Lucy Letby: have you changed your mind - thread 3

[Typicalwave]

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

Is the coroner a “loose cannon with a bone to pick” too?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2y5zqw0jdo.amp

I was waiting for the ‘bone to pick’….

Shed had whay looked like a pretty good career up until that point.

Not everyone who gets fucked iver is a dishonest charlatan

Already know about it.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11481977/Senior-coroner-takes-employer-employment-tribunal.html

This is a more detailed explanation into the deaths. They do seem to be similar, throat cut and how anyone with Parkinson's disease can do that is beyond me.

This was your fourth paragraph which was stating the bleeding obvious:

Not exactly. Yes, they couldn’t tell a barefaced lie about something that is a definite fact - for example the time of death or who was on shift. But they can and absolutely will spin a story out of all the unknowns that gather between all the facts. For example, if nobody knows who was in nursery 1 at precisely 10.52 on a particular date in the NICU the prosecution can allege that this is when Letby struck, but they’re just making that up. It could be when she struck (if she’s guilty) but it could be when she was chatting about Corrie to a colleague in another room etc (if she’s innocent). The prosecution will attempt to present the narrative that fits their story, the defence will attempt to do the opposite. There is no fact being twisted or denied, because nobody knows for a fact what happened in between two moments that are factually recorded - say clocking in at 7 and then medical records show a procedure was done at 11pm etc.

Not that I know of?

Not actually my fourth paragraph but fine, let’s not split hairs.

Again, we are talking about exactly that sort of grey area so it’s clearly not stating “the bleeding obvious” to everyone.

The Coroner kicking up a stink about not being informed about suspicions of deliberate harm is completely justified and the consultants and (I think) hospital management have expressed regret about this.

However, what Davies is saying is almost entirely dependent on the expert panel being ‘correct’ in their findings and as we know these findings have not yet been formally tested.

Was there a formal test done on deaths of the babies that died, such as a coroner's report?

What was under discussion was the fact that information was withheld from the coroner.

@Typicalwave said this:

“The coroner was deliberately kept out of it and the CoCH deliberately withheld info from the coroner. That’s not from me, that’s from Stephanie Davis, chief coroner’s officer for Cheshire at the time.”

P.s: Wanly claiming to have “regrets” doesn’t explain the glaring hole in a story about a series of baby deaths being “unexpected” but not bothering to flag these deaths to the coroner.

Nope. The consultants didn’t flag the deaths to the coroner, which is what they are actually required to do.

I watched the documentary last night and do feel that there is a lot of room for doubt.
What did strike is that the hospital really wasn't equipped to manage such very sick babies. Its also seems quite convenient for male consultants to put the blame on female nurses.
Ive never sat on a jury but recently went to a theatre event which was the recreation of a real life murder trial, with the audience voting at the end as the 'jury'
The prosecution was a character assassination of the defendent. There was a motive, but no actual evidence.
I really wanted to vote guilty, stripping out the the prosections case, he was clearly a very flawed person and had been violent in the past. But being a violent, not very nice person did not make him guilty.
The audience found him not guilty. In real life he was convicted of murder. 8 years later new evidence came to light and another person confessed.
An interesting experience for me which shows some of the issues with the jury system.

What Davies is saying is not dependent on the expert panel being correct.

She is an interesting case because her statement to Thirlwall in 2024 did not express doubts or cast aspersions on the Cheshire Police, despite the acrimonious end to her work with them.

Her doubts and statements to the press came only after the publication at Thirlwall of a statement from Dr V, made months after Child O's autopsy, showing that information about a significant procedure had been withheld from the pathologist.

For context: when Jane Hawdon examined the medical records for this child in 2016, she commented that the information in them was so lacking that she simply could not comment on the quality of the resuscitation.

Whether Dr V's information (which was not disclosed to the defence) provides a necessary explanation of that child's death is another question: but omitting that information from the report to the pathologist (and withholding it from the defence) was clearly not acceptable.

That sounds really interesting, thanks. What was the name of the play?

A lot of what she is saying in this interview is dependent on the new experts’ findings:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jul/14/former-senior-coroners-officer-says-lucy-letby-has-suffered-miscarriage-of-justice

Six babies had normal medical post-mortems. The exception was baby E. Dr ZA (anonymised) told the parents there was nothing to learn from it so no need.

All but one of the postmortems found a natural cause of death. The exception was baby A.

Baby A therefore had a coroner's inquest. None of the doctors giving evidence there referred to the unusual rash which they insisted on at the trial. Nobody indicated that the death was suspicious, even though the postmortem happened after Lucy Letby was removed from the ward, despite the coroner asking specially for any more information, despite the option of speaking to the coroner privately.

Baby D was due to have a coroner's inquest because of her mother's concerns that the child's pneumonia was a result of the failure to give her antibiotics after her waters broke. This was cancelled when the police investigation started.

The parents of the triplets (who had numerous concerns about their treatment at Chester) also wanted a coroner's postmortem. The coroner agreed to keep this option open until they heard back from al of Chester's external experts on the case. When you see that Jane Hawdon concluded that significant failings in care likely contributed to both triplets' deaths, it seems clear a coroner's inquest would have gone ahead in these cases too, but again, the police investigation prevented this.

No it’s not. She’d become concerned on December when she found out information had been witheld, before the experts held their conference February. It’s true that she found the experts finding compelling, but her suspicions and concerns originated before this.

