegal, it’s not gross misconduct, and it doesn’t mean that she murdered anyone anyway. So it’s irrelevant.

Medical professionals aren't supposed to be doing this. Imagine your doctor snooping on your private life!

I just watched the Netflix documentary the other night. I’ve been so torn with this case since it was reported on.

At the time of her conviction I was convinced she was guilty, but then hearing how professionals disagree with the evidence and there being so much medical discrepancies I thought maybe she really could be innocent. So much seemed to be circumstantial and she was never caught afflicting any harm on any of the babies.

I seemed to remember that part of the evidence against her was text messages exchanged between her and colleagues at the times of the deaths. Found this link https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66120198.amp which reports on her text messages and now I’m not so sure.

It’s such a complex case that could be seen in both lights. Even the supposed confessional scribbles can be explained from a therapeutic perspective that she was just offloading all bad thoughts in her mind. Again it could be argued she stated she was evil and did this as even if innocent was starting to question if somehow she was to blame.

So awful for those parents. I hope the truth will be fully confirmed one day.

Literally anyone can snoop on your private life if you put it online. You aren’t being sensible. Do you think being in certain jobs precludes people from being nosey?

Many doctors I know use an alias on social media, as it is not uncommon to be contacted by patients

Everyone is searching everyone these days - and if you put information on Facebook, you definitely should not consider this to be private and personal information

Lucy would have only been able to see what they chose to make available on their public profile page which anyone can see. So people really shouldn't post anything they aren't happy for everyone to view. It doesn't sound like she made friend requests or anything that would have let her see private information.

Anyway I think that it's not professional and Lucy shouldn't have done it. But that all her internet activity has been reviewed and that this is worst of it, actually to me is suggestive of her not being a mass murderer. I'd expect to see either a lot of searches about ways to kill babies without being detected, other very odd material, or the Tor web browser installed.

I think that people are pushing this narrative hard about the Facebook searches is indicative of just how weak the case against her is and how little tangible evidence there is of her doing anything seriously wrong.

Worthy of a reprimand at work perhaps but not a life time in jail.

So now it's the parents' fault for putting some of their life online for some sicko grief vulture nurse to salivate over?! She wasn't supposed to be doing it. End of. Just goes to show how some will excuse ANYTHING she did even if it's clearly against hospital rules.