Lucy Letby: have you changed your mind - thread 3

[Typicalwave]

New thread for those following or wishing to comment - originally started by @kittybythelighthouse.

Worth pointing out here that a prosecution or defence making a claim isn't evidence in itself. In any trial, both sides are likely to argue things that directly contradict each other, in the course of making their client's case. Some of it is by definition bound to be wrong. That's not the same as the barristers lying.

Whatever the result of a trial, we don't know whether the jury's verdict means they accepted or disputed the truth of every claim made by either side. This is because we don't find out the jury's reasoning. A not guilty verdict doesn't mean they didn't accept some things the prosecution said, a guilty verdict doesn't mean they didn't accept some things the defence said.

Let's recall that those emails that showed that Dr Jayaram gave false testimony about Lucy Letby never calling for help (child K) also showed him coordinating with the other consultants to pass the police records of collapses and deaths where they could place her at the cotside. So Evans had a very obvious steer.

Still, it's clear he didn't know at first who he was looking at (or staff names were redacted), because his first report included lots of "suspicious" incidents with children Letby cared for, but while she wasn't on shift. Nobody was charged with these incidents, of course.

Here's a very brief thread on where Lucy Letby was for just three of the cases: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1892897282712097084.html

The logistics of her actually achieving these attacks are pretty implausible.

You know what I find really odd?

Every account I have read from every Dr that was asked to look over the cases, the pathologists who did the autopsies, Stephanie Davies the Cheshire constabulary senior coroner’s officer - none of them were told that foul play was suspected, and none of them found anthing that triggered a concern that any of the deaths were unnatural.

The ONLY professional who knew murder was suspected before reviewing the cases was Dewi Evans.

We, yes he did. He DID know that the police were looking for a murderer.

‘Sounds like my kind of case.’

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/dec/20/my-kind-of-case-intense-focus-falls-on-lucy-letby-trial-expert-witness

Exactly. And baby C is an embarrassment to the prosecution because that case slipped through the net and exposed them at trial.

It certainly wasn't the only "suspicious" case Evans found where Letby was off shift! And that's looking at cases picked out for them by the consultants accusing her.

David Rose's work on this was overshadowed by Shoo Lee's press conference shortly afterwards, but it's well worth a read:

https://unherd.com/2025/02/why-the-letby-case-isnt-closed/

A good video presentation about problems with the chart, and the cases that were dropped from it, by Peter Elston:

Exactly. Surely it has to be agreed facts by both sides what times the babies collapsed and who was there etc.

This idea that it must be possible to establish as a matter of fact exactly who was there when is very unrealistic. If you've read medical notes before, they don't routinely state everyone who goes in and out of a room at what point. There isn't CCTV footage. There are supposed to be procedures and records for who clocks into the ward when, but even if those had been adhered accurately by the Chester staff (they weren't) it still wouldn't show who was in which part of the unit at what time.

So there's no surely about it! If that were considered something that was necessary to agree, they'd probably all still be in the courtroom arguing about it now.

Its also not true to claim that Dewi Evans correctly identified all of the cases bar 1.

https://unherd.com/2025/02/why-the-letby-case-isnt-closed/

You argued yourself just a few days ago that Letby lied and falsified the timings of Baby E’s collapse, which the prosecution asserted too and told Letby she must be lying about yhd times to give herself opportunity to leave baby E without care gof an hour before calling the registrar, , despite the fact that the registrar’s, Letby’s and the midwife’s (on a different ward) contemporaneous notes of events all matched up and it was mothers phone call time stamps from her phone provider that were an hour out.

He also rewrote on of his theories (twice) and in court when cross examined said 'well something bad must have happened' (paraphrased)

From the book Unmasking Lucy Letby-

'It was far too early to talk about suspects. For detective inspector Hughes establishing whether a crime had even been committed was the first step.'

(on Evans) 'He would always maintain that he knew nothing about Breary or the battle between the consultants and senior managers at the hospital.'

'All he had to go on were the clinical notes and a cursory examination at that. And this alone was enough to make him alarmed.'

'Evans was happy to assist, but he'd spent enough time with criminal defence barristers to know that if this case, and his opinion ever got near a court his impartiality would also be on trial. If he knew before reading the medical notes that allegations or suspicions had been levelled against a particular nurse, he might leave himself open to the accusation that he wasn't approaching the evidence objectively with an open mind. so before going any further he made his position clear to the cops-if you have a suspect I don't want to know, he told them, and they were more than happy to agree.'

