Lucy Letby: have you changed your mind - thread 3

[Typicalwave]

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

Firefly, you don’t seem to be aware that I’m entitled (as are you!) to criticise anyone who is in the public eye, including journalists (I would have thought that was obvious!) what exactly is it that I said about Liz Hull that has upset you?

Let me then be really careful and precise with my words on LH: I think she’s a dreadful hack who uses the parents as a human shield so she can continue profiting off of their grief without needing to concern herself with inconvenient matters like accurate reporting or the public’s right to hold the justice system to account. I think her (and Caroline Cheetham’s) podcast is a nasty little rat’s nest of direct manipulation, structural dependence, and journalistic corruption hiding behind a pair of sickly sweet voices that make me want to gargle tequila for breakfast.

Before you get your knickers in a twist over the words “journalistic corruption” know that it is a fact that Caroline Cheetham’s media company was being paid by Cheshire Police while the trial was ongoing. This IS collusion and structural dependence. It is massively against journalistic ethics. I wouldn’t mind if they were running some kind of lifestyle flimflam, but they are not. They are flinging the public’s right to scrutinise justice into the fire by shilling for CP, hiding behind the parents to do it, AND getting paid for it?! This is such harmful low behaviour that I could honestly go a lot further.

It’s really interesting to me that you still do not see how (or apparently even where) you have also been strong in your words, if not more so. Here’s a clue: I wasn’t talking about the expert panel.

“Nick Johnson seems to get away lightly in all this-no idea why!”

I’ve told you why. He’s just a barrister doing what barristers do. He’s not the superhero for your side of the debate. It’s simply his job under the adversarial system (which for better or worse is what we currently have) to represent the case for the prosecution to the best of his abilities within the bounds of the law. He will have been appointed via the CPS Advocate Panel (a structured roster of approved counsel). Once on the panel, a barrister can’t simply decline briefs because they dislike a case or think it’s weak. They need a recognised reason (conflict of interest, lack of expertise, diary clash, etc). He just did his job. As I say, I do not approve of all of his lines of questioning, which veered into outright misogyny at times IMO, but on the whole he was just doing his job and he did do it well. He is a very good barrister. There are good public interest reasons why the CPS Advocate Panel functions like this, just as the ‘cab rank rule’ for defence barristers is also in the public interest.

Liz Hull, on the other hand, is a bad journalist who is actively engaged in corruption for access and profit at the expense of the public’s right to open justice and to scrutinise and hold justice (including the policing system) to account.

“It's everyone else you seem to hate-consultants, police, journalists who reported on the trial...”

Yes. Because those people behaved very poorly in ways that actively harm the public’s right to scrutinise or access justice.

Nick Johnson just did what a Prosecution Barrister does.

One of these things is really, really, bad. The other is a necessary element of the current legal system. Does that make it clearer?

“But you missed out most of the reasons for why they started investigating-now who is arguing in bad faith!”

No. No, I didn’t. All of those points have been addressed over and over again across these threads. I don’t want to clog the thread up with more of the same but I’m happy to DM if you want.

Because they are “so-called” extremely qualified and experienced doctors, not esteemed ones like Dewi Evans. And they associate with lowlife mechanical engineers with PhDs and dozens of relevant published papers to their names.

Or something.

At least you didn’t call any of them an ‘evil, evil piece of shit.’

From an observational POV it's an interesting exercise in the issues of fixed beliefs that become dogmatic.

On this thread the views range from she was accused so she must be guilty, confirmed by a system with a possibly unconscious bias towards proving that, or a calculated attempt to clean up a very messy complex situation as neatly as possible, through the middle ground which sees massive flaws in the system and the evidence identified by people with the expertise to challenge this, because MOJs are a concern to the wider population for many reasons, to the strong belief that Lucy Letby is innocent due to the evidence presented and either direct experience or being well informed of how the system can be abused and be abusive.

The latter two camps are more open to having their position challenged, even though it might lead to discomfort, the first camp will not be shaken, and display an almost religious fervour, with underpinnings of "fighting a good fight" in the face of "evil".

It's something we're seeing across society and relating to a variety of issues. Polarised black and white thinking has seeped into everything.

There's a saying that if you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything, which i disagree with, as sometimes when it comes to being forced to pick what one believes to be the lesser of two evils, neutrality and withdrawal is a stand in itself.

In the context of Lucy Letbys case, I can't deny that fear plays a part in my opinion - fear that our systems are never benign, fear that propaganda and manipulation can so easily condemn a person, fear that once a fallacious opinion becomes cemented in a court of law, it will be used as fact and the next person in the firing line will have no defence at all. And we should be beyond this by now.

