Lucy Letby: Have you changed your mind?

[Kittybythelighthouse]

The other thread has had a lot of really interesting discussion but we are running out of pages so here’s a new one for those who are interested in continuing the conversation.

Whether you’re sure she’s guilty, sure she isn’t, or are somewhere in between, I’m interested in hearing how your opinion has evolved (or hasn’t!) since you first heard about the case,

Please try to be respectful - this is a heated topic. Its a matter of huge public interest with a lot of strong opinions, but we are all adults and can disagree with each other in a respectful manner.

Old thread is here (the poll still has a few days left):
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5388914-lucy-letby-have-you-changed-your-mind?page=38&reply=146359313

Do you think that the Countess was the only unit to see a rise in deaths?

“On the BBC programme it said that many of the theories given by the expert panel were already presented in court to the jury. Although presented how exactly? As no expert witnesses were called?”

Milke Hall’s theories were presented via the defence KC. The jury were directed that only witness testimony is evidence, not anything a barrister says, which is true in law.

No, it doesn’t. There’s nothing that can 100% exonerate her. But it can obviously be proven that mistakes were made during the trial and on that basis, she shouldn’t have been convicted. It still doesn’t make her innocent. Nothing can ultimately prove that.

I watched the BBC documentary last night, it was a bit more critical of the evidence that people were suggesting showed she was innocent.

I felt that there’s a lot of troubling evidence used to convict her. I feel her conviction is unsafe because of that. But it does sound like the defence had all of that information during the trial - the email from the doctor which showed he was lying, evidence that the doctor who identified them as murders changed his mind mistrial about how one of the babies died - so I don’t know how she will get a retrial.

I think there’s still strong evidence that there were two babies who were poisoned with insulin, but I guess a lack of evidence that show it was 100% her that did it.

I am very interested in the new investigation about the feeding tubes at Liverpool women’s hospital. As I think again that’s strong evidence of something going on.

I would defffo support a new trial though

I watched that new doc with interest last night.

What struck me was the number of (mainly male) expert witnesses, who were absolutely 100% confident that they were right.

Many hospital consultants have a reputation for being arrogant and not liking to be challenged, and that attitude really shone through. They can't all be right, so how is a normal person supposed to work it out? The barrister was the same.

The documentary made me question how some of the deaths could be beyond reasonable doubt. The breathing tubes evidence seemed pretty damming though.

Which leaves me wondering how Panorama could even take its assertion of 40% dislodgement rate (so bad it’s either incompetence or malice) seriously. No training hospital wouod surely allow that level of dangerously awful to pass muster.

Yes I agree, it makes a mockery over ‘expert witnesses’ and shows it really does depend on who you think is more believable.

The feeding tubes shocked me and swayed be back to thinking she could be guilty, will be interested to see what happens with that

When it comes to BBC bias, I'm always reminded of John Stapleton and his Nationwide report on Annie Maguire's bomb factory report regarding the Birmingham Six. Disgraceful gutter press, lower denomination headlines. Much like the word "Monster", used twice by Moritz in the latest Panorama documentary of Lucy Letby when describing her.

If she is innocent and she is found not guilty, she will never live a normal life so regardless she has a life sentence.

Yes same I watched it and it solidified my believe that she did it

If innocent I’m sure she would prefer to be out and living somewhere else under a new identity than rotting in HMP Bronzefield though.

That’s so interesting, I was waiting for them to dispute the figures in some way, but when they didn’t and the lawyer was saying there’s no evidence it did confuse me as I thought, that seemed pretty clear cut but I wonder if they count the shifts in the same way how the statistics would turn out

I think there’s still strong evidence that there were two babies who were poisoned with insulin, but I guess a lack of evidence that show it was 100% her that did it.

There is absolutely none regardless of how a couple of journalists have spun the story. No evidence of insulin poisoning and no evidence to link LL.

There is evidence of poorly managed hypoglycaemia though.

Some are worried by the feeding tube stats.

They look damning as presented but this is because they are mangled stats - objectively bad maths to put it simply. It's not even a question. The maths are simply wrong.

They claim that during Letby’s shifts, babies’ breathing tubes came loose 40 times more often than on other shifts, where the rate was said to be under 1%.

To get that 1% figure, they count each intubated baby separately. So if there are ten babies on a shift, that’s counted as ten shifts for the calculation.

But for Letby, they didn’t count it that way. They treated her 50 shifts as if there was only one intubated baby each time. That makes her total look much smaller: 50 instead of 500, which pushes her calculated rate much higher.

This is totally egregious and shouldn’t happen on the BBC. They should have consulted a statistician and they obviously didn’t.

They didn’t count ‘ventilated shifts’ for LL, they just counted shifts. Several examples of the maths errors on the thread.

Yes. The hospital confirmed that she was there partly for training in handling intubated babies! And saw no problems at the time.

And yet we are supposed to hold her responsible for all extubations on the ward in hindsight! No, thanks.

There’s no excuse for them having not consulted a statistician and providing full data. I already know from those stats without needling to ask that neither of these journos even have A level maths. I’d bet my house on it.

When she was found guilty i read a lot of info. to do with the trial and found the evidence against her pretty overwhelming.

I can still see that mistakes were made in the gathering and presentation of the evidence.

On balance i still think she's guilty.

I didn't start following the case until I caught the tail end of Shoo Lee's press conference one day.

Initially, I assumed that if the CPS had put forward the charges, they must have compelling evidence (oh, how wrong could I have been?), but after watching Shoo Lee's report, I read through some old news stories and caught up on the case.

My opinion hasn't changed much since then. I don't know if she is innocent; there are too many conflicting expert opinions, and I don't have enough of a medical background/education/experience to pick out who is most likely correct.

I am 100% convinced the conviction is unsafe. Dewi Evans put forward to the jury that the only possible cause of death was murder, and this is blatantly untrue.

The "smoking gun" insulin evidence is problematic for a number of reasons, none of which were outlined to the jury.

The air in the stomach is frankly laughable. It is something Dewi Evans plucked out of thin air and has no basis in medical science.

The air embolism evidence was misrepresented/misunderstood by the expert witness.

I also have serious concerns about Dewi Evan himself; he went into this presuming guilt and looked for a way to make it fit. Concerns were raised about his suitability as a witness expert at the start, but the judge declined to acknowledge them.

The evidence needs to be examined by a new group of experts, actual experts, not pediatricians who fancy themselves a detective, from each side, and a new trial needs to be had, imo.

Apart from one doctor saying this isn’t unusual in premature babies, they didn’t offer any alternative explanations to how the high insulin levels could have occurred naturally. What is it that makes you so sure it was hypoglycaemia?

Dewi to me seems like the centre of all of this. Chose evidence that supported his theory, discounted anything that didn’t. The chart of her shifts show how bias he was as he discounted any babies who died when she wasn’t on shift. I find the story of how he got involved concerning that he could just appoint himself the expert

The thing is, you don't need to be sure it is one particular explanation. Often more than one is possible in medicine. The insulin babies recovered so there was no more testing.

Letby was convicted after the jury was told there was no alternative explanation and poisoning was the only possibility.

So if that's not the case, the conviction isn't safe.

Why would the prosecution call them? They had nothing to say to point LL being guilty

The defense are going to call them as they are there to defend - not prove innocence- as that’s not how are court system works. You’re either guilty or not guilty and you defend

It isn’t the first time the misuse of statistics may have lead to an unsafe conviction. There was a woman accused of being responsible for two of her babies dying (the died of SIDS) and they used the statistics of this happening twice in a row in order to prove her guilt. You could see why the jury went the way they did with that, but thankfully more evidence came to light after and the ‘expert’ that presented these statistics was found to have done so in a very misleading way.

lawyers often ‘joke’ how they are not mathematicians and can’t get their head around statistics. Very scary that they seem to rely so much on the presentation of them without consulting a true statistical expert.

Which is what it was intended to do.

To convince the public that Coffey and Moritz were right.

Not to evaluate the scientific evidence around insulin and inform the public of all the different benign explanations for a randomly high insulin reading (eg immunoassay cross contamination from pro-insulin or antibodies, Hirata’s syndrome (IAS), prem neonate vagaries of blood volume and organ clearance etc.) Or to take them through the medical data and show where the treatment of baby E’s hypoglycaemia, for example, differed from the standard treatment which explains why it persisted.

No, they simply used out of context sound bites to try to bolster their own case.