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..

@Oftenaddled but explain the exact scenario of needing to look after another dying baby in the same cot? Not just in that room, but another dying baby. How does that help? Because I'd love to understand. It makes no sense to need to lose another baby to replace the previous one you lost. Then you just have two traumatic deaths to get over. Well maybe in her sick mind it does, that's why she kept making it happen. But to a normal person it makes no sense.

This article has some interesting insights about why what she was doing with the searches in the context of her crimes is textbook serial killer behaviour-

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/lucy-letbys-chilling-christmas-day-30667154

Searches of Letby's home found sensitive medical documents under her bed, including nursing handover sheets, resuscitation records, and blood gas readings. Of the 257 sheets, 21 related to infants Letby had allegedly harmed.

About the notepads/diaries, I cared for a man who died suddenly. I'd spent most of the day with him and administered all of his medication. My immediate train of thought when I found out the coroner had asked for an autopsy to determine the cause of death because of the sudden, unexpected nature of his death, was along the lines of "oh my god, I have murdered Bob. I overdosed him. I am going to prison. I deserve to go to prison. How could I do that to his family and live with it? I'm a horrible person."

The coroner determined that Bob died of complications related to pneumonia and acute asthma and that his death was not predictable nor had there been any wrongdoing on the part of me or the other medical professionals who looked after Bob that day.

You're not making sense there.

Isn't that exactly the sort of thing serial killers do ... so let's assume she was doing it to strengthen the case that she was a serial killer.

You are illustrating the point from at @Kittybythelighthouse that people don't want to let go of a villain they can enjoy criticising. It is socially acceptable to hate a killer, but that shouldn't get in the way of recognising when a killer might be no such thing - unless you're enjoying the hating.

The point presumably was that her job (at Liverpool) was to care for babies who might, despite her best efforts, die, and that continuing to do her job to the best of her ability was the best way to deal with that.

Repeated exposure to unavoidable stresses reduces sub-clinical anxiety over time, if you want a more general explanation.

That article is as ridiculous as its headline suggests.

Clearly meta should take Facebook down on Christmas Day, since only murderers conduct searches then. Or leave it up and hand the IP addresses over to Chester Police.

What arrant nonsense. I feel as if I've lost several IQ points just scrolling down that page.

One small but vital point, in the hope that it doesn't seem like an endorsement of the rest of it. Christmas is a normal working day for many health care professionals, including Letby in 2015.

Surely her supervisor knew what was best for her and told her to stay in room 2 (I think it was) to help her deal with it? Not keep going in 1. And like I said colleague agreed. Wouldn't someone trying to get over a traumatic incident at a job listen to their superior who is trying to do what's best for them? And no she doesn't just get to decide she's a better nurse than the one in the room she wants to be in! That again is up to the person above her to decide. Goes to show she'll do what she wants when she wants. Not a great candidate for a nurse, as well as being described as "cold"!

What you’re doing here is assuming guilt as a starting point shared by all. Letby is guilty in black and white technical legal terms, but as we are discussing a potential miscarriage of justice we are speaking in the context of possible innocence. Obviously none of us are advocating for a serial killer to be released. We aren’t yet sure that she is a serial killer, or a killer at all.

These things you are disturbed by are only sinister if you refuse to acknowledge that we don’t agree with your starting point. For us guilt hasn’t yet been proven, You don’t have to agree with us, That’s fine, but clarity of communication here is impossible if you don’t acknowledge our starting point, reframing it all as if we are all sure she’s guilty but for some reason we love serial killers just leads to pointless circular conversations.

She hoped her supervisor would listen to her explaining what she felt she needed. She didn't. So she grumbled a little in a text message. Nothing sinister.

And yes, she had to defer to her supervisor as we all do, but she was entitled to express her feelings about it all briefly to a colleague, and those feelings weren't unreasonable.

I guess that's why it was kept out of the trial and we only learnt of it afterwards. I don't think empathy or warmth is a "skill" (or has anything to do with being an extrovert)-yes she could probably learn to fake it a certain amount, but at her core she would always be cold and lacking in empathy. Because that's who she was. You can't fix a psychopath. And it was obvious enough to be picked up on at that early stage. I thought her second assessor hesitated to pass her as well...

She did have complaints? For one there was a mother not in the trial who said LL made a comment to her about her baby boy that was completely inappropriate-I'm sure she made a complaint. Then there was the incident where she tried to take a baby away that was still alive. Not sure if that was an official complaint or not. AND the comment about a baby liking a bath. And being excited to make up a memory box. Yeah there really was a lot...

Communicating empathy is certainly a skill. The assessor explained what she meant. It was about explaining procedures, distracting the child with a toy etc - all good to learn. Being a bit awkward and hesitant is not evidence that you are a psychopath.

