Lucy Letby - have you changed your mind thread 4

[MistressoftheDarkSide]

With thanks to the original poster @kittybythelighthouse and @Tidalwave for continuing the discussion.

You said “Babies in NICU are all sick, by definition. Some of them are stable (i.e. their condition does not appear to be getting worse), some of them are improving, and some are unstable or deteriorating.” and I just don’t agree that this applies to all the babies on a unit that has no step down and where they go straight from the unit to home. Some of them will clearly have reached a point where they are ready to go home and these babies are not sick and will not be expected to suddenly deteriorate.

And I am not in the legal profession, I was very clear that I used to be quite some time ago. I now work for the NHS 🙂

You worked in the legal profession? In the UK that is a regulated term that strictly applies to those authorised and regulated to practise law. Not saying you didn’t. Just checking that this is what you mean?

I’m not sure it is, unless you’re referring to individual occupations within the profession or specific reserved activities. Anyway, just to reassure you that yes I was qualified to do what I was doing.

What is it about Baby D’s circumstances that lead you to believe there were no issues?

I posted a very detailed blog post about Baby D yesterday, I'd be interested to know if Firefly has read it, although they do seem to avoid anything too detailed or factual.

The strict UK definition of the legal profession is set out in the Legal Services Act 2007 - it refers to those formally authorised and regulated to practise law. It’s important not to give the impression that you’re speaking from experience as one of those professionals if you are not. If you are then fair enough. If you are not then probably best to clarify that.

Firefly seems to think that not informing oneself of the important detail is a virtue. It also, coincidentally, allows one to get straight to the fun stuff of gobbling up lurid tabloid opinion pieces about an evil nurse who has “thrown open the door to Hell, and the stench of evil overwhelms us all.” Who cares about the fact that the whole thing falls apart if you actually look at it.

May I have a link?

A lot went on with bany D that had ‘cause for concern’ written all over it. I find it incredible peole dear rube her as a ‘well’ baby. She had a SUPC (respiratory collapse) with in minutes of being given assistance in theatre, whilst in her father’s arms - that alone put her at a 50% increased risk of mortality compared to.

https://lawhealthandtech.substack.com/p/ll-part-8-the-death-of-child-d

This whole substack is very thorough.

Someone on Reddit made a complaint (below) to the BBC regarding Judith Moritz’s claim in the recent Panorama that Lucy Letby was “alone” in nursery 1 when Baby C collapsed. In their response, also below, the BBC bizarrely attempt to redefine the English word “alone” to mean “in a room the size of a living room with two other people present”.

It’s completely Orwellian “We have always been at war with Eastasia” stuff.

My complaint: An unverified and untrue statement

Judith Moritz stated

“One of the clearest problems with the prosecution evidence involves Baby C. He died at just four days old. Lucy Letby was alone with him when he collapsed.”

In fact, there appears to be no evidence Lucy Letby was alone in the room with Baby C. Three nurses in their original police statements failed to state that Lucy Letby was in the room. Two of them later changed their statements to place Letby in the room but there does not appear to be evidence that she was alone. One nurse [Nurse B] who actually said Letby was not in the room never changed her story.

The BBC’s response:

Thank you for contacting the BBC about Panorama: Lucy Letby: Who to Believe? You say that it was wrong to say that Lucy Letby was alone with Baby C when he collapsed. We don’t agree.

Nurse Ellis testified that shortly before Baby C’s fatal collapse, she left Nursery 1 and returned to find Baby C suffering a bradycardia with Ms Letby standing by the incubator.

Although Nurse Ellis and Nurse Taylor gave evidence that they were in Nursery 1 at the time of Baby C’s fatal collapse, they say they were tending to other duties, i.e., they were not with Baby C. Nurse Ellis says she was working at a computer and could not see Baby C’s incubator and Nurse Taylor recalls she was tending to another baby.

Nurse Ellis testified that that at the time of Baby C’s fatal collapse, she turned round and saw Ms Letby standing at Baby C’s incubator. In her trial evidence, Ms Taylor also says that Ms Letby was already at Baby C’s incubator when Baby C started to deteriorate. It is also the case that she did not explicitly state this in her 2018 police interview, but both statements can be true.

In short, the testimony of Nurses Ellis and Taylor indicates that Lucy Letby was alone at Baby C’s incubator with Baby C when he collapsed while Nurse Ellis and Nurse Taylor were tending to other duties in Nursery 1. The fact that they were in the room does not alter this.

Ms Letby herself told police in 2019 that she was the only staff member in the nursery at the time Baby C collapsed and she agreed that she was seen at his cot side when his alarm sounded.

