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

I haven’t read that book but I’m not sure anything you’ve written there negates the point that she distanced herself from any knowledge about AE and literally says that it’s not something that’s often discussed, nor has she ever come across it on an NNU - yet she obviously felt the need to mention it specifically when texting her colleague.

You can see how, if she did do what she was convicted of (controversial to even suggest this I know!), this might provide her with some cover.

I can only think that she spent so long looking into “the whites of her (Liz Hull’s) eyes” everyday at the trial that she’s gone full cult member group psychosis. It’s bizarre how devoted to a guilty narrative she is. I know she has a book to sell, but given how many corrections they’ve had to make she could have chosen a much more middle ground at any point.

Moritz is thoroughly trashing her journalistic reputation with this. Besides clinging to the underside of a sinking ship, she has also exposed herself to not be a very good journalist. She does not have an incisive mind and in interviews just comes across like a nodding dog with intermittent furrowed brows. She doesn’t get anything useful or follow anything interesting no matter which side of the fence you sit on.

Coffey is responsible for the book and the docs too, but I think he’ll come out of this a bit cleaner. Not that he should after the Panorama stats debacle.

Indeed. But how are they getting away with it?

LL: It's been mentioned in terms of line care. You'd have to be mindful that you don't leave a line open and things like that. But it's not something that's discussed frequently in any detail.

There's nothing remotely suspicious about her reporting a genuine risk she was aware of. Would we think her less likely to be guilty if she ignored it?

Moritz and Coffey had the access, resources and exposure to be the heroes here. If they'd made a serious effort at honest, rigorous investigative journalism they'd have skewered this case from the outset. But they seem to have got carried away with hubris and sentimentality, and events and other journalists have overtaken them. Their best hope is that their tawdry contribution to this mess will be forgotten.

You'll notice too that her colleague didn't text back with ooh air embolism. What's that, never heard of it, don't be silly.

We know from Shoo Lee's researches that air embolism in the neonatal unit is a rare phenomenon. That presumably is why Letby's training never dwelt on it at any length. But the fact that it exists as a risk in poor line or syringe management is elementary nursing (and detective novel) knowledge.

I do not understand how people get so far from common sense as to criticise this woman for trying to keep small babies safe in a frightened, chaotic and dangerous unit. It must have been terrifying for her to see such basic attention to duty twisted against her.

Or you could also say well she would say that when being questioned by the police and if she knew that she had sent that message to give herself cover! 🤷‍♀️

Even after the trials ended and reporting restrictions lifted they could have shown some eventual ability to revise their views (like Josh Halliday) that still could have made them ultimately heroic with the added value of being capable of recognising groupthink and bias etc in oneself and prioritising fact over ego. Coffey did show a bit more scepticism than Moritz then, but it’s impossible to look past the state of the recent panorama for either of them. As it stands they’ve just made themselves look like fools and like bad journalists.

You could say whatever you like, but without actual medical evidence that any murders took place it’s all meaningless.

Except that that presupposes that trained nurses would never have heard of air embolism risks from open lines, so Letby is just pretending she knew that from her nursing education.

Can you not see how silly this is getting? The whole thing has been misrepresented by irresponsible journalists. Let it go - you're welcome to your opinion on Letby's case but you can't make this make sense.

Just out of interest, and going by your final paragraph, you are 100% sure that she is innocent then? (as opposed to just unsafe conviction)

I'm not here just to satisfy your interest, though. I've answered your arguments. If you've given up on defending them, good.

I work in the veterinary field, air embolism is a bit of a medical bogeyman… people can be terrified of a few air bubbles in a line but how often does it actually cause any problems? I would imagine it’s something that would be more of a concern for a fairly recently qualified, perhaps overly conscientious nurse like LL than a more experienced member of staff who might see it as a theoretical risk but not something to worry about day to day. I don’t think her reporting it is suspicious but could reflect character witnesses about how fastidious and rule following she could be.

I was certainly terrified of it when administering medications as a carer, but that arose from reading too much classical detective fiction!

Yes, agreed some of the datix reports may have been over-anxious or conscientious - not to say I know either way. But the death rate was rising and there was anxiety about some (by no means all) of the deaths and collapses, so I can imagine that reporting anything out of order would have felt like doing the part that's in your control, and potentially helping.

Coffey, Moritz, Cheethams and Hull sought to be mouth pieces for money making. Cheethams is particularly the one to watch.

The latest ITV documentary doesn't give a lot of information on the writers.

Re-posting a statement from a judgment in a family case posted by a pp as they felt it was critical of Dewi Evans (it wasn’t), but which I think is quite relevant in response to your assertion.

Without medical evidence…

and the start witness (Jayaram) having perjured himself

and the mother of baby E not having understood her phone records were not in BST this allowing the prosecution to perpetuate a lie (you can’t tell me the prosecution didn’t notice that not only Letby’s medical records but also the midwife’s and the Drs contemporaneous notes all backed up the timeline of what happened and the mothers was consistently an hour out)

And the cherry picked rota sheet

and the CPD telling CP to stop looking at the stats of that sheet

and the CPS failing to disclose to the defence that CP had initially consulted a statistician who told them their methodology was wrong

and Dewi Evans deciding frok the outset that being punched in the liver was the ONLY explanation and doesn’t appear to have looked at other explanations so believed foul play and this conditions his whole review eith a heavy dose of confirmation bias

and Evans deciding to include baby C after he found out Letby was on duty but she wasn’t…

the claims that all must have slipped into the unit unseen

the injecting of the TPN bags

the insulin procurator that doesnt appear to have been missing from the hospital

it makes the JFK weaving bullet theory look plausible

Please don’t misquote me not misrepresent what I was saying.,

To save anyone else trawling through it, this is a family court document so different processes and precedents, dealing with a child who had been injured but with no party, expert, family etc, claiming to know the cause of the injury.

The judge pointed to factors suggesting that the parent would not be abusive, and said that rather than asking the expert witnesses to solve the case when they started from a position of uncertainty, the court should have considered these factors.

Obviously we have never been in a position in the Letby case where experts were uncertain - Evans famously achieved certainty in ten minutes. The expert panel are secure in their findings of the most plausible causes of death. The medical field is therefore the appropriate focus for this case, as it was not in the family case above, so I wouldn't see the comparison as relevant.

Because there is not even one tiny bit of evidence a crime was ever committed let alone by LL in particular.

Mark McDonald’s experts have already given more than one plausible cause of death for Baby O (both of which the original defence expert disagrees with) so I’m not sure how they can be described as secure in their findings.

No, that's another Panorama misrepresentation. Aren't Coffey and Moritz a menace?

They've said that the child died of a ruptured liver hematoma. This may have been caused by birth injury and may have been exacerbated by a medical manoeuvre gone wrong. But they can also arise spontaneously. What a shame Coffey and Moritz worked so hard to try to turn this into a "defence experts disagree" story when it is nothing of the sort.

I am just amazed at how low the BBC is willing to go on this.

Evans didn’t bother to look for any plausible explanations. He went straight to ‘murder’

They’ve misrepresented me.

I never said the point I was making was critical.

The excerpt posted is not what I posted - that’s what they chose to take from the judgment.

my point was that it was clear in that judgment that Evans had overstepped on the remit of the court expert and instead of learning from that observation he went and did it again.

I did reply to them to ask that they not mid quote or misrepresent what I said.

Yes, as far as Evans is concerned, that's what I'd understand too. The court was told he should not have been asked to go outside his alleged expertise and declare whether the family was guilty of abuse. This would apply in criminal courts too.

He should certainly have known after that, if not before, what boundaries to observe. I understand your point perfectly and it's an important one.