Lucy Letby: have you changed your mind - thread 3

[Typicalwave]

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

It hardly matters anyway. The expert panel’s findings are compelling.

“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.”

I have never heard someone who thinks she’s guilty condemn the doctors for this or for anything else, like emailing management about a serial killer for over a year instead of doing literally anything about it (coroner? Pan Cheshire Child Death panel? Just go to the Police?!) leaving her free to wander round the hospital killing at will.

@Oftenaddled Your claim (that Letby was said not to have reported at all) wasn't accurate.

That's not what I meant no. I think she didn't report it for an hour and that's why all the accounts except the mums match up. The time being wrong is just speculation and some conspiracy person's theory at this point. You keep saying Lucy's matches up with everyone else's and don't seem to be acknowledging that this is obviously going to be the case if she doesn't notify anyone about it for an hour.

But forget about the time difference for just a sec for the love of god lol.
Lucy denies ANY of that convo with the mother. Denies saying the bleed was down to the tube, denies telling the mother to leave. Do you just think the mother misremembered/imagined ALL of that? On the most traumatic day of her life that will be etched in her memory forever? Why is Lucy denying that she said all this to the mother?

Of course. It's one thing to say that in an interview though and another thing completely to be cross-examined about it. I'd be very surprised if he can explain every single bit of evidence away. There were too many methods she used. I don't know what he's said about each one, or if he's allowed to speak on it publicly. It'd be very interesting to know for sure. Has he said the insulin poisoning wasn't deliberate? I doubt it!

You’ve had it explained several times. The mother made several calls that night in response to things occurring on the NNU and on the maternity ward - including the midwife coming in to mum to tell her they wanted her to go back to the NNU in 30 minutes. Yhd mother made another call to her husband when this happened. Thd midwife noted when she went to speak with mim. Mim relied on her phone providers call log for the time this exchange happened. The mums time recollection was a whils hour earlier than the midwife’s contemporaneous notes.

The mother’s phone providers call gave her the times of her calls that evening in UTC.

You are either being wilfully ignorant or you lack basic ability to come to a logical conclusion of his all three separate medical notes mayecjbuo ij a Timd line but the mothers is consistently one hour early.

only one of the following two are correct:

the mothers call log is an hour early bevause it’s was British summer time abx the call logs were time stamped in UTC whoch is the same as GMT

Of all three sets of notes frok three members of staff that match up to the events are all recorded as one hour later for the events.

The midwife's notes did not depend on Lucy Letby telling her anything. She made her own notes based on her own conversation with the parents in a separate phone call later that evening. She wrote down the time of the phonecall. The mother's records are approximately an hour earlier for that phone call.

From this fact, people have concluded that the mother has the time of both phone calls wrong.

He wanted to take the stand. He was shocked then and he still feel now he should have had the opportunity to give an account of his findings.

Lucy Letby says in the paragraph you've quoted, I don't believe I would have said something like that. That is a perfectly reasonable thing to say eight years after the event if something doesn't sound like something you'd say.

We can't tell what she meant because there is no follow up question, but she could mean, I'd never have been so sure, I might have suggested it but only as a possibility, I wouldn't say that because I'd have suspected a gastric bleed etc. Somebody, even Lucy Letby, might indeed have suggested the tube scratching the throat as a possibility without making that response untrue.

You are just attaching far far too much weight to someone's memory of a conversation eight years on. And so what if Lucy Letby had thought it was the tube scratching the throat anyway? What difference would it make?

You know best hun, even better than Nick Johnson KC apparently!

Feel free to read the statements yourself.

I can help with that information. Hall has said, to Rachel Aviv of the New Yorker, that if the defence had been aware of a third child on the ward who had similar insulin test results (in November 2015), that would have made a difference to their defence on that point.

Unfortunately, this information was not disclosed to the defence. That is one of their grounds for review in their files sent to the CCRC.

So it sounds as if Hall did not necessarily know how to explain the insulin tests at that time. Fortunately, full disclosure of evidence and the match of science help to overturn many a miscarriage of justice.

All I can say is thank god the jury were able to understand such a simple concept as the fact that no one else but Lucy and the mum knew what happened before 10p.m because they weren't there.

Seems arse about face to me.

If a guilty LL has managed to persuade an expert that she didn't do it, she's done the hard part already. The expert would be questioned by the prosecution barrister who, however competent, will be massively inferior in subject knowledge.

Dr Hall, even if wrong, would've had some basis and rationale for his view and would be giving an honest opinion in response to someone who had no specialist knowledge. If he'd been fooled well enough, which you clearly think he was, it's not at all probable that he'd go on the stand and say actually she did harm them. Because he'd been fooled. So it's more likely that the reason was tactical or procedural.

I understand people drawing negative inferences when one side can get an expert to make their case and the others can't, but this is something different.

All I can say is thank god not everyone is wilfully ignorant and unable to look at the evidence of four separate accounts for fear of it threatening the integrity of their beliefs.