Yes, clearly she has a view on the new expert panel's findings and also has identified procedural problems. They're two different things.

I assume we'd all share her concern that doctors didn't report a medical procedure to the coroner. That wouldn't be any more acceptable if the new expert panel had concluded that LL was guilty.

Should have said, coroner also found child A unexplained, possibly natural causes but was unable to rule out iatrogenic, i.e. caused by medical procedures.

He pointed out at Thirlwall that it was Chester's consultants who prepared their case reports for the pathologists. He was furious and incredulous at their having failed to tell him of their suspicions.

Yes, exactly. Davies is quite clear in her distinction between the revealed fact that the consultants withheld information from the pathologist and her informed opinion on what might have happened if they had not done so.

We seem to be at cross purposes here. Maybe the following article will help you understand what point I'm trying to make, especially these bolded parts-

Mr Johnson said: “Their reaction would be dependent on when you told them there was a bleed?”
Mr Johnson said: “The prosecution case is that (Child E’s mother) is telling the truth and (Child E) was bleeding at 9pm.
“But you didn’t tell anyone about that until at least an hour later?”

Most of the rest of the exchange is here (for context)

The boy’s mother had told the court that she heard “horrendous crying” as she visited her son at 9pm and then saw blood around his mouth.
Letby says no bleeding took place prior to 10pm.
Prosecutor Nick Johnson QC asked: “Is it your case that medical incompetency contributed to his collapse or death?”
Letby replied: “Possibly, yes.”
Mr Johnson said: “Whose medical incompetencies?”
Letby said: “The medical team who were on that night.
“I just think collectively they could have acted sooner to respond to the blood issue.”
Mr Johnson said: “Their reaction would be dependent on when you told them there was a bleed?”
“Yes,” said Letby.
Mr Johnson said: “The prosecution case is that (Child E’s mother) is telling the truth and (Child E) was bleeding at 9pm.
“But you didn’t tell anyone about that until at least an hour later?”
Letby said: “No I disagree with that.

Mr Johnson went on: “I am suggesting to you that when (Child E’s mother) came down at 9pm you had inflicted an injury on (Child E) to cause bleeding?”
Letby said: “No, I don’t accept that. It didn’t happen.”
Mr Johnson said: “That’s why he was screaming, wasn’t it?”
“No,” said Letby.
Mr Johnson said: “Did you tell (Child E’s mother) that the source of the bleed was the insertion of a nasogastric tube?”
Letby said: “No.”
Mr Johnson said: “That is what you told (Child E’s mother) when she queried why he had blood around his mouth?”
Letby said: “No, I don’t recall that, I don’t believe I would have said something like that.”
The defendant denied the suggestion that she had “falsified records” including when failing to record a vomit of fresh blood on an observation chart.

Mr Johnson asked: “Why in the aftermath were you so obsessed with (Child E’s mother)?”
Letby said: “I don’t believe I was obsessed with (Child E’s mother).
Mr Johnson said: “Why were you searching for her continually on Facebook?”
Letby replied: “Because I often thought about (Child E) and (Child F).
The court has heard the defendant searched for Child E’s mother on nine occasions, including on the late evening of Christmas Day 2015.
Mr Johnson said: “Didn’t you have better things to do on Christmas Day?”
Letby said: “I often thought of (Child E) and (Child F).”
Mr Johnson said: “Because you had killed one and had tried to kill the other.”
Letby said: “No I didn’t.

https://www.herefordtimes.com/news/23545113.lucy-letby-hereford-nurse-denies-falsifying-records/

I wasn't implying anything. I was just letting a PP know that there actually was a willing defence expert. He just wasn't called.

Why wouldn’t you call the defence expert if you were guilty? That doesn’t make sense since surely your aim would be to avoid being found guilty. Can you explain your reasoning there?

Because they're probably not going to be able to agree no harm was done if I actually was guilty. Safer to avoid any medical experts altogether surely.

Exactly as I said

You said, Letby didn't tell the doctor about the bleed

I said, it's the time she told him that's disputed.

The bolded part says exactly what I was saying. Your claim (that Letby was said not to have reported at all) wasn't accurate. Perhaps you didn't mean to express it that way, but it seems we are actually on the same page. Lucy Letby was accused of waiting an hour to report.

(and we have explained why the accusation about the delay is disputed upthread)

I think most people do know that there was a defence expert who wasn’t called. The funny thing about that is that many people who don’t think she’s guilty started to ask questions because of that, not in spite of it.

Your logic that (if guilty) she would have felt it was safer to not call experts doesn’t work at all. Obviously it’s better to have someone speak for you than not, and we know for a fact that Dr Hall doesn’t think she’s guilty and he doesn’t agree with Evans - in fact there doesn’t appear to be a single neonatologist who does.

It’s vanishingly unlikely that Letby herself made the decision not to call them because she’s guilty. Whether or not she’s guilty/innocent she clearly isn’t stupid.

There are many, oblique, procedural legal reasons why experts might not have been called. This is why it actually does matter a lot how the trial ran. You can’t actually talk about this case properly without examining the structure of the trial. Here’s an article that goes into some detail on actual possible reasons why experts weren’t called.

jollycontrarian.com/index.php?title=Lucy_Letby:_the_missing_defence_evidence

surely you just know that to this day Mike Hall dies not agree there was murder in the first place? Have you not read his interviews? Or watched them?