On that basis, we don’t accept that it was wrong to say that Lucy Letby was alone with Baby C when he collapsed.

If you’d like to understand how your complaint is handled at the BBC, you might find it helpful to watchthe short film on the BBC Complaints website about how the BBC responds to your feedback. It explains the BBC’s process for responding to complaints, what to do if you aren’t happy with your response and how we share the feedback we receive.

Best wishes,

BBC Complaints Team www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

The Act refers to people and/or bodies formally authorised and regulated to practise law for these six reserved legal activities:

Exercise of rights of audience
Conduct of litigation
Reserved instrument activities
Probate activities
Notarial activities
Administration of oaths

As I’m sure you must know, there are many people legitimately working within the legal profession who are not authorised to do any of the above. I could have been one of them, or I could have been one of the people referred to above. It’s none of your business quite frankly.

All I have stated on these threads in relation to my own experience is that I worked in criminal defence, have spent many hours sitting in Crown Courts and in conference with counsel, and that it was the norm at the firm I worked for to have at least one murder case running at any given time. I’ve obviously also done a lot more than that too, but pertinently I don’t think anything I have talked about on these threads falls beyond the scope of my stated experience? Nor have I at any point sought to offer any legal advice or opinion? (And God help you if I did, my knowledge is ridiculously out of date).

Thanks for confirming that you were not a member of the actual profession. Just to be clear, working in a law firm in support roles is work in the legal sector, but in the UK the term ‘legal profession’ is reserved for those admitted and regulated as solicitors, barristers, or other authorised persons under the Legal Services Act 2007.

If you weren’t admitted to the roll of solicitors, called to the Bar, or otherwise authorised under the Act, then you were not part of the legal profession. You were working in the legal sector. Those are two different things. Conflating the two is misleading, which is why I challenged your original phrasing.

The difference and status of the term “legal profession” is well understood in the legal sector, but it sounds like you left this sort of work a while ago so you may have forgotten that. I’m sure that your experience was valuable, but I’m sure you’d agree that it would be misleading to suggest you were part of the regulated profession itself. It’s not about me being nosy btw, it’s about not being misleading within a thread that is in part a discussion about legal issues.

You’re being completely ridiculous so I don’t even know why I’m engaging, but I haven’t admitted anything about which occupation I was or wasn’t.

Can you provide us with your credentials so that we can confirm you’re qualified to give your many opinions on matters from (amongst others) legal to neonatology to pathology to NHS management?

Oh, come on... Stop badgering each other. rubbishatballet is clearly Amal Clooney and is too modest to say.
Can we get back on topic and stay friendly?

Not really helping your plea for friendliness with the bitchy mean girls comment about Amal Clooney, but yes am more than happy to draw a line under these tortuous needling side bars about nothing of any relevance that Kitty keeps insisting on.

I’m afraid I see nothing ridiculous about asking someone to confirm whether or not they were registered as a practising legal body or merely worked within the sector when they’ve relied several times on them having worked in criminal law on a thread that has criminal law and justice at its heart.

I work in the social care sector, I work with a lot of social workers and am part of a social work team (primary work is in the NHS) but it would be wholly wrong of me to imply I’m a social worker nor work for the NHS.

Re status of the NNU - it had designated ICU cots, in nursery 1, requiring one-to-one nursing, HD (high dependency) cots in nursery 2, and SC (special care) cots in nurseries 3 and 4.

So you you wouldn't call the whole unit a NICU and you would expect children in different nurseries to have more or less acute needs. But they also moved between nurseries, in both directions, as their conditions fluctuated. They were supposed to be transferred to level 3 facilities if on ventilation for more than a certain amount of time (I think 24 or 48 hours), if they needed surgery, if they were below a certain weight, or if they were born below a certain gestation, though in practice this wasn't strictly observed.

For the babies Lucy Letby was accused of killing, babies, A, C, D, and E were in nursery 1 from birth.

Baby I was moved between nurseries and hospitals, but was on nursery 1 for the shift when she died. Babies O and P were supposed to have one-to-one nursing but instead were placed in nursery 2 with a 1:3 ratio. Baby O was transferred to nursery 1 after an initial collapse, but there was no room in nursery 1 to do the same for baby P the next morning.

The babies she was accused of harming but not killing:

child B, child F, child H, child K, child L, child M, child N (one event) and child Q were in nursery 1 (ICU).

Child G, child J were in nursery 2, high dependency. (Child G vomited and deteriorated after this, with a documented infection, and Lucy Letby wasn't found guilty of harming child J).

