Lucy Letby: have you changed your mind?

[Kittybythelighthouse]

I’ve been sensing a shift in opinions on the Lucy Letby case and I’m interested in hearing from people who have changed their mind either way.

Did you used to think she was guilty and now you don’t, or you aren’t sure? What changed your mind?

Also vice versa: did you used to think she was not guilty but then changed your mind to guilty? What convinced you?

The reason I’m using the term ‘not guilty’ rather than ‘innocent’ is because courts don’t prove innocence. Not guilty is a legal conclusion about whether or not the state met its burden of proof.

Yes and having said that. Giving it more thought I’m not sure I would lookup patients up people in LL situation. It does seem rather ghoulish and unprofessional.

However if she was simply having a look to see how they were getting on because she cared, and thought that no one would be any the wiser.

Ive no idea the extent of the searches or her reasons for doing so.

Bbc documentary is on thus evening. It was the ITV documentary which highlighted the poor expert witness testimony.

Totally agree with this.

She had a total of 31 searches for some of the parents, this was out of over 2,287 total searches in the same period for unrelated people (someone she met in salsa class, old friends, etc). She said she did it out of human curiosity/concern. I think we can all agree that she didn’t think they’d be any the wiser.

It was only available to view today and I've watched it. Obviously Moritz and Coffey wrote a book, now available in paperback. One of the conclusions Moritz made was quote from the programme - "She's a monster or a victim.". That's an example of a binary conclusion to make.

I think she’s probably innocent. My daughter spent time in NICU as a newborn and it was blindingly obvious to me that, as it stands, medical science doesn’t actually know all that much about the bodies of tiny babies. Which makes sense if you think about it - newborns and preemies aren’t entered into trials or routinely experimented on. Doctors can only do their best and the rest of us have to accept that there is a limit to what they know. This is possibly where the route of the confusion lies with the insulin cases imo.

I initially thought she was guilty but now believe the conviction is clearly unsafe and a retrial is urgently needed.

What has horrified me most is what the case has revealed abour the woeful state of the system for expert witness evidence in criminal trials. I am just astounded - and horrified- that Dewi Evans was ever considered appropriate in this context (complex neonatology).

As you say, as matters stand it is not really possible to go beyond saying that the conviction is unsafe. My own strong suspicion - despite this- is that this is a case of a nurse being scapegoated for appalling inadequacies - negligence- in medical care; and that the medical & political establishment have a very strong incentive to conceal these inadequacies (as we have seen in the context of so many maternity deaths).

So I think the retrial is needed not just to ensure that a woman is not being punished for offences of which she is innocent, & to restore trust in the justice system, but to prevent further baby deaths resulting from grossly inadequate care (if that is indeed what is in play here).

All of us who use the NHS have an interest in shortcomings in care being exposed. And all of us have an interest in criminal trials being fair, and the expert witness system reliable, unbiased & effective.

So as well as a retrial, I think we urgently need a full review & reform of the expert witness system to prevent such shitshows in future.

Also, the FB searches and the “guilty” notes are extremely understandable and, to me, is relatable behaviour. The fact that the prosecution relied on them as evidence makes me suspicious that they secretly thought the rest of their case was weak and were hoping to manipulate people who don’t have an intuitive understanding of how someone may react in LL’s situation.

It’s a bit gross seeing the posts ignoring an unsafe conviction and likely miscarriage of justice.

I completely agree with every word of this. My thoughts exactly.

It’s high time the expert witness system was addressed. The Law Commission flagged the issues with it in a report in 2011 but sadly the courts ignored their advice, as they also did with the Royal Statistical Society’s report on statistics and ‘healthcare serial killers’ which actually predated the Letby trial. It’s not just not good enough, it’s actually terrifying. Reform is needed asap.

I’ve read elsewhere that they brought up the Liverpool tube dislodgements with accompanying terrible and/or manipulated maths to arrive at the 40% more on her shifts trope.

I think that you're missing a huge part of the picture here. I have cared for many, many patients who have died. A good death is as important as good care. Once a patient has died, in my opinion, their relatives become the patients. What we do around the time of death will be remembered by the relatives forever. Which is why we've sometimes continued futile care so that relatives have time to get to the hospital. Or why we've urged a relative to have life support withdrawn rather than waiting for resuscitation attempts to fail.

If we fell apart every time a patient died, we'd be terrible nurses. Our job is to separate our emotions from our work so that we can give effective, compassionate care that focuses on our patients and their loved ones.

