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..

Couldn’t disagree with you more. We have open justice in this country. It’s not pretty and it can add to the pain for the victims, but it allowed the press to print character assassinations of Letby so her defence must also be allowed to put their evidence out there.

Anyway, for anyone interested in more recent news on the case, Phil Hammond's 25th column is now online on Private Eye. This one deals with information not passed on to the coroner about some of the deaths Letby has been charged with.

https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/lucy-letby-25.pdf

linked from the series at

https://www.private-eye.co.uk/special-reports/lucy-letby

I do not think the consultants at Chester conspired to have an innocent woman convicted. I do think that we have evidence that some of them weren't in the habit of admitting to and reflecting on their own failings, and that this cleared the way for this miscarriage of justice.

It is not transparent. He is publicly asserting that there were no murders yet all he is backing that public assertion up with is an entirely unchallenged summary report which on the face of it runs counter to everything that was considered in a 10 month long trial (which was a transparent process). We do not even know whether all his own experts agreed on the findings.

And everyone is just supposed to accept all this because ‘first 11’ ‘A team’ ‘all the prosecution experts were corrupt and/or idiots’ and all the other such nonsense that Letby’s cheerleaders endlessly spout.

The summary report is a summary of the full report, which is extensive, detailed, and properly peer reviewed. The point of the report is that it should be presented in court. What do you mean by “We do not even know whether all his own experts agreed on the findings.”?

I strongly challenge your assertion that the trial was transparent. There were lengthy reporting bans, unprecedented anonymising of multiple witnesses where there’s no credible reason to believe e.g they are vulnerable to retributive violence, and the transcripts (in a public trial no less) cost £100,000 to access! That is far from transparent.

Nobody is expecting anyone to “accept all this”. No one is turning up to bronzefield tonight with wire cutters. What is being asked for is that the evidence is reviewed with the rigour we rightly expect of the justice system that has the power to lock any of us up for life.

The fact is that Lee’s panel of experts vastly outweighs those used by the prosecution and they cannot be ignored without seriously damaging public faith in the justice system. If you’re certain she’s guilty (although I really wonder how anyone can be in the circumstances) then you have nothing to fear from a thorough review of the case.

He's giving his professional judgement, and he has passed the full reasoning to the CCRC. He has explained fully how the panel conducted their double blind peer review, reached agreement, and put all of their names to the document.

I am afraid that you would probably be able to find something to complain of however he handled this.

If he had gone straight to the CCRC without sharing anything, you'd find that suspicious.

If he had shared all the medical details, you'd object to that.

If he were working alone, you'd ask why he had no support.

So here you seem to suggest there is something wrong with his perfectly sensible proceedings: working with other experts, providing a summary to press and public, sending the details to the CCRC. I don't see it.

You will see people online who keep scraping the barrel, flailing around complaining of everyone and everything to distract attention from the key facts. It's easy to get caught up in their tribalism and end up arguing about tangential points that make no difference. I'd advise you to try to sit back and think: how much closer does any of this carping about people's perfectly rational actions get us to knowing what happened?

Fortunately, more and more people are aware of the problems with Letby's convictions. I liked the ITV documentary because it packed in lots of information and showed where it was coming from. It really is worth watching. It's on YouTube now for anyone who can't get it on ITV

I followed the case from when the Guardian very first wrote about it, when the trial started.

I thought the documentary was very good, but it didn't do enough, personally, for me to be convinced of her innocence. The bits with her old school friend and nurse manager were interesting I suppose, but not really worth the paper they're written on. Of course they would speak in her favour.

I found the comments from Letby's school friend and manager useful as a narrative hook, but I agree with you that they don't tell us anything about Letby's guilt or innocence.

I was much more interested in Professor Jane Hutton's discussion of statistics, Professor Neena Modi's assessment of failings at the Countess of Chester Hospital, the team of biochemists sharing their findings, and, of course, the very clear proof that Dr Jayaram misled police and the court when he claimed Letby must have dislodged a baby's tube.

I can see that a documentary alone can't demonstrate innocence, but I certainly think it demonstrates cause for reasonable doubt about the safety of the conviction.

I think it's very courageous to speak in favour of Letby as a colleague and friend.

£100,000 for court transcripts is shocking. I agree with the argument that if you are convinced that Letby is guilty and due justice was done, then a retrail is nothing to be afraid of. I think there should be a retrail based on the email by Jayaram that said he was called to the room by Letby.

The documentary had a good tight focus, so it didn't say everything about that email either. One thing it could have said is that Dr Jayaram and the other consultants talked in that exchange about presenting the cases in a way that would pique the police's interest and persuade them to investigate. How many other inaccuracies and selective accounts may have made it into that report?

I agree. It can’t have been easy for Dawn to even have Lucy at her wedding. I’m sure there had to have been guests who didn’t like that. Hopefully none of us will ever have cause to find out whether we have a friend as courageous as Dawn, but she is a hell of a friend.

The summary report is a summary of the full report, which is extensive, detailed, and properly peer reviewed. The point of the report is that it should be presented in court. What do you mean by “We do not even know whether all his own experts agreed on the findings.”?

@Kittybythelighthouse I mean that two experts looked at each baby and if they disagreed then a third expert reviewed the case and a consensus view was reached. We do not not know which if any of the conclusions are consensus as a result of differing opinions between two experts about what happened.

https://www.bmj.com/content/388/bmj.r250

This is an interesting summary of the expert panel's, led by Lee, conclusions. Lee was not called to give evidence in the first trial.

ETA At the very least you would expect Lee to have been contacted regarding the use of his paper in a high profile and very emotive trial.

We know that all of the conclusions are consensus because after that process, the whole group agreed their conclusions for the summary report and put their names to it.

We also know that where they couldn't decide definitively on a single most likely cause of death or collapse, as in the cases of babies A, E and M, they listed both possibilities.

So we do have a consensus in the reports. Hope that clears things up.

I think you misunderstand how peer review works. The entire set of reports was reviewed before publishing.

So no matter at all if up to a third of this panel of best of the best world leading experts in their fields might have disagreed with the final opinions put forward in the report, and may potentially even have agreed with the prosecution evidence which convicted Letby?

Peer review by experts not convened by Shoo Lee with the intention of finding an alternative cause of death for each and every baby would be more rigorous to my mind.

You really haven’t understood what is meant by them reaching a consensus. It’s not that the third person has the final say. It’s that they discuss and come to a conclusion they all agree on. Nobody is putting their name to Shoo Lee’s ‘there were no murders’ report while actually thinking there might have been.

No, that is quite wrong.

You haven't understood at all, sorry.

Here is what you need to understand.

1. The task of the panel was to determine the most likely cause of death or collapse. Often there will be several possibilities.

1. The legal position is that the defence does not have to prove or even suggest a cause of death or collapse at all. But obviously if they can, it's relevant.

1. The Letby prosecution argued that they had excluded natural causes of death or collapse or considered them sufficiently unlikely that murder was the only alternative.

1. The experts used a system called double blind peer review. It is considered the gold standard in research circles. It means that instead of one person writing a report and the other checking it, they both write separate reports so make sure they haven't influenced each other. Then they discuss any discrepancies and reach a position they can both support.

1. At this point, we know that all but two pairs reached an explanation they were both happy with. That doesn't mean the other pairs were at each other's throats. It means they felt it would be useful to get another opinion, the way we'd always want a medic to do. Collaborate, share knowledge, reach a conclusion everyone concerned agrees on.

1. Once the third person had been consulted in these cases, each pair had an explanation to share with the whole group. The whole group then critiqued and refined and agreed as necessary. Then they all agreed that they could sign off on the reports, and on the statement that they had found no evidence of deliberate harm.

This is an exemplary process for collaborative investigation. It's not about two people disagreeing and one being shouted down. And if anyone had not agreed that there was no deliberate harm, they would not have put their name to the reports agreeing that statement.

This is how science works, and there seem to be a lot of people online who won't acknowledge that you can't accuse people of doing it wrong just because you don't like the outcome. If you are reading comments online like this, those people either have no background in science or research or are commenting in bad faith. I'd be careful about relying on them.

In three cases at least, the group felt there was more than one possibility - e.g. different immediate causes for child A's blood clot, child E's GI haemorrhage and child M's infection.

That's fine. No drama. In some ways it is better for Letby's case because they are saying the prosecution has missed, ignored or rejected more than one explanation more likely than murder.

Again, you’re misunderstanding the process entirely. That’s not what happened. It was a rigorous peer reviewed process completely in keeping with the scientific standard and yes they are top international experts, coming from the world’s best institutions like e.g the Karolinska institute. You couldn’t ask for a more scientifically thorough review of these cases.

It was not some slovenly hack job. They know what they are doing. They have gold standard reputations and highly lucrative careers to protect. They haven’t suddenly decided to jettison everything to do a half-arsed job on a case they aren’t even being paid for, for some nurse halfway across the world. Where on earth are you getting your info from?

I understand exactly what consensus means, but it loses some of its weight when all involved are part of a panel which was tasked with finding alternative causes of death for all the babies. The fact that some of the experts may have disagreed before reaching consensus, and what it was they disagreed on, is not at all irrelevant.

Plus one of the experts is clearly not content to put their name to the report as things stand.

The panel was not tasked with finding alternative causes of death for the babies. It was tasked with finding the most likely causes of deaths for the babies.

One expert, a pathologist based in the UK, wished to remain anonymous for the first summary report but was named in the second, which reiterates the conclusion that there was no evidence of any deliberate harm.

You really are a bit of a mine of misinformation on this topic - I think it needs saying. Wherever you are getting your facts is really not to be trusted.

If so meticulous, gold standard and not half-arsed why have they made an error like getting a baby’s date of death wrong by a week?

In any event, I guess we just have to wait and see what the CCRC make of it. Although no doubt Letby’s cheerleaders will immediately be screaming stitch-up if it goes anything other than her way.

No one is screaming here, just quietly explaining how you're not understanding the process.

Here are the two summary reports from the international panel, for anyone interested. They include the process used to reach consensus. They can be a bit tricky to find online.

Linked from:

https://lucyletbyinnocence.com/#shoolee

Babies A, D, F, G, I, K, O:

https://lucyletbyinnocence.com/shoo-lee/International%20Expert%20Panel%20-%20Summary%20Report.pdf

Babies B, C, E, H, J, L, M, N, P, Q:

https://lucyletbyinnocence.com/shoo-lee/International%20Expert%20Panel%20New%20Summary%20Report%20of%20additional%2010%20cases.pdf

They are pretty clear, especially the summary causes of death.

Shoo Lee set out with a clear bias in convening his panel to find alternative causes of death for all the babies. He had decided that the prosecution evidence was wrong for the non air embolism cases a) before he’d seen it and b) when he didn’t even have specialist expertise in the areas relating to those cases.

Who is the pathologist named in the second (I assume you mean full unless I am missing something?) report? Have you seen the second/full report?

A typo in a summary report that was likely typed up by an assistant is no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water. Though if you have issues with errors, may I point you towards the Cheshire Police’s ham fisted bungling of the door swipe data, which was back to front during the entire trial? To name one.

If by “Letby’s cheerleaders” you mean people here who just want to see that justice is rigorous and fair in the country they live in, something that affects all of us and our children etc directly, then I imagine we’ll accept exactly what we are asking for - a thorough review of the evidence which either makes safe the conviction or vacates it and does so transparently. If this is what the CCRC does then all well and good.

We aren’t some fan club. We literally just want to be sure we aren’t living in a nightmare where any one of us could be banged up for life on the shonky word of a dodgy doctor and a bungling police force. Not too much to ask I think.