Lucy Letby not charged with further crimes - what does this say about her current convictions

[mids2019]

So no more charges for Lucy Letby currently.

I can't say I am surprised as the tactics the CPS used the first time to secure convictions wont wash. There have been too many questions about the 'expert' evidence in the first trial and in my opinion the CPS don't want to take the risk of trying again with a more possibly more aware jury.

The police seem to be not too happy and probably thought they had similar evidence as they had initially so were taken aback by the CPS decision. They have had to approach parents to say that their children dies either through medical incompetence or through natural causes. The poor parents will now feel distraught and confused being lef up the garden path and the police maybe telling them Lucy was guilty.

I wonder if this is paving the way for a retrial?

This whole case starts from a guilty bias, not an innocence bias. I don't have an innocence bias, I don't know whether she's innocent or not.

But I'm as sure as sure can be that she has not been proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

Here is the international expert panel's summary report on Baby O. It's simply not the case that nobody has been able to explain this death.

PANEL OPINION

Baby 15 collapsed because the subcapsular haematoma ruptured causing acute major haemorrhage into the peritoneal cavity sufficient to cause a near halving of the haemoglobin level. Subcapsular liver
haematoma is the result of “traction” or “shear” forces applied to the thin, fragile liver capsule through the hepatic ligaments.

In Baby 15, this was highly likely the result of the extremely rapid delivery, which is a well-recognised cause of birth injury. Bleeding into a subcapsular haematoma is characteristically initially slow because it is contained by the pressure of the enveloping liver capsule; in these early stages the clinical signs are insidious and difficult to recognise.

High pressure ventilation decreased venous
return to the heart and contributed to liver congestion. The slow, deterioration is then characteristically followed by acute collapse when the capsule ruptures, releasing free blood into the peritoneal cavity.

The significance of the rising heart rate and falling pH before the terminal collapse were not recognised. The blind abdominal insertion of a needle during resuscitation may have penetrated the right lobe of the liver, causing further injury, noted by the pathologist as parenchymal haematoma and laceration.

Blunt direct trauma to the right abdomen or chest is implausible because it is very difficult to generate the kind of forces required to produce the observed injuries in a liver protected by the lower chest wall.
The gaseous distension of the intestinal tract was likely due to air swallowing and insufflation during non-invasive respiratory support. The suggestion of injection of air into the circulation is conjecture.

lucyletbyinnocence.com/shoo-lee/International%20Expert%20Panel%20-%20Summary%20Report.pdf

The eldest triplet had a liver hematoma (noted at postmortem), so it's not unreasonable that his identical sibling, born a minute later, should have had one too.

But the birth injury has only been presented as a probable or very plausible cause of the liver hematoma. This is in part because, despite Cheshire Constabulary being advised in 2017 that experts should examine obstetric notes, they never engaged an expert to do so. While the police have ultimate responsibility for that, they acted on the advice of David Evans. In consequence, the notes have never been made available to the defence, although they have requested them.

But liver hematomas can be spontaneous in any case, so the birth injury is simply a suggestion of most likely cause. All involved acknowledge that the injury was injured before doctors started to work on it. The hematoma would likely be congenital. But further injury to the liver seems to have developed during treatment.

Nobody remotely qualified to do so has "debunked" this outline of events. There has been quibbling over the birth injury, which is not an essential feature.

The fact that you are presenting this as "debunked" shows that you have lost sight of the claims Evans made - to have eliminated other possibilities. This possibility has certainly not been eliminated.

Who has debunked it? Do you mean the prosecution? Because I think there is a clear bias there, whereas the original pathologist and coroner have no such bias.

Obviously, the prosecution will choose an expert who agrees with them over one who doesn't.

Dr Shoo Lee and his team also concur that there was no blunt force trauma. So, on the side, you have Modi and Taylor (Dr Lee's team), the original pathologist and coroner, all saying there was no blunt force trauma, and on the other side, you have 2 expert witnesses being paid by the prosecution.

Leaving aside qualifications and experience, who do you think is most trustworthy between the two sides?

You seem pretty invested for someone who doesn't know either way? Why not just accept the 7 consultants, all the parents and the jury that heard all the evidence are satisfied she did it?

The original pathologist performing the postmortem also found ruptured subcapsular hematoma as cause of death, by the way.

The international expert panel has submitted their work, which has been passed to the CCRC, in order to have it examined in court. So I suppose we can all agree that the sooner that happens, the better?

The seven consultants (to be fair to them) never claimed to be able to judge what Lucy Letby might have done; obviously the parents wouldn't be qualified to make that judgement; and one really must wonder whether the jury would have convicted given the evidence that has come out since the trial. So there's not much to gain from invoking these parties.

I won't accept it because there are too many highly qualified, experienced professionals saying the evidence is flawed and does not meet the standard for reasonable doubt, all of whom have no reason to lie or exaggerate or even speak out in public, for me to ignore.

And because I believe it is dangerous to blindly accept the court's judgment when miscarriages of justice are known to happen, especially in cases involving medical experts and complicated evidence.

I don't know what reasons other people have.

I'm invested because I loathe injustice with every fibre of my being and I always have. It's wired into my soul. I believe that it is better that a guilty person goes free than that an innocent person gets a life sentence.

Is that OK with you?

Why can you not accept the doubts posed by multiple other experts? I've sat on a jury, I know how flawed they can be, have you? Have you even heard of Andrew Malkinson and other innocent people, convicted by a jury? The parents? Really? You want people just to accept the extreme emotional reaction of deeply traumatised people who have been told someone killed their baby?

We've ALL heard all the evidence, it's a matter of public record!