I know I'm rambling a bit, and this post is not intended as a criticism of anyone in particular. As I say, it's coming from my observation and experienced and I will always acknowledge that I'm not immune to bias, because none of us are as even with awareness, our subconscious can be a sneaky motherfucker.

I seriously think that given the overwhelming of easily accessible information across all platforms, that we need more education about our own psychology - although, as my curse is to see big pictures, that could come with its own agenda.

Anyway, apologies for a bit of a de-rail,my current existential crisis is showing.

“No, I think my point is more that I can’t really understand why the defence didn’t make more of the fact that it would have been impossible for Letby (or anyone) to tamper with the bags without it being completely obvious. Why not call someone from the company who makes the bags? Or another relevant expert who could talk to this?”

This is another opportunity to illustrate that trial procedure really does matter (whereas Firefly earlier stated that it’s totally irrelevant). We have no idea what was or was not disallowed by the judge in this case. Most rulings on arguments/questions are made in the absence of the jury. The press only report what happens in the presence of the jury. Every time you think “why didn’t the defence raise this?” The answer may be that it was disallowed. You can’t know, so therefore your test for whether or not this thing matters should be whether or not it’s true, not whether or not it came up at the trial. This is one very good reason why the battlecry “I followed the whole trial!” doesn’t actually illustrate a depth of knowledge here.

“Why not call someone from the company who makes the bags? Or another relevant expert who could talk to this?”

You should also ask yourself why the prosecution didn’t do this.

Take all the time you need.

As would we all. Neither side did this. It would have benefited the prosecution to illustrate the ease of it, if it is possible.

Courts don’t generally allow “in-court experiments,” the prosecution wouldn’t want to highlight the practical obstacles, and the defence either didn’t press the point or were limited by admissibility rulings. The jury were left to assume feasibility rather than having it tested.

Yes. That was discussed on day 3 of the trial.

I didn’t? Oh well. Too late to edit now 🥲 😂

You’re not rambling at all.

“fear that our systems are never benign, fear that propaganda and manipulation can so easily condemn a person, fear that once a fallacious opinion becomes cemented in a court of law, it will be used as fact and the next person in the firing line will have no defence at all. And we should be beyond this by now.“

This is very much the point for me and it illustrates how foolish it is for people, even if they think she’s guilty, to handwave things like corruption in the press or clear fault lines in the justice system or policing. None of us are safe if such things are allowed to go unchecked.

I understand why they tried all the cases at once from some angles, however, the volume of information the jury had to absorb over 10 months must have meant they hit saturation point pretty quickly. No shade at the jurors, nor aspersions towards their intellect, I think anybody would have developed a ten thousand yard stare after a few weeks.

The heavy weight placed upon them due to the nature of the trial must also have been daunting.

I think each case should have been countered by the defence in order presented. It's all very well that the prosecution goes first, but the volume of information was colossal, and ifvthe defence, such as it was, tried to address each and every point after the whole prosecution case, the trial could have been much longer.

I suppose they had to try and parse out which bits to fully address, which bits would have made potentially the biggest impact on the jury.

Given the variety of "murder methods" i think this was an unprecedented case and that, as discussed upthread, our adversarial system was ill-equipped to deal with it.

I too can't understand the lack of defence experts, but I can't believe the defence were just inept - i think they made calculated choices that just ended up being plain wrong, because this case was unlike any other and they were a bit overwhelmed too.

Given the fact that the judge is essentially in control, my biggest issue is that the judge was clearly not impartial, and that's a huge problem, as he's there to ensure a properly conducted fair trial, not wave away legitimate concerns such as the suitability of "expert witnesses" raised by other professionals.

Firstly, can you point me towards where I have previously stated that trial procedure is “totally irrelevant”?

We have no idea what was or was not disallowed by the judge in this case. Most rulings on arguments/questions are made in the absence of the jury. The press only report what happens in the presence of the jury. Every time you think “why didn’t the defence raise this?” The answer may be that it was disallowed.

Honestly, this is such a reach that I don’t really even know where to start with it. BUT let’s say that happened - can you give me an example of a potential justification the judge might have in doing so?

Also, there is nothing in the CoA judgment that suggests that such a potentially significant piece of evidence for the defendant was disallowed. If that is what happened then why on earth wouldn’t it have formed part of the application to appeal?

“Why not call someone from the company who makes the bags? Or another relevant expert who could talk to this?”

You should also ask yourself why the prosecution didn’t do this.

Take all the time you need.

Thanks for your generous offer but I don’t need much time to hazard a guess that one of the reasons they didn’t bother could have been because the defendant had already conceded (yes, whether she was in a position to or not) that someone had tampered with the bags 🤷‍♀️

Apologies if this is going over old ground, and it's been posted on these threads before, but can anyone point me to Lucy's police interview when they got her to say that any exogenous insulin must have been delivered by TPN bags?

