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..

It was in a pretty awful state, too, as this Telegraph article reports:

https://archive.is/4v9VO

Indeed.

I do feel strongly about this case and I have followed it from the first reports which I think go back to 2016. Unfortunately, I had a first hand exprience of poor neonatal and maternity care resulting in a neonatal loss of my sibling and pregnancy loss (my own) and it's a difficult topic. Sorry if my posts came across heated. What I really would like to happen is the truth and justice for the families, achieved in a way that doesn't involve TV shows fuelling speculation but not providing clarity, and without this level of public circus.

Totally agree with this. The original case reeked of scapegoating.

Dr Michael Hall has said that there were elements of the prosecution case that he felt were wrong. So I think we can reasonably infer this means that there were also elements that he agreed/couldn’t disagree with - which would obviously make him something of a liability for the defence under cross-examination.

I am sure you are right. The problem is the defence just didn't have had the money and expertise to find and instruct all the experts they needed. They probably needed more experts than Hall to disprove all the elements of the prosecutions case. They needed someone for insulin tests, some one for statistics etc etc.

I don't think her defence was very good. But I think its a common problem that the state has more resources and the defendant is always on the back foot.

I hope the court of appeal doesn't decide that even though Lucy may be innocent there can't be a retrial because she could have called the current experts working for the defense in the original trial.

In practical terms she really could not have done. The reason they are all working for free now is they can see there has been a conviction based on bad scientific evidence.

That's right. It would be very strange if there were no elements he agreed with and would suggest he was just playing games instead of giving an objective analysis.

For example, the prosecution experts excluded certain infections - no reason for Hall to disagree. A responsible expert witness might have agreed that he could not explain the insulin cases through natural causes. We have explanations now, based on advances on science.since. A responsible expert witness could admit to not being able to identify a natural cause of death, since this is the case with two or three infant deaths a week across the UK. A responsible expert witness would have to agree that some symptoms were "consistent with" inflicted air embolism, a line the prosecution used. Of course, that doesn't mean they were caused by air embolism.

Prosecution and defence witnesses are meant to give the court an honest expert view of the spectrum of possibilities, not to argue for their "side". If there isn't some overlap in their findings, something has gone badly wrong.

You do realise that there are many cases of harm being investigated in hospitals she has never set foot in? That is why there is a national enquiry into maternity services. The fact that there was "harm" - as in deliberate action to kill - is what is at the centre of the expert disputes. The leading experts in the world - including one whose research was claimed as evidence that harm was done in the trial - say that on reviewing the actual evidence of "harm" they find no evidence of deliberate harm.

There is so much incorrect about this post - look up the principle of equality of arms/article 6 of the ECHR.

Also, the defence instructed a number of expert witnesses other than Michael Hall (and many reports were served from them before and during the trial) - they just chose not to put any of them on the stand.

I haven’t seen the doc yet. Do we know why the defence didn’t call the witnesses?

But if you’re a defendant, unless they’re going to actively assist your “side” and can counter the other “side” then you probably don’t want them giving evidence in court…

No, they have never said.

I recommend the documentary.

And also last year’s New Yorker piece: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/20/lucy-letby-was-found-guilty-of-killing-seven-babies-did-she-do-it.

Plus, the Private Eye reports.

It’s surely not good practice to use as the key prosecution witness an ‘expert’ (Dewi Evans) who’s no longer a practicing paediatrician and proactively offered his expert witnesses consultancy services as: ‘My kind of case’. Plus, he’s since changed his view on some of the deaths.

What the documentary didn’t make clear is why her original defence was so poor. This now seems to be the crux of the case. The test for an appeal to be granted is new evidence coming to light which wasn’t available at the original trial.

But, does that mean if someone has a really woeful defence team (presumably provided by the state via Legal Aid), who fail to call any of their own expert witnesses to challenge the prosecution, it means potentially unsafe convictions can stand and potentially innocent people can spend their entire lives in prison? If so, that means those who don’t have the money to fund a good defence, or the fight to argue for one, risk facing an unfair trial.