Well someone was wrong weren't they? I'm not going to call the mother a liar but you go right ahead. The times possibly being wrong (I need to go read up on that anyway) doesn't change the fact she found Lucy Letby there with her baby and blood all around his mouth crying hysterically, unless you think she imagined all that. Lucy wanted herself nowhere near that incident. And I know who I believe!

From the article linked:

"Other discrepancies contained within the official notes, written by Detective Sergeant Janet Moore, are more serious. In fact, according to Evans’s initial analysis, and as the below chart illustrates, Letby was not in the hospital when 10 of the 28 incidents he described as “suspicious” took place — more than a third of them."

1. No one is calling mim a liar - she was reporting what she was told by her phone provider who, like most phone providers, uses UTC time, we were in BST time at the time of baby E

2. I was responding to your claim that surely both sides had to agree on facts such as whrn the babies died wtc. Evidently that’s not correct, is it.

Barristers are not allowed to KNOWINGLY mislead the court but they are perfectly allowed to disagree on facts that are disputed or not established.

You claimed that Evans didn’t even know anyone was in the frame. He knew the police were investigating deaths. Have you watched any of his interviews? I can’t recall him ever kissing a chance to tell the story if how he became involved

I’m addition, Evans claims on oath that he’d never even encountered the name Lucy Letby until
the BBC published her name in 2018 after her first arrest (see photo below)

However, in his interview with John Sweeny, he admits that Lucy’s name was in he nursing notes of the files that were handed to him late 2017 - and he notes that she was in the a lot (but not all of them, he quickly bavk peddles) and then elaborates that he mainly focused on the medical notes snyway that were separate.

Exactly this.

Yes that's right. She wasn't in all of them because they gave him all the deaths, and we know she wasn't on shift for every death. But her name was almost certainly in all the collapses, since we saw the consultants planning to present the collapses where they could put her cotside.

The point of course is, he knew he was invited to find deliberate harm, there being a police inquiry. And anyone thinking that magically produced only incidents associated with Lucy Letby hadn't read the Unherd article / listened to the Peter Elston video above.

Ffs. You are very naive about how trials work and what a barrister’s job is. It’s like you’re shocked by the very idea that every word he’s saying isn’t 1000000% fact. It’s like you think he’s Hercule Poirot at the end of an episode describing in detail what the murderer did and when.

What NJ is doing is presenting the prosecution’s case. It’s their argument for what happened and when. That is not “lying” but it also often isn’t fact and you keep expecting it to be! Barristers are adept at this. It’s a performance of a story and they’re hoping the jury will accept it. Nobody can know 100% what happened at all times, but he claims to because he’s presenting their version of the events. That’s his job! It’s their ‘story’ nothing more and it’s just how adversarial trials work.

It’s very obvious now why having “followed the trial from the beginning” has made you so entrenched, given that only the prosecution allegations were printed on front pages and disseminated on social media for the entire duration of the reporting bans and you were taking it all in as reportage of fact. It wasn’t then and it isn’t now. It’s the prosecution’s version of events. Nothing more. It might be true, or parts of it might be, but it also might be completely wrong.

You should read Sally Clark’s cross examination. You’d have her banged up too at this rate if she hadn’t already drank herself to death after being exonerated. Pick any case you like where the accused was innocent and have a read of their cross examination. It would be eye opening for you.

I think this is a good approach and it’s very like the process I went through myself when I first started thinking about the case. I didn’t start out assuming innocence by any stretch. It took a long time of research and weighing various pieces of evidence before I came to the conclusion that she’s (imo) almost certainly innocent.

But he wasn't "invited " he offered his services and they were accepted.

So mother left Letby approx 10pm after Letby ushered her away Si she could continue to harm baby E and then immediately called the registrar for help - it’s in the registrar’s contemporaneous notes.

You are also showing your naïveté about the adversarial process here. I suggest you go and read Sally Clark’s cross examination and tell me whether or not she did it (she didn’t and was eventually released). The prosecution certainly painted a vivid picture of her doing it! It was all nonsense storytelling though, because that’s how adversarial trials work.

“It's all nonsense, and as a prosecution claim it's neither evidence nor a fact accepted in court or in the judge's summing up for the jury.”

I’m astonished that this is news to anybody, but it appears that it is.