I think you are wrong about the complaints. Chester handed over records of such things at Thirlwall and none about Letby. First is just tabloid gossip as far as I remember but would need to see it to say more.

Second was never identified as actually being Letby, and no, there was no complaint about this error. It was an interesting one, because the nurse in question, thinking the baby was dead, wanted to put the child in a cold cot (which preserves the body). If you'd just murdered a child, you'd be delighted to delay that as long as possible, since delays make the postmortem less effective.

Why would you complain about a nurse sharing a fond memory of your child enjoying a bath? Isn't that exactly how we are encouraged to offer comfort - sharing the good memories?

I'm sure anyone could be described as excited by an unsympathetic observer, when their job is to communicate as positively as possible with bereaved parents.

You only need a bit of empathy yourself to see that this isn't a catalogue of failings!

Having watched it, I think she's guilty. And being investigated for more cases.

All these gutter journalists have no respect for the parents and families of the victims. People try to justify it by saying "the parents deserve the truth", but the parents have already got the truth, as they've said and have also said seeing such insensitive reports and media is hurtful.

Those who are convinced she is guilty, does the lack of neonatal specialists who agree with Dewi's evidence not make you uncomfortable?

Dr Evans is not a specialist in any of the areas being examined. Of the 7 specialists who have examined the medical evidence, not a single one of them even agrees that the babies were murdered, let alone agrees they were murdered in the way Dewi testified.

Dewi altered several of his reports after finding out that Lucy was not on shift when the babies were allegedly harmed.

She needs a new trial, and the prosecution needs to find expert witnesses who are qualified to testify about the subjects on which they are giving evidence.

I agree that some of the things she said or did were odd or insensitive, but there are also plausible explanations for them, and being insensitive is not a crime.

@Frequency the reason some posters keep going on and on about the other, frankly very weak evidence, is because there is no real evidence that the babies were killed or that Lucy did it.

It is a classic witch hunt. Also if you can convince people she was a bad person then they won't care as much that she is in jail unfairly.

If people want to see what incriminating text messages actually look like there is a great channel 4 documentary out at the moment, Operation Dark Phone.

Why do you seem to think there were no prosecution witnesses qualified to give evidence in specific areas of expertise?

So 236 sheets related to infants who weren’t harmed? Which surely demonstrates that there was no nefarious motive to keeping the sheets.

i agree it’s odd behaviour but we don’t lock people up for life for being a bit odd. I do wonder if she has some sort of OCD, autism, etc. might also explain the fact that it’s been reported she was non emotional in court. Or maybe she’s just numb and traumatised by it all.

Do you really think that this behaviour means she must be a murderer? Sure, murderers are shifty, but not all shifty people are murderers.

An appeal court judge took the unprecedented step of writing to the court whilst the trial was in progress to question the expertise and integrity of Evans. Judge Goss decided to leave it to the jury judge his credibility for themselves. Evans has recanted his testimony regarding the cause of death in some of the cases since she was found guilty. She’s been convicted of murder by methods which he no longer stands by (and have never been described in the body of evidence). He also changed his mind whilst on the stand when he realised she couldn’t have done what he said she had done because she wasn’t there.

Bohin is subject to numerous complaints regarding her own practice in Guernsey and these are complaints which call her own integrity into question. She rubber stamped Evans’ findings, even the ones which found babies had died by methods which don’t exist in the body of medical evidence.

It is a fact that medical expert witness work is extremely lucrative and there is a strong tendency to give the hiring parties what they want rather than following the brief which is to assist the court and remain impartial.

Im not going back to research what the other experts contributed, but it’s all out there and amounts to very little. I don’t believe any of them went further than stating that this finding is ‘consistent with’ or that thing ‘can’t be ruled out’.

Perfectly fine for Shoo Lee to confidently state at a televised press conference “there were no murders” though?

Yes, perfectly fine. That was a press conference.

The second part of this statement doesn't support (and is not relevant to ) the first..

Nothing about doing that is okay, and I think deep down you probably know that.

Not at all. There's a long and honourable tradition of working through the media to resolve a miscarriage of justice.

It's bizarre how people seem determined to invent rules that Letby and her defence have broken.

And it is transparent. People who want to keep Letby as a hate figure are just determined not to hear the evidence in her favour. They're all for justice - oh yes. So long as nobody is allowed to speak out, to publish scientific research, to talk the media. All those things are somehow wrong, because they might exonerated Lucy Letby.

You know that Shoo Lee is a real expert. You know his work is based on proper scientific evidence. You know that Evans and co have nothing to compare to this. So you think he should be quiet about all this and not speak to the media? Why?

Seeing as he’s an expert who has had full access to all the medical records and has spent a lot of time looking at them I think so, yes.

He was also clear to the defence barrister that if he thought LL had killed them/someone had killed them he would say so. He doesn’t market himself as an expert witness for hire so I think is less biased than Evans.