I feel another factor in shaping views of this case is judgement of women: the mugshot of Letby, the (inexplicably) published film of her arrest and her demeanour at the trial. It was remarked she showed little emotion in court, barely cried etc. But she’s a neonatal medical professional. They presumably can’t be people prone to succumbing to their emotions.

Yes, that's right.

In practice, if you have seventeen complex cases, the chances are that you will help in some cases but not in others, if you don't have an answer to everything. And if a single conviction could get a whole life sentence, that's not much point in solving some cases but not others. Better, maybe, to hope that the expert witness has been discredited in cross examination, which is the tactic legal commentators think Myers adopted, rightly or wrongly.

Until the court of appeal request this information, as they may do, it's very unlikely to be disclosed because of legal protections. But there are some informed speculations from legal commentators, and they are all variants on:

didn't accept that there was enough information out there to argue about "science" the prosecution had invented.

thought the jury was more likely to be convinced by cross-examining the prosecution witness than alternative scientific complexities

Had prepared arguments against the prosecution reports (which is correct procedure) but not against alternatives invented on the fly in court.

Legal experts don't seem to be shocked by this turn of events, just to see it as a tactical ploy and not necessarily as an error. It may have been the best option the defence had, unfortunately. That wouldn't mean Letby was guilty or that her lawyers / witnesses thought she was guilty.

For example:

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/

And

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

Both really interesting and worth a read.

She had one of the top criminal KCs in the country defending her. Definitely not woeful, and the quality of her original defence is not a factor in her application to the CCRC.

@EdithBond I mean I think everyone is agreed the defence wasn't great.

I think some of the people that think she is guilty are saying that the defence didn't call experts on her behalf because they couldn't refute the prosecution case. Although Hall's reports do show he found a lot of issues with the evidence so it was surely an error not to call him.

What we do know now for sure however is that there are an awful lot of scientists, professors and other experts who can challenge the prosecution case as her new defense has found dozens of them. These people are extremely well qualfied.

I think there is a clear public interest case for a retrial. Aside from the fact that an innocent woman could be in jail we have possibly incompetent and/or dishonest doctors still practising, natural and possible medical negligance deaths wrongly attributed to murder, possible reccomendations being made by Thirwall to change hospital practices to catch non existant serial killers. The list goes on....

And we really need an overhaul of how deaths in hospitals are investigated. But this case urgently needs reviewing first.

Yes, I realise that it can’t be a factor. That was my point.

@Oftenaddled has given a helpful explanation of why the defence may have done so little to challenge the prosecution evidence. I guess a major problem was so many charges with so many detailed explanations. A defence witness may help with one but risk harming another.

Those stating categorically that LL is definitely guilty are coming over as zealots. Hand on heart, no one could look at the plethora of evidence casting doubt on her conviction and not at least think there's a chance that it shouldn't have got over the beyond reasonable doubt threshold.
I personally don't know. I have followed quite a bit of the story in Private Eye and have seen the other documentaries but not the new one.
Just a few of the pro conviction arguments that have bugged me include having a go about the involvement of an MP. Look at other miscarriage cases and the Post Office scandal. Of course campaigners are going to reach out to MPs and prominent journalists. Similarly, concern for the families. Would they rather an innocent be languishing in jail than learn that perhaps their very premature baby just hadn't beaten the odds? Above all it is the zealotry. The religious fervour with which some can't countenance the fact there just might have been a mistake.
For those better informed, could someone answer a query for me. I get that a frustration for her current team is that they can't appeal unless new evidence comes to light. However, isn't the email from the doctor confirming that he was at the scene because LL had called him (contradicting evidence that she did nothing), new evidence? If that was knocking about during the trial why wasn't more prominence given to it by the defence.

Is it better for an innocent woman to suffer injustice if she’s innocent or a guilty one not to face justice if she’s guilty. I think that’s the point as we will never know if she did it.

What’s your answer to your own question?

That’s my question too. My guess is that it relates to only one case and their aim is an appeal against all convictions? But only a guess.

