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?

@Firefly1987

Devastating for the families but hopefully they can take comfort in the fact she's never getting out and the police found answers of sorts for them.

The families might not have even had any questions in the first place until the police put them into their heads.

Just goes to show how strong the evidence was the first time that the CPS sent it to court.

No it shows just how weak this case must have been considering we saw what they brought forward to the first trial and that was already weak, and this time around they could have used the fact that she's been convicted of harming babies as a piece of evidence.

It was all put together by Lee et al, the RCPH, and Dr Jane Hawden, who all identified serious failings on the unit and with the consultant's lack of experience and supervision, but no evidence of foul play.

The RCPH actually investigated it twice, because they reviewed the unit after the death of Noah Robinson, but none of their findings were acted upon, and COCH continued taking in more and sicker babies than they were qualified to do so. An increase in infant mortality was predictable and avoidable.

Dr Mike Hall, Letby's expert witness, also reviewed all the evidence and was one of the first to speak out for Letby once reporting restrictions were lifted.

It's not letting me edit my post, for some reason, but I need to add that the babies did not have air embolism, none of their symptoms matched the symptoms of air embolism, and the symptoms they did have had plausible causes, resucitation, CPAP machines, and poor ventilation techniques.

Below is a list of medical experts and COCH staff who have spoken about the case either for the defense or prosecution.

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

The families might not have even had any questions in the first place until the police put them into their heads.

Yeah I'm sure it never crossed their minds that their child who was born at Countess of Chester at the time the serial killer worked there was possibly harmed by said serial killer. Must be those nasty police putting crazy things in their heads again.

No it shows just how weak this case must have been considering we saw what they brought forward to the first trial and that was already weak, and this time around they could have used the fact that she's been convicted of harming babies as a piece of evidence.

You absolutely did not read 10 months worth of evidence. You've looked at the medical evidence and nothing else, so has Shoo Lee and friends no doubt.

Why would three or four sets of debunked evidence put together be any more persuasive than one, though?

"You've looked at the medical evidence and nothing else"

But Firefly, if the medical evidence says "not murder" then what else overrides that?
Facebook searches?
Notes?
Handover sheets?
Being too eager to work with her patients?

The whole "picture" that you're building up isn't a picture of a serial killer any more.

If the police had investigated it properly then I don't think there ever would have been a 'serial killer' for the families to even hear about.

We've been over this repeatedly on other threads, you know I'm very familiar with the other evidence also, not just the medical evidence. We've discussed it many times.

Lee and the others also looked at the witness statements, the court transcripts, and at least some of the evidence not disclosed to the jury.

A transcript, obviously, would be more reliable than notes, memory, or judge's summary.

So they had more information than others, not less.

I would argue that the ones not looking at the whole picture are the 7 consultants. They did not report any of the deaths as suspicious to the coroner, nor did they inform the coroner that they suspected someone in the unit was harming babies. The reason they didn't do this is that they didn't think any of the deaths or collapses were suspicious in isolation. This is why they needed Dewi to identify murder victims. They didn't suspect murder in any individual case.

They looked at the overall upwards trend in mortality and sought a reason to explain it; this is what led them to believe there was a killer on the unit.

On a unit identified by both internal staff and external reviewers as being chronically understaffed, underexperienced, underresourced, lacking the proper space for infection control, with raw sewage backing up onto wards, who are taking more babies and sicker babies than they are certified to manage, would you say a spike in mortality is more likely to be caused by poor care or murder?

The consultants didn't even consider any of the factors raised by both RCPH and their own senior staff, nursing staff, and management; they immediately looked for a nurse to blame.

When you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras.

They're not debunked though-as far as I know the insulin evidence most definitely still stands. The rest is just difference of opinions and the guilty side has far more weight because of circumstantial evidence. How are you going to just take the word of some experts that decided to get together long AFTER the trial when they were needed instead of what was tried and tested in court?

The more "coincidences" there are in a case the less likely it's really just bad luck. You already admitted it was unlikely one nurse would be at 10/13 deaths (personally I still believe it's all deaths in the last year and 15/17 overall-DE went through them all) then add in how unlucky she'd have to be for all these sets of circumstances to just so happen to her. It's not sounding very plausible is it.

There is no logical argument that because she didn’t do one thing, that she couldn’t have done another.

I'm just using your terminology with debunked.

Yes, there was a morphine rate error, when Lucy Letby was working with another more senior nurse, early in her career. There are approximately 200 million medication errors in the NHS this year, so that's really not significant information.

For the other instances you listed, you're making the error of assuming that because a tenuous explanation could be contrived for each, the case is strengthened. Of course that's not correct. A tenuous explanation was contrived for each based on the assumption that Lucy Letby's presence at each couldn't be just coincidence.

Of course, her presence at a higher than usual number of deaths could be coincidence - though the chances were increased by her shift pattern, her seniority, and her available to take on extra shifts.

I don't know where you get that I "admitted" it was unlikely one nurse would be on 10/13 shifts. The point I've made a few times is that to identify such a nurse in advance would be almost impossible, but that it is not only likely but certain that this pattern will happen to some nurses some of the time. If you would like some links on this phenomenon, please just ask.

The consultants didn't even consider any of the factors raised by both RCPH and their own senior staff, nursing staff, and management; they immediately looked for a nurse to blame.

Maybe they were just able to join the dots as it was so bloomin obvious by the end? Can't remember the exact quote but it was something along the lines of "every time I'm called to these sudden collapses, Lucy Letby is there" and then another colleague said "yes I noticed that too"-from the first Panorama doc I believe.

Then we've got Lucy wailing "it's always me when it happens" and her colleagues saying "can't believe you were on again, you're having such bad luck" etc. junior doctors calling her nurse death..you're acting like they picked a name out of a hat all of a sudden not that they had many months of suspecting she was harming babies.

On a unit identified by both internal staff and external reviewers as being chronically understaffed, underexperienced, underresourced, lacking the proper space for infection control, with raw sewage backing up onto wards, who are taking more babies and sicker babies than they are certified to manage, would you say a spike in mortality is more likely to be caused by poor care or murder?

Obviously I would expect it to be poor care if I hadn't heard all the evidence-what does that even prove? It's almost as if you want to put everything down to poor care just because of the unlikely event of a serial killer. I guess that's what the police were thinking the first time they investigated and then dropped the case against Harold Shipman-and look how that turned out. None of those babies suddenly collapsed due to raw sewage or infection. But hey she had her plumber there to try and sway the jury and they didn't buy it-because it was all irrelevant.

Even if the insulin evidence isn't debunked those cases can't stand alone. No jury would have found her guilty of that without the other charges in the case.

There is evidence against the insulin poisoning, the most compelling being there was no insulin unaccounted for on the unit, and the amount needed for poisoning would be noticeable, nor was there any evidence of Letby procuring any insulin from elsewhere - nothing in her internet history or bank transactions pointed to her buying insulin illegally.

The tests used to diagnose the babies were not forensic tests and were not suitable to be used in a court of law as evidence due to the possibility of false positives.

Another baby was diagnosed with insulin poisoning, and DE flagged this as a potential charge against Letby. The case was dropped after the baby was transferred to Alder Hay and diagnosed with an underlying condition that causes high blood sugar.

In unit with inexperienced, overworked staff, what is most plausible - that a nurse, apparently dim enough to leave "compelling" evidence in a plastic bag under her bed despite knowing she was the main suspect in a murder inquiry was clever enough to obtain massive quantities of insulin while leaving no digital evidence or that the inexperienced, overworked consultants missed a diagnosis that could otherwise have explained the blood sugar results?

There is also a 100 page report by Prof Geoff Chase, the world's foