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..

The reports are above - yes, of course I've read them.

We have spoken up thread about the difference between motivation and bias. Let's look at the steps.

Lee suspects that Letby has been convicted on unreliable evidence.

Lee is advised by Letby's barrister that she well only be released if alternative causes of death are found.

Lee offers to convene a panel to examine the deaths and collapsed, making it clear that he will report conclusions of deliberate harm if they are found.

Lee then convenes a panel, asking them first to look for the most likely cause of death, then to look at the expert witness view and comment on it. He uses standard scientific processes to avoid bias - the double blind peer review with further moderation you were complaining about upthread.

Does Lee have a motivation here? Yes. Does he permit bias to influence the work of the panel? We've no grounds to think so. His process was, of course, far more rigorous and informed by far more information than the work of the prosecution expert witness.

(Editing to add: I missed your question. Both of these reports are summaries. The full report is with the CCRC)

The Justice system makes mistakes because it's a human led institution. Core to integrity is the ability to admit to errors and act accordingly. Vera Baird KC is the CCRC's new chair, appointed after Helen Pitcher left following the fall-out from the wrongful conviction of Andy Malkinson.

CCRC's core principles should exemplify independence, transparency and assiduity.

I watched the program last night. I was shocked. There are too many inconsistencies.

I feel so sorry for the families involved. Their suffering must be great and unrelenting . Another trial would add to that suffering.

I do believe that a Judicial Review is the way forward, with all experts contributing, whether having been previously called or not. The families should be protected as far as possible.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yl273mlryo

Cheshire Police have submitted further evidence of possible murders by Letby to the CPS for consideration. So it's not going to stop for families affected @OLDERME

Absolutely. I meant no disrespect to either woman. Since I was already convinced by the science and logic, their contributions just made me sadder. But there are lots of people out there, including on this thread, who seem to think Letby had no life and wasn't respected by colleagues. It's right that we chip away at these narratives.

I was interested to see the panel of Loose Women agree that this was the most striking thing about the documentary for them, and that they would support a judicial review. So these two brave women, Dawn and Karen Rees, certainly affected public opinion, and I hope that is some consolation to them.

I will say that whilst I don’t think all of the incidents were just coincidences that she was on the same ward (although not impossible) - I don’t think the fact she Facebook searched the families is evidence of any wrongdoing.

Call me a freak but until recently when I deleted Facebook, I’d randomly Facebook search my colleagues at the other end of the office to just see what their wives / husbands look like. It’s certainly not done in a malicious way and I think with social media, it’s just so easy for people to be nosy. But it certainly doesn’t equate to murder! I realise how insecure it was in my part and my life was improved so much without social media but the fact she searched the families doesn’t = murder.

The note she wrote, however is compelling but again maybe she felt genuine guilt that babies passed away in her care and so blamed herself? Idk, if she did do it she is the most vile human on the planet; but if she’s just unlucky then she is the unluckiest woman on the planet.

She also wrote notes stating she did nothing wrong, she is innocent, and questioning why she is being blamed.

Why is one of the notes taken as a confession of guilt, but the other is not proof of innocence?

Those scribbles were nothing more than a barely coherent stream of consciousness from a distressed woman. She may have been distressed because she knew she was guilty; equally, she may have been distressed because she was innocent. We don't know because they are not evidence of guilt or innocence.

Far too much attention was paid to the notes, imo. And not enough emphasis was given to the fact that she also wrote notes insisting on her innocence. She was not a stupid woman; if the notes were more than a therapy exercise, surely she would have disposed of them when the investigation ramped up?

I agree that she is extraordinarily unlucky but not because she was always there. She wasn’t always there. There were other deaths which Evans marked as murder. Once it was shown that Letby could not have been responsible for those deaths (she wasn’t actually there) they magically became unsuspicious. She wasn’t even there for some of the ones she’s been convicted for!

Evans also changed his mind literally while on the stand about one murder method when it was shown that Letby was not present and had not even been at work in the days since the baby in question was born. Did you watch the documentary? It goes into that at the beginning. Evans is an absolute charlatan who will go down in disgrace like his buddy Roy Meadow (the Dr that convicted Sally Clark and Angela Canning).

I had to look up exactly what failing the placement entailed-and came across another inappropriate comment LL made-

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyz904y0xyo

Ms Lightfoot also told the hearing she overheard an "inappropriate" comment from Letby in the wake of the deaths of two triplets in June 2016 - who Letby was convicted of murdering.
She said she overheard her telling a colleague: "You'll never guess what's happened."
Ms Lightfoot said: "The way she said it seemed like she was talking about some sort of exciting event she had witnessed.
"It wasn't an appropriate response to the death of a child.
"I have never, and I have never since, seen a response like that to a nurse involved in a patient's passing."

I mean if her behaviour and reaction to deaths is wildly outside any other nurses response you really have to ask yourself why.

As for the other complaints-the first one I mentioned definitely happened-it was from the first documentary they released after she was found guilty IIRC. It was the mother herself talking about it. I'm sure she was a nurse as well and LL had said something about her baby not doing very well and the mother felt like this was an inappropriate comment. So she made a complaint against LL. Then her baby mystery collapsed...I'm sure she said something about finding raised insulin levels in her baby too but because he recovered it wasn't investigated.

You're right about the second one-I forgot the nurse was never identified-they thought it was likely LL though. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was.

The bath thing I don't really understand but you probably had to be there. It's obviously a devastating time for the mother and she felt it was inappropriate for LL to be going on and on and smiling about a bath the baby had whilst alive. I'm inclined to believe given everything we know about LL that she was indeed being inappropriate and not displaying a normal response to a grieving parent.

But that's entirely subjective in retrospect @Firefly1987 It wasn't noted and reported at the time the incident happened.

As I said, @Firefly1987 , it's easy for people to make subjective judgements on tone and expression of emotion, especially in intense situations like the immediate aftermath of an infant death. Even if all of those recollections are accurate and not distorted by hindsight, they are pretty tame stuff and tell us nothing at all about the possibility of a crime.

Which time?

Does human behaviour not interest you at all?

OK so anything short of her telling everyone she's killing babies is tame and tells us nothing...

To speak for myself here, I am very interested in human behaviour. As a result I endeavour to use empathy to understand nuances at play with anecdotes, such as you’ve presented, in order to avoid black and white villain vs good guy thinking.

Statements made in retrospect by parents who’ve been told that Lucy Letby had murdered their baby are going to be coloured by that belief. These parents had no issues with LL at the time - in some cases they especially liked her. One set of parents asked her to be godmother.

I don’t think it’s a demonstration of high emotional intelligence at all to judge a person by statements made in retrospect under these circumstances. This is exactly the sort of thinking that was used in witch trials, I mean that literally. None of these things are sinister unless you have already decided that she’s guilty. At most they’re a little clumsy. Even if they were extraordinarily weird things to say or do none of them are evidence of murder.

This is “Goody Proctor spoiled the milk” type thinking straight from Salem 1692. This is not a demonstration of enhanced emotional intelligence and fluency in human behaviour.

@Kittybythelighthouse I'm not sure how you can say that when most of this stuff didn't even come out til she'd been found guilty.

This type of thing is hugely important-I mean just look at Ian Huntley inserting himself into the investigation and even admitting he was the last person to see Holly and Jessica. Police know how serial killers act and it's a massive part of catching them in the first place and binging them to justice. It's fine if you want to focus solely on the science but others are going to pick up on the red flags of her behaviour. One comment can be shrugged off as her being awkward and getting it wrong but when you see time after time she was acting in a very inappropriate way and is also the one tied to all the incidents then it's bloomin obvious something wasn't right with her.

That’s precisely the point. Her behaviour was only considered suspicious in retrospect, and people’s recollections, and the stories they tell to each other, are influenced by the guilty verdict. No-one reported anything at the time.

@SnakesAndArrows apart from the lady I mentioned. I found an article about her-
https://news.sky.com/story/lucy-letby-mother-fears-killer-nurse-harmed-her-baby-in-act-of-revenge-12922481

Or in her own words (the video in the article isn't working for me but I found it on tiktok)-

https://www.tiktok.com/@skynews/video/7268754925948128544?lang=en

And not everyone is going to make a complaint about a nurse during the worst time of their life. Especially the ones who actually lost a baby. They already had so much to deal with. If they were such innocuous comments they probably wouldn't even remember them years later-but they did.

Most of that stuff actually came out during the trial and was reported in the papers with suitably lurid headlines every day (which incidentally is what happens when there’s a “reporting ban” only the salacious stuff the prosecution allege gets reported) it’s not relevant when it came out though.

The parents were told, years after their child died, that Lucy Letby had killed them. Their critical statements about her, including anecdotes where they say they aren’t sure it was her, were made at that point/during the trial. It’s irrelevant when the public heard about it.

The problem here is that literally none of these things things you list is actually odd unless you already think she’s guilty, which you clearly do. Again, while she’s “guilty” in a letter of the law black and white sense, I mean actually guilty (given we are discussing a possible miscarriage of justice). Can you seriously not remove guilt from the equation and have a think about it while trying not to be biased/assuming guilt? None of these things are odd in that context. It’s honestly a bit concerning if you cannot do that even for the sake of argument.

Bear in mind that the Cheshire police literally dug up her entire life, including her garden, looking for dirt and they found so little.I would lay good money down that any one of us would have more things in our search histories and texts etc that would seem incriminating to people who believe we killed a bunch of babies. Particularly if you have an interest in anything like true crime, but even if you don’t!

Given the extent to which her life was unpicked in the desperate search to find anything that could be framed as incriminating Letby was actually astonishingly mild in that regard.
All of it is only sinister if you imagine it through a filter of malevolence that is taken for granted.

Edit: your own post admits “They were such innocuous comments” and you’re right, they were. That’s the point. Would this be different if there was actual hard evidence of any killings at all, let alone that she did them? Yes, maybe. But that isn’t what we have here. Not even close.

Hypoglycemia in two-day old, premature babies is extremely common - it's their metabolism not being set up for life outside the womb. There is also no test result showing that child's level of C-peptide clearance was unexpected, so no danger of another insulin testing debacle. We know this because the BBC showed anonymous test results over two years on Panorama, and the three unexpected results are attached to known cases.

I wouldn't put it past the police to consider charges on this one, but it will really be scraping the barrel if they do. Thing that happens to at least one in five premature infants happens ... Letby was on duty. Let's hope the CPS don't let something of that quality through.

At the end of her note she had written also “Why is this happening to me”. Prosecution missed that part out.
Why would a mastermind serial killer leave a note in her room for police to find.

I could write a note today saying I was Jack the Ripper, doesn’t mean anything in terms actual scientific/forensic evidence.

Defense was useless.

@Kittybythelighthouse well yeah obviously if there were no suspicious baby deaths she was connected to we wouldn't be talking about her inappropriate comments...it's a bit like the "jokes" about Peter Sutcliffe being called a rapist by his workmates then he gets arrested for murder. I think similar happened with Wayne Couzens. You'd probably be saying they don't mean anything either. Surely motive is important? Here's a big motive- narcissists hate to see others happy. She just had to interrupt those parents who she wasn't involved with and had zero reason to comment at all-"don't get your hopes up!" I mean WTF. She wasn't even looking after that baby.

The problem here is that literally none of these things things you list is actually odd unless you already think she’s guilty, which you clearly do. Again, while she’s “guilty” in a letter of the law black and white sense, I mean actually guilty (given we are discussing a possible miscarriage of justice). Can you seriously not remove guilt from the equation and have a think about it while trying not to be biased/assuming guilt? None of these things are odd in that context. It’s honestly a bit concerning if you cannot do that even for the sake of argument.

I mean you are doing the same and refusing to acknowledge she could actually be guilty. And why should I come from a place of innocence when it's blindingly obvious she did it?

your own post admits “They were such innocuous comments” and you’re right, they were. That’s the point.

No I said IF they were innocuous comments they'd probably just be forgotten about, for them to be remembered so many years later points to them standing out as odd to the family at the time.

@Oftenaddled You seem to be talking about low blood sugar rather than high insulin levels. I had to google as I don't know too much about this but they seem to be different. You obviously know way more about it than me but the lady whose baby it was also knew about this stuff and she doesn't understand how it happened either. If it was common she'd know that and the hospital wouldn't be trying to claim (with lack of any other explanation) the insulin was being passed from her!

That’s not what I’m doing though. I assumed she was guilty at first and took little to no interest in it because one assumes that the police and courts know what they are doing.

It was only after doubts started materialising from very credible quarters that I thought bloody hell I better take a closer look here. I then examined everything available without having a firm position either way. That’s where you start. It’s fundamentally flawed logic to begin from a presumption of guilt and work backwards.

Nothing matters or means anything, let alone carries sinister weight, if there were no murders. There is in fact no medical/scientific/direct evidence whatsoever that any murders occurred. Everything else is just gossip and nonsense, particularly if it’s innocuous once we remove the presumption of guilt.

Of course parents are going to start digging through their memories looking for anything they missed. Anybody would. That doesn’t make the anecdotes any more shocking. If they had been told anyone else at COCH killed their babies they’d find something about them in retrospect too. The idea that these anecdotes are stronger because they’re innocuous and raised no eyebrows at the time is just next level witch trial thinking.

Of course I wouldn’t be saying any such thing about Wayne Couzens or Peter Sutcoiffe. Do you know why? Because there was actual evidence that A: someone was murdered and PARTICULARLY B: evidence that they murdered the person/people. That’s an entirely different scenario.

“And why should I come from a place of innocence when it's blindingly obvious she did it?”

Because:

A: it isn't “blindingly obvious that she did it” at all. Far from it. In fact I’m agog at anyone, especially those who aren’t medics, or relevant experts of some kind, who isn’t at least a little bit concerned that this might be a MoJ. How can you confidently say that in the context? You can’t. Not logically. It’s not rational to have no doubts whatsoever anymore.

This level of commitment belies an emotional need to hold onto the guilty verdict for reasons that I can only see as dark and strange. Aren’t you concerned that the justice system is so flawed that something like this may have happened? And that it could get it wrong again? Perhaps when you’re in the dock? Particularly given the large amount of MoJ in the last few years. Do you think you and yours are immune from finding yourself wrongfully accused of something some day? Why is it so important to you that this verdict go unchallenged? It should scare the bejesus out of all of us.

B: there is no point in attempting to engage in the conversation if you refuse to even acknowledge the opposing position (the possibility of innocence)

Part of engaging in argument is being able to present (and argue against) the best version of your opponent’s argument. You break it down with logic but coming from their perspective. I can do that for you. You don’t appear willing to attempt this, even for the sake of argument.

This just leads to constant circular reasoning: The texts/fb searches/notes/anecdotes are proof of guilt because she’s guilty. She’s guilty because the texts/fb searches/notes/anecdotes prove she’s guilty.

It’s not logical. If these things don’t stand without a presumption of guilt then they are not proof of guilt.

It all comes back to the medical evidence and it always will. If there were no murders none of the other stuff matters. Can we at least agree on that?

I mean IF it comes out there were all these unexplained incidents when LL was not on shift then of course I would probably change my mind. I see no evidence for that being the case at this point. That would totally change everything. And it's probably the only thing that would. I'm hoping the new Panorama doc will clear some of these things up.

Aren’t you concerned that the justice system is so flawed that something like this may have happened?

There was 10 months of evidence, how can it be flawed? This is not one of those times anyone has to worry about a MoJ.

Of course parents are going to start digging through their memories looking for anything they missed. Anybody would. That doesn’t make the anecdotes any more shocking. If they had been told anyone else at COCH killed their babies they’d find something about them in retrospect too. The idea that these anecdotes are stronger because they’re innocuous and raised no eyebrows at the time is just next level witch trial thinking.

You don't seem to have any comments to make about the mother who made a complaint at the time? And look how her baby mysteriously crashed when she took a short break. That happened a lot didn't it? Bit odd that, considering if there was any sign of their baby deteriorating no parent or staff member would be going for a break. Wonder where Lucy was at the time...