I was accused of (relatively minor) neglect as a NICU nurse. My emotions focused on me and how I felt about being accused simply because I knew the baby was ok and that I hadn't done what I was being accused of. My sole reaction was to give an account of how the senior staff would know it wasn't true, and I could only do that because it was raised as soon as the relative made the accusation. I can't imagine what it would be like to be accused of very serious offences months after the event.

Yes it was said to be quote "empirical evidence" by Moritz. Really? The diagrams were mind nubinginly awful - no lessons have been learnt.

There are similar issues within the family court system - when you have ‘experts’ with a vested interest in ‘winning’ as it’s their bread and butter giving evidence then the system is already compromised

Are you aware that Dewi Evans conducted almost all his expert witness work in closed family courts? I find that very concerning.

I was not aware. Much lower bar of ‘proof’ in family court too.

Thanks for this thoughtful comment. It’s always useful to hear from other NICU nurses. Just to add, the trial was seven years after the deaths. I think if she had been in tears in the stand she would have been crucified for that too. It would have seemed ‘manipulative’. For what it’s worth she did break down at one stage while one of the deaths was being discussed.

None of us know how we would behave in the stand under these circumstances, so I think it’s troubling to judge LL by a perceived incorrect emotional response. I have a friend who burst out laughing at her own mother’s funeral when her beloved mum died after a long illness. I know for a fact that she was devastated. I had spent the whole previous night nursing her through desperate spasms of grief, but she laughed at her mother’s funeral. Many would have a lot to say about that.

Humans are odd and complex and messy, which is why I don’t love to see declarative analysis from a distance by psychologists or psychiatrists who have gotten all of their information from the media or a podcast and not from actual detailed work with the person in question. It’s harmful and careless.

There are a lot of troubling things in Dewi Evans’ past.

It shouldn't even need to be said.

Surely everyone (even with limited life experiences) is aware that not everyone responds the exact same way to tragic events.

Since the trial, the amount of comments I've seen from people who have said 'if that were me I'd be screaming and shouting about my innocence' in the court room, I mean it's not eastenders, most of the time people don't tend to have outbursts in court in real life, they're told not to, but also as I said it's not Eastenders........

I must admit this is what interests me about the case-what turned her into the evil person she became and why she did it. So I do find this super helpful thanks. I agree it's all very chilling, it stands out as so obvious she did it when you look at her behaviour before you even get to the evidence. It amazes me that people can't see it but then I think perhaps they are just not well versed in human behaviour at all to see how wildly outside the norm hers was.

I've always suspected she is a narcissist. She seemed to hate others being happy and isn't that textbook narc? That's why she attacked multiples and babies on special occasions. One was the 100th day of life celebration where the staff were all getting ready to celebrate. Another time she took it upon herself to tell a couple not in the trial "I don't like it when parents get their hopes up because you never know what could happen"-no one was even asking her for her opinion. There's dozens of examples of her weird inappropriate behaviour. It all makes sense when you realise she has a personality disorder. Could be a psychopath but I think narc, I don't think a psychopath would care enough to write all the stuff on the post-it notes.

As for the behaviour of the defenders-there is clearly a bias at play. I don't think it's as simple as her being young and blonde but more like people see their daughter in her and it's making them blinkered to all the evidence-and her weird behaviour which they insist is normal! It was very far from normal.

“it stands out as so obvious she did it when you look at her behaviour before you even get to the evidence.”

This is a frank admission of confirmation bias: “Goody Letby looks like a witch, so Goody Letby is a witch”

The scary thing is that you don’t seem to realise that this is a deeply problematic approach to supposedly studying “human behaviour”.

Many people could benefit from learning about human behaviour through history, about what we’ve got wrong when we’ve relied on instinct over evidence and the complex human and social reasons why, rather than just applying vibes and gut feelings and calling it an interest in “human behaviour.”

P.s: your last point would be true if we were simply pointing to vibes, like you are, and not the actual evidence.

Think another judge or lawyer wrote to the sitting judge to warn him about Dewi Evans. Think it was disregarded.

@Firefly1987 your confirmation bias is showing. It's not helpful to anyone.

Was that confirmed to be Letby who made the comment to the parents?

@Kittybythelighthouse confirmation bias because a serial killer acted like a textbook serial killer and had dozens of red flags? OK then...whereas if she didn't have any you wouldn't be pointing that out? As the PP said it's not enough to convict her on and I wouldn't (I would with all the other evidence) but it's certainly enlightening and explains a lot after the fact.

I know none of this interests you in the slightest but I was quoting someone who has extensive experience in that area. I found their post very interesting and whether you think so or not her behaviour around parents, inappropriate comments and keeping trophies etc. is an important part of the case. You are free to ignore posts about that though.