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.

I also felt Lucy was guilty to start off with. I thought that it seemed too much of a coincidence that she was there for all the deaths and also that they stopped once she was taken off the ward. The only thing that initially confused me was that she had a childhood friend willing to support her. I thought that was odd because most serial killers and psychopaths are simply not able to maintain long term friendships in this way.

But at the time I just thought that was another of the terrible and strange things about the case. I read a long newpaper article about the case in which one of the consultants was interviewed and I thought how brave he was and how awful it was that the doctors hadn't been believed by the managers to start off with and had even been accused of bullying Lucy. I thought Sunak had a point when he was angry Lucy hadn't been made to attend her sentencing.

Then a few months later I was chatting to a friend who works in healthcare who said she thought Lucy was probably innocent. I was quite surprised as she is a thoughtful and rational person so we had a chat about it. I mentioned Lucy had always been present for all the deaths, which had been unexpected, and that they had stopped when she had been removed from the ward. My friend then told me that the unit had been downgraded so that it didn't take such sick babies at the same time Lucy was suspended, so that could also explain why babies stopped dying.

At that point I realised something was really wrong with the way the case was being reported in the media as I had read quite a bit about it, but this very relevant piece of information, had not been mentioned. Instead a big deal had been made about the deaths stopping once she was suspended.

Later on I read the New Yorker article and some pieces in Private Eye and my position started to shift. I began to think that maybe Lucy was still guilty but it was difficult to be sure and perhaps her trial hadn't been fair.

Then I watched the press conference with Shoo Lee and all the other experts. At the end of that I thought, oh fuck, she's actually completely innocent isn't she? And all the information I have been able to find out since then has confirmed that opinion.

I now see all sorts of things differently. That obviously the managers weren't keen to act because there wasn't any evidence and not because they were uniquely dreadful people. That type of thing.

It has made me feel quite silly tbh. It shows how easy it is to be manipulated by the media. I thought I was quite a savvy person. I realised that the case against Amanda Knox was insane quite quickly. But then again there are still people in Perugia to this day that are convinced she is guilty.

I can see quite a few reasons why people wouldn't want to change their minds other than wanting someone to hate which was never a motivation for me . To start with you have to admit you have been fooled. Some of that overblown initial reporting feels almost like falling for a scam if you believed it at the time as I did.

It is also a scary thing to acknowledge as it shakes your confidence in so many institutions you trusted to keep you safe and to tell you the truth. The courts, the police, doctors, the NHS, the BBC, your favourite newspaper etc.

It clearly goes further than that with some posters. It's not an unsafe conviction, everything that could be brought up to help her was because believe it or not she actually had the best defence possible. Anything coming out now is purely speculation. I actually can't believe we have "experts" just blindly parroting nonsense like "the harm might've been caused at birth" for one baby despite all the evidence pointing to a perfectly healthy birth. Or that insulin tests are completely different in babies? Honestly some of them would argue black was white. It's things like that which means they're just not credible.

@ipredictariot5 There is always a lot of non medical evidence and a jury has to form an overall view. The new defence experts would advance the case that the previous evidence is beyond reasonable doubt. From Panorama the insulin evidence looks most compelling but even a 2% chance of an alternative explanation could suffice.

Sure but even if that was the case, how many times could that type of thing happen to one nurse before it stretches all credibility?

I think this is an excellent post and it is how things went for me as well, although I was always uneasy about the ‘I am evil, I did this’ and how it was presented.

Whether convinced of her guilt or otherwise those notes should never ever have been taken as read. It troubles me people think they should, that it’s as open and closed as that. God know what scribbled notes I have lying around

@Firefly1987

And it is more than a bit odd to do things like demand to be given a dying baby to get over the death of a previous one for example.

I don't believe this is true, sorry. Can you actually link to something that says Letby asked to be given a dying baby to care for? Or are you talking about her asking to go back in the nursery where a previous death happened, to break the association, which I believe is the closest thing to what you've suggested here. If there's something I've missed I would like to be made aware of it, but I've seen you post similar to this before and thought it almost sounded like you were deliberately twisting what was actually said - but maybe not.

I too wouod like to know the provenance of this claim.

It’s really easy to twist things.

I mean, I am only imagining here but I can envision a conversation that went something like ‘will you be OK in that nursery, Lucy? And a reply like ‘actually I want to go there - I feel like if I work there it will break that association I currently have with it.’ Which is very different to what is was reported.

@BanditLamp the fact the unit was downgraded is olddd news. It would've made little difference as some of these babies would've still been taken by the downgraded unit anyway. In fact take the case of the triplets-the weaker triplet survived (because he was moved away from LL) whereas his two stronger brothers died. And they were all fine before LL got back from holiday.

Then we have the case of baby G who was the most premature baby out of all of them-and she survived (albeit she has severe disabilities now 😢) I think that is testament to how strong these babies actually were. You can't claim they were all sickly babies likely to die when the most premature one survived. Whilst much stronger healthier babies suddenly collapsed and died. And lets not forget that many of them were not responding to resuscitation methods, and this was very unusual. Your friend clearly knows little about this case.

Yes she asked to go back in that room and was very upset that she couldn't and that was her reasoning. She very specifically wanted another dying baby.

https://www.chesterstandard.co.uk/news/23470171.lucy-letby-upset-frustrated-minutes-baby-collapsed/

Letby went on to explain when working at Liverpool Women’s Hospital she had “lost a baby one day and a few hours later was given another dying baby just by the same cot space”.

The detective said: “You sent the final text at 11.09pm. Six minutes after you sent that (Child C) collapsed.”
“Right,” said Letby.
The detective went on: “What are you thoughts on that?”
Letby responded: “I don’t have any thoughts on that.”
The detective said: “The text messages suggest you were frustrated at not working in nursery one, do you agree?”
The defendant said: “Yes, I think it would have helped me if I could have been in nursery one.”
Letby agreed she was the only staff member in room one when Child C collapsed and that she was seen at his cot-side when a monitor alarm sounded.
The detective asked: “And at that time you were feeling upset and frustrated?”
“Yes,” said Letby.

Most of those babies would not have been there in the downgraded unit.

Good point @kkloo

Well I've heard different so I guess that's just one more thing people can't agree on.

Ok, I see where you got that from. It obviously doesn't say she wanted a dying baby; that's an inference from the prosecution which clearly you agree with.

I didn’t closely follow the original court case, I heard bits and pieces of evidence in the news, but I always assumed the jury had spent months reviewing very detailed and expert evidence and I trusted that they had made the right decision.

But it very concerning the information that is now coming to light. Maybe it doesn’t change anything, but it seems there is a decent likelihood that an incompetent nurse, as part of an incompetent team with little oversight or governance, has been jailed for the rest of her life for a pre-meditated criminal act she did not commit, and that is truly shocking. And unfortunately only one person is really able to tell us what actually happened, but no one knows if they can trust what she says. And my heart goes out to the parents of those babies who died, who just need to know what really happened to be able to move forward with their lives.

I started out thinking she must be guilty too. I didn’t even really pay any attention to it. I’m not that interested in true crime. But I am interested in justice. There came a point for me when there were too many questions and too many flaws with the medical evidence and with the procedure in the police investigation and in the trial. The hallmarks of a MoJ are all there but rigorous evidence for guilt is not.

Regardless of the outcome of all of this it has starkly illustrated that the British justice cannot properly handle medical evidence. Urgent reform is needed.

That was her reasoning though, otherwise why bring it up during texts to her friend? She obviously had some weird morbid reason she needed to see another dying baby to get over the last one. I mean this is strange no? And she never adequately explained why it would even help her. Can we at least agree she was not attempting to deal with what happened to baby A in a healthy way?

This is a really thoughtful and insightful comment.

Yes, this is true. The judge was Lord Justice Jackson, a senior Court of Appeal judge. In December 2022, he took the unusual step of writing directly to the trial judge, Mr Justice Goss, to alert him to serious concerns about the reliability and professionalism of Dr Dewi Evans as an expert witness in a previous case. Jackson described Evans’s report as “worthless,” accused him of making “no effort to provide a balanced opinion,” and said his approach amounted to “a breach of proper professional conduct”

Judge Goss said the jury could decide whether or not to believe him. The jury was made aware that a judge had criticised Dr. Evans’s previous work, but they did not see the letter or the full details of Jackson’s criticism.

No. She simply never said she wanted to nurse another dying baby.

And getting on with the more challenging aspects of your job is a perfectly sound coping mechanism.

No. This was not confirmed. This comes from a parent of a baby Letby was not charged with harming in an interview after Letby was convicted. I don’t doubt that the parent had made a complaint about a member of staff, but given the fact that the complaint did not appear in any of the trial or Thirlwall documents I think it was mistaken identity made in retrospect. From her account she didn’t have the name of the nurse at the time. She added 2+2 later.

I don’t blame her for looking back and thinking “that must have been her!” You likely would in the context. As I say, it has not been backed up in any of the official records, and I doubt that such an aggressive prosecution would have left it out.

That's right. Only one of the seven babies she's accused of killing might have been there, and the expert report suggests she died because she wasn't given the right antibiotics.

I think she’s been scapegoated I’m afraid. As the saying goes, Medics stick together and nurses stab each other in the back. Her life will never be the same again, even if she’s found innocent. I’m surprised she’s still alive quite frankly.

This very much summarises how I've felt about this case too.

However, having just watched today's Panorama episode, I'm quite troubled by the statistics coming from the Liverpool hospital where Lucy Letby worked previously. On average, 1% of breathing tubes came off/out babies when looking at ventilated shifts. Lucy had 50 ventilated shifts and approx 20 breathing tubes came out during her time there, so approx 40% of times (approx 53 minutes in to the episode for anyone interested). I'm quite taken aback by this.

I don't think she was telling her friend she wanted another dying baby, no. That would run counter to the rest of the conversation which was about being able to move on from the baby who previously died, a situation which was obviously upsetting because she felt she couldn't get the image of it out of her mind and it would help to see a different baby in that nursery.

I don't know if it's healthy or not, but it's not unheard of as a coping mechanism.

Do you think she would have said to another nurse she wanted a dying baby? Do you not think that nurse would have felt that was something that needed to be escalated urgently, if so? And the prosecution would also have made a lot of it, too?

You have to bear in mind that Brearey trawled through several years of Letby’s shifts looking for something that would serve as a smoking gun. How many babies did she care for in that time? Probably hundreds

We don’t know how striking the data presented on panorama is, because as usual they are appealing to statistics - while seemingly being unaware that this is what they are doing - and never ever calling a statistician for guidance or comment.

That is a bit of a dodgy figure, by all accounts.

One of the lawyers made this claim first at Thirlwall, but the way he put it showed he didn't understand what he was saying. He was comparing the chance of a single baby extubating (for Letby's shifts) to the chance of any of the babies on the ward extubating (for other shifts).

Statistician Jane Hutton wrote to him to say she was worried that he was spreading misinformation. She offered to help. He just never mentioned it again, though he'd said he was going to explain.

I think the BBC has picked it up from him. I'm sure there'll be more discussion of it online shortly, because it's a well known junk statistic among people concerned about the conviction.