Child N was in nursery 3, expected to go home that day, when he deteriorated from before Lucy Letby's shift. Again, she was found not guilty of that attack, presumably because it was so obvious she wasn't there.

So, while you can say that the NNU had cots for children who were recovering, feeding and growing, this doesn't mean it didn't provide ICU care (until it was downgraded). None of the children Lucy Letby was accused of killing came into this recovering, feeding and growing category. A small number of her "attacks" are meant to have happened outside the ICU cots. Children in rooms 2, 3 and 4 could and did deteriorate, but these events were very much the exception in the charges against Lucy Letby.

it was designated ‘short term’ ventilation, whatever that means

Well, it wasn't meant to be meanspirited. I used to work in comedy but clearly I'm off my game. I won't tease you anymore.

Thanks oftenaddled. That is what I had gathered - they did provide different levels of care including intensive care, and babies would move between them according to need.

Nobody needs to produce “credentials” to give an opinion on a discussion thread. But once someone claims the mantle of professional authority, as you did, they should expect to be asked whether they actually held that status. If they didn’t, then the claim is misleading. Nothing more than that. Getting bristly about it suggests you know that too.

I have never ‘claimed the mantle of professional authority’ (lol, alright Hyacinth Bucket?), all I have said (and god how I wish I’d never mentioned it now) is that quite a while ago I used to work in criminal defence, or if you would prefer ‘the legal profession’. And I think I only said it originally because there was a discussion about it not being the done thing in the UK for barristers to rise when they have an issue with a line of questioning, and I made the comment that that was not my experience from having spent many hours observing them in action.

Please point me towards anything I have said pertaining to my experience that wouldn’t apply whether I had been either a barrister, a solicitor, a legal executive, a paralegal, an accredited police station representative/crown court clerk or potentially even a legal secretary (who in some smaller criminal firms may well sit behind counsel in crown court and cover some conferences - or at least would have done in my day)? And if you can’t, please tell me again why it is even remotely relevant what my exact occupation was? (Actually don’t bother). All you are doing currently is highlighting your complete lack of understanding about how criminal defence in the UK works in reality.

Anyway, though it makes zero difference to anything, I will tell you that I worked in various roles which I’m not going to list for you but was ultimately a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives (as it was then) - happy now?

Finally, I know I only have myself to blame that I have continued to engage with this ridiculousness and I really should just leave you to your echo chamber of Lucy Letby and Shoo Lee cheerleading as that is essentially all that you want from these threads.

your echo chamber of Lucy Letby and
Shoo Lee cheerleading

@rubbishatballet I understand that you think Lucy Letby is a serial killer. I don't but that's because I think the evidence to against her is very poor. I feel sorry for her because I think she's been wrongly convicted but I am not cheerleading (whatever that even means?) for anyone.

Before I looked into the case properly I assumed Lucy must be guilty. I would change my opinion if I saw new and convincing evidence she had commited these crimes and that there were any crimes.

But what I really don't understand is why you think anyone would be cheerleading for Shoo Lee or why he would need that. The guy is a retired neonatologist and medical researcher. He has literally done nothing wrong. His only motivation seems to be concern about his medical research paper being misused and worry about a wrongful conviction. He isn't even being paid or making any money out of it.

I also honestly don't understand why with so many prominent experts seeing no evidence of harm but only natural causes and sub optimal medical care (not unknown in the NHS) anyone can have no doubts whatsoever about this conviction.

It's interesting when you go to look up a detail of this case how often you find something else that undermines the prosecution case.

We heard so much about Lucy Letby wanting to be in the ICU, in nursery 1, with the sickest babies. But when they looked at the text messages that ended up showing she wasn't around when baby N collapsed for the second time, she was actually talking about escaping room 1 and how she'd been having a lovely peaceful time with the babies in room 3. It is so sad and alarming that her perfectly normal messages about work stresses and passing problems were turned into ammunition against her.

Neither do I.

Sorry, that was in response to @DoubledTrouble

@Oftenaddled i think what’s so chilling about this case is that it shows how normal things, thoughts and explanations can be twisted and turned into something incredibly dark.

My dad died eleven years ago. He had a heart attack and it was after I’d disclosed something to him that was likely to be upsetting (it was a work thing; nothing terrible but I knew he had a tendency to fret.) I had been in two minds whether to tell him or not but decided to. And then he died. I wrote down in a diary something almost identical to Lucy - something about being a selfish, horrible person and I KILLED HIM in capitals.

I stalk people on Facebook as well. It’s what it’s there for FGS.