I've found the trial stuff, but I would like to refresh my memory about the very first mention to Lucy and what was said precisely. And Google is not being my friend....

Just to reiterate, we don’t know what was or wasn’t allowed. We do know that nurses at COCH were warned off of testifying in support of LL by the trust. We also know that the judge was, for whatever reason, very pro prosecution. The defence were hamstrung lots of times in front of the jury, the refusal to allow interleaving being one such example, therefore it’s not a stretch to assume that there were other such moments in the absence of the jury (which the public wouldn’t know about). Judges don’t have free rein to disallow the defence from calling expert evidence, but they can make life very hard for the defence in practice.

I’m not saying that the above accounts for all of the defence’s seeming shortfalls, but it likely does account for some. The following factors also may have played in:

• The defence was reliant on legal aid once LL’s house sale money ran out. While equality of arms is a thing, in practice the prosecution has the machinery of the state: police, forensic labs, disclosure officers, CPS lawyers, etc at its disposal.
• The prosecution has far more time to build their case (given that the investigation starts well before the defendant has reason to instruct a defence). The defence can absolutely end up overwhelmed and under-resourced compared to the prosecution.
• The defence only gets disclosure once proceedings are underway, often after the Crown has had years to build the case.
• Letby, once arrested, naively engaged the local solicitor who managed her house sale. They almost certainly were way out of their depth in a historically massive criminal trial like this one. While Myers is a very good KC, a barrister is dependant on their team for research and fact finding.
• The prosecution had a larger team and much more time. As we’ve seen on several occasions (like with Jayaram’s overlooked email) the defence were likely simply overwhelmed with massive amounts of material to comb through, most of it likely barely relevant. They were outgunned in every way.

Mea culpa - I at first thought this was Firefly hence my error in saying you said procedure was irrelevant (which I corrected in the edit) you didn’t say that. Firefly did. Apologies, I had a lot of Firefly mentions to reply to today.

“Honestly, this is such a reach that I don’t really even know where to start with it.”

What is a “reach”? I said that judges have the ability to disallow certain elements from being brought forward. I didn’t say this is 100% what happened here, my point was that we can’t assume that it wasn’t, so our measure should be what is true in reality, not whether or not something was mentioned in the trial, given the fact that we can never know what was or wasn’t allowed. That said, British courts generally don’t allow demonstrations in the same way that American courts do, so it’s a pretty safe assumption actually and not a “reach” at all.

“I don’t need much time to hazard a guess that one of the reasons they didn’t bother could have been because the defendant had already conceded (yes, whether she was in a position to or not) that someone had tampered with the bags”

Again, that shouldn’t matter to any of us as much as whether or not in reality tampering with the bags is possible.

I want to know who first stated that the insulin was administered via the TPN bags, and why the police presented it as an established fact. It's bugging me. Which amateur Sherlock deduced that?

“I think each case should have been countered by the defence in order presented. It's all very well that the prosecution goes first, but the volume of information was colossal, and if the defence, such as it was, tried to address each and every point after the whole prosecution case, the trial could have been much longer.”

This is what the defence argued for. It was impossible because the judge’s decision to try all the charges in one trial (called joinder in legal terms) and not to allow interleaving of defence response to prosecution allegations per case meant they had to wait until the full prosecution case was heard for all of the charges.

It really does undermine the concept of a fair trial in my opinion.

It was simply the only possible way LL could have delivered insulin to the babies given the fact that she wasn’t there at the time. There is no evidence whatsoever that any TPN bags were poisoned by anybody.

I was just about to ask the same thing - and when it cant up in cross examination.

I agree, but someone must have said that in the first place.

The decision to joinder the cases could be in the CCRC application. Other MoJ have appealed on that basis in the past as it can be prejudicial to the defence. But of course we don’t know. They certainly have enough to go on even without that.

I would guess Evans. The police would likely have deferred to him for theories on how she could have poisoned a baby while off shift from a medical POV.

And essentially if it was Evans, he guessed.

NJ brought it up and from my reading of the transcripts at that point he is being extremely clever (I mean this sincerely. He is actually a very good KC) by trying to get LL to say that it’s possible to poison TPN bags without detection by framing it as being “to her benefit” to illustrate that someone could potentially have done this, given that she had by this stage allowed that if the test proved poisoning then someone must have poisoned them. In this way he gets round the question in the jury’s mind of whether it’s possible, without accidentally illustrating that it isn’t in fact possible.

The man was second to none at coming up with all sorts of malfeasance on the hoof. He should have been a crime writer. Would have done less damage that way.