And because I believe it is dangerous to blindly accept the court's judgment when miscarriages of justice are known to happen, especially in cases involving medical experts and complicated evidence.

This has never happened before with a serial killer case in the UK to my knowledge? I know it happened in other countries but that's not the UK justice system. It's incredibly unlikely to be a MOJ involving so many babies and you really can't compare it to other MOJs in this country. If there's too complicated evidence for the jury you'd expect them to come back with not guilty verdicts if anything.

Are you actually reading anything on this thread? There was no belief that any of those babies were murdered until someone started looking to blame Letby for murdering them. There are other explanations for every single one of those deaths. There is no evidence that there has been any murder committed, never mind serial murder by one person.

It's worth remembering that the jury was instructed that if they believed Lucy Letby had committed a single murder, they could conclude that it was more likely she had killed other babies (without necessarily knowing how).

For that and other reasons, you can't treat this as if she had been convicted of each crime independently, making error less likely.

Sally Clarke, of course, was a UK convicted serial killer of babies whose case was overturned as a miscarriage of judgement, but I don't see why we need exact category matches like this to consider Lucy Letby's conviction unsafe.

I wouldn't, the whole way through the trial they were told repeatedly about how these babies were all doing great until the second LL was alone with them.....

If people are struggling with the evidence then things like that will obviously stick in their minds. As a juror in 2022/2023 you wouldn't expect that the prosecution and their witnesses would be allowed to completely mislead you, I'd expect them to be honest so if they're all saying the babies were doing great, no sign of anything being wrong and out of nowhere they collapsed I think people are highly likely to believe that above all else.

@kkloo they didn't say there was no sign of anything being wrong. I think the jury know they all needed some help or other else they wouldn't be in a NICU unit in the first place...never mind most of them being in room 1 for higher needs babies. They simply had catastrophic collapses around ONE nurse when parents and other staff left them previously stable. That's just the truth. It happened to babies not even in the trial.

Do you not ever ask yourself why you think they're so hell bent on persecuting one young woman for absolutely no reason? How would you even get 7 consultants to all agree to do that? Never mind the police?

@Firefly1987
I don't think it was for no reason, I think they convinced themselves that she must have been doing it.

@kkloo maybe she was then

When the hospital reviewed sudden collapses without including Lucy Letby's name in their search terms, they found that she wasn't particularly likely to be involved in sudden collapses.

When you look at the deaths she was prosecuted for, four of the seven cases had earlier deteriorations or collapses she wasn't charged with, even though Evans had identified them as suspicious. That's babies C, I, O and P.

Why wasn't she charged with those collapses? She wasn't on shift.

The babies weren't stable. That's been grossly exaggerated. And the data was cherry picked, chosen selectively, to give exactly the impression you've got from it.

Richard Gill’s article for The Justice Gap, How To Become A Convicted Serial Killer Without Killing Anyone, is a brilliant explanation of the process by which well meaning medics get sucked into believing an innocent nurse is a killer.

https://www.thejusticegap.com/become-convicted-serial-killer-without-killing-anyone/

The really astonishing thing is he wrote and published it before the Letby deaths even happened.

The CoA will not be able to look at this because juries’ deliberations (which would shed light on the weight they placed on various pieces of evidence) are not recorded.

Jonathan Sumption wrote about this very thing, saying it was a weakness of trial by jury in his piece “The Case Against Jury Trials” in the Telegraph this week.

I too am of the view and always have been that the standard of proof hasn’t been met here.

Juries have to be SURE the defendant committed the crime stated on the indictment.

”she probably did it” is not enough.

The circumstantial evidence in this case could never convince me to be SURE. No independent evidence, like forensics, or someone testifying the SAW her do the act which would also have been stated on the indictment?

Nope. Not enough.

Legally she is 'not guilty' of murdering baby k, she was originally charged with that but then the CPS dropped it before the trial so the judge recorded a 'not guilty verdict be recorded.

Also no proof that crimes have even been committed.

Circumstantial evidence can be very compelling. And I can't believe people actually make the point that no one saw her do anything when she had plenty of time alone to do it. She specifically waited for other staff and parents to leave. If someone had seen her they'd just be discredited (like they've tried to do with RJ and baby E's mum) because people simply don't WANT to believe she's guilty no matter what comes out. This new documentary could have CCTV footage and people would claim it was doctored-too far into it defending her to admit they got it so wrong is my guess.

She was actually not usually alone with the children when they collapsed and died - she was in full sight in a fully lit room surrounded by other staff for babies A and P, in the room with other nurses for babies C and D, standing in the doorway with another nurse for baby I and yes, alone for some time with babies E and O.

There's a trick to this. She was normally one of two or three nurses qualified to look after babies across rooms 1 and 2 at night. Each of these nurses would therefore be alone in one nursery when the other took a break. They would swap and "babysit".

The methods of attack or murder that Evans and his colleague suggested had no particular timing constraints. Maybe the baby would collapse the next minute. Maybe five minutes. Maybe hours. They didn't commit themselves. So once they decided Letby had attacked a child, the prosecution just tried to find a time that night when she would have, or just could have, been alone with them.

The whole business about parents or nurses having just left her alone, and the idea that the prosecution could even pinpoint a time for many of the attacks, is a melodramatic mythm

It sure can, especially when there's proof that crimes have been committed.
In this case there is no proof of murder or attempted murder and the circumstantial evidence was weak.

RJ discredited himself.

Such a stupid comment about the CCTV, if there was CCTV evidence then we wouldn't be having this conversation.

It's nothing to do with not wanting her to be guilty, it's that we're not convinced, this must be the 20th thread you've said this on, you don't WANT to believe that people just aren't convinced by the evidence, you will come up with all sorts of irrational theories rather than accept the obvious one.