@Imperativvv as I understand it he hasn't ever declared her not guilty he's said there were elements he didn't agree with like it being stated that the babies were healthier than they were in reality in his opinion. It's hardly a ringing endorsement of her innocence! Most of us have inferred from what he's said that there's elements of the prosecution case he DOES agree with.

The mum of baby E made two calls that night. The second one, in her phone records at 22.52, was supposed to be the one telling her husband to come to the hospital right away, where the midwife talked to him. However, according to the midwife’s notes (agreed evidence) she did not get the call from the unit about Baby E's crisis until 23.30, and Mum E arrived there near midnight.

So how did the midwife speak to the husband about an incident before she knew about it? It doesn’t make sense. Was the midwife lying in her notes too? She would have to be to make this time false. The time would have to be false to make the mum’s phone record time correct, Everything lines up except the mother’s phone records, which appear to be an hour early. There’s a potential explanation for this.

Phone companies generally keep records in UTC, whereas this event occurred during BST. The hospital notes (Letby’s, the registrar’s, and the midwife’s) all agree with each other. It may be because they are in local time (BST), while the phone company records are logged in UTC which is one hour ahead of BST.

So the “second call” logged at 22:52 in the phone records is actually 23:52 local time. That makes sense:

• The midwife is called by NNU at 23:30 BST.
• Baby E collapses at 23:40 BST.
• Mother E calls Father E at 23:52 BST (appearing in records as 22:52 UTC) this is the “come now” call where the midwife speaks to him.
• Mother E arrives at the unit shortly before midnight.

Once you account for UTC vs BST, the time gap disappears and everyone’s accounts line up, the registrar’s the midwife’s, the mum’s, and Letby’s.

Whether or not the UTC explanation is right, it’s the only explanation I’ve heard so far that accounts for this discrepancy across the records.

Well, where he seems to agree with the prosecution is that he can't explain all the deaths and collapses with reference to a specific natural cause.

But 150 infant deaths are certified as unexplained every year in the UK. So the next step is obviously not to accuse anyone of murder.

This article says Dr Hall doesn't think there's any definitive medical evidence that the babies were deliberately harmed. Ie he doesn't accept the contention that there must've been an 'it' in the first place.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj0y9673rjno

He also gives an alternative explanation for Baby C below.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c89l05e97vqo

With that in mind, even assuming he's wrong on both points, it's a stretch to say he'd 'probably' not be able to say no harm was done when questioned.

Well it was definitely a terrible mistake for the defence not to call Dr Hall. Really we might not be where we are now if they had.

They should have had an expert neonatal nursing care witness as well to comment on issues such as tubes getting dislodged and the likely hood of being able to carry out all these attacks in the middle of a busy ICU

A statistician and an expert on insulin tests were probably needed too.

Still I think there is a fundamental problem here with the proscecution, police and consultants being able to get more data than the defence.

The former get to go through all the deaths, collapses and tests cherry picking things that can be blamed on Lucy. The defence only gets information on the selected data.

Also I think there are probably issues for the defence in finding the right experts and paying them.

Far from ensuring perfect recall, the more stress and anxiety the mother was feeling, the more likely it is that there will be gaps in memory, things out of place or information just not taken in or muddled memories. Trauma memories are notoriously difficult because of the way the brain works under stress.

Personal experience - trauma truly messes with your memory, which a particularly cruel aspect of memory and how it works.

I do wonder if Myers was so clear in his own mind that there was no real evidence against Lucy that he was over self confident about the outcome of the trial. Perhaps he thought his cross examination had come across to the jury better than it had.

There are two possible scenarios. The fact that I believe one (which happens to be the one presented in court) and you believe the other doesn't make me wilfully ignorant. It just means you'll grasp onto any possible reason to discredit the mother. It's really in poor taste.

Well, where he seems to agree with the prosecution is that he can't explain all the deaths and collapses with reference to a specific natural cause.

Well there you go then! He has no way to naturally explain some of the deaths and he'd have to admit that in court. No wonder he wasn't called.

He's also said there's a lot wrong with the new expert panel and he thinks it'll hurt her case in the long run. So I'm surprised you're willing to listen to anything he says to begin with.

I had a scan at 20 weeks which showed my baby was missing an arm. A couple of weeks later we were at the specialist and they asked if the hospital had given any potential reasons. Dh said no, and I launched into a long description of what I remembered them saying.
What I said was total rubbish, and definitely not what was said, because I got out the leaflet to prove it to dh when we got back and found it was not what I remembered.

Five years later and all I could remember from that time was the last doing the scan saying she couldn't get baby to move, so wanted the consultant to have a look, and me turning to dh and saying " something's wrong."
I'll swear that happened, but dh's tells me I totally froze and he couldn't get a word out of me for about half an hour.

I don't think a memory from 10 years ago is very reliable for anyone, especially at a traumatic moment.