It’s clearly hell for the families.

Such an awful, complex and unprecedented case, given how many convictions it involves.

But other babies died when she wasn’t there. They discounted those babies on the basis that she wasn’t there 🤷‍♀️
so of course she’s always there if they only include babies where she wasn’t present
although I believe one of the ones it’s now been shown she wasn’t there until after the baby had collapsed? baby C had air in his stomach before Letby had been on shift? And the dr said the air in the stomach was the cause of death.

Am currently watching the tv programme.

As someone who has previously worked on a neonatal unit I’ve always thought that the consultants at the Chester hospital were determined that an individual had killed babies as tha5 was better than admitting that there as a combination of poor practice from the doctors, low staffing and poor procedures such as not enough consultant rounds. Weren’t they twice a week? They should be twice a day!

I am very suspicious of Dr Ravi’s evidence, he is clearly a person who likes the limelight, was a TV persona….his evidence has been found to be incorrect. Did he purposefully lie? 🤷‍♀️. He gave incorrect evidence in court. Even his evidence that Letby was standing by a cot watching a baby deteriorate while doing nothing never struck me as an unusual thing for a nurse to do. It’s normal to stand there briefly and watch to see if the Sats resolve on their own, a lot of the time they do. He would know this.

the air in the stomach method is a load of bollocks. Babies gulp air all the time, if they gulp too much they puke. They don’t die. Dr Evans should never have been allowed to be an “expert” witness. His evidence is shonky beyond belief, I believe since the conviction he’s now changed his story about how some of them died. How can he do that after he’s told the jury one thing? And now admits he was wrong? He’s a total narcissist I reckon, totally firm in his beliefs with no good reason to be. He’s also very biased, he was getting paid a lot of money and ensuring a conviction would make his reputation as an expert witness stronger and more money in the future.

just reached the bit in the tv programme about ng tubes being dislodged and the drs saying this doesn’t happen accidentally. It happens a lot. I’ve seen it. I’ve also seen tubes not inserted correctly, again if you have a poor doctor with a bad technique this would happen more frequently.

I think I would rather she go free if there’s a chance she didn’t do it than suffer a lifetime of turmoil if she’s innocent because I can’t imagine how she must feel living this otherwise.
Even if she’s innocent and freed her life is over now regardless, her career, reputation and I doubt she’d ever recover from what she’s been through and her MH will be shot to bits.
I don’t know if she did it or not.

The problem was not a failure to lead defence evidence, but the Court’s decision to admit the prosecution expert evidence in the first place. The defence strenuously objected to this, appealing to the Court of Appeal, but was roundly rejected, largely on the grounds that it has been open to the defence to lead evidence and it chose not to.

From The Jolly Contrarian piece. The prosecution expert's evidence being speculative.

The article also mentioned that Michael Myers KC had petitioned for prosecution evidence and defence evidence to be heard together, rather than weeks or months apart, and this was also refused.

I understand more now about why her defence was seemingly quite poor. Quite a bit of the reasoning was around the uncertain nature of what Dewi Evans was stating as expert witness. And just as he couldn't say something definitely happened, in many cases the defence equally couldn't say it definitely didn't.

To me, that sounds like reasonable doubt, but due to the nature of a trial, when you don't hear evidence concurrently as LL's KC requested, you end up only remembering the parts where the defence expert says he isn't sure because they come much later on. Which can end up being counter productive and hence probably why Hall wasn't called.

Dewi Evans changed his (multiple different) theories on how she killed them, pretty much on the fly.

In the instances where he initially tagged a baby’s death as suspect, but then found out that she hadn’t been on shift, he just decided that THAT death must have been natural. How was a defence expert going to effectively counter that? It’s bloody hard to hit a moving goal.

It shocked me that the judge, even having been warned off allowing Evans to be used as an expert, (by a fellow judge no less), not only didn’t intervene but also instructed the jury that they could ignore any doubts they had - if there was enough on one death to persuade them, then they could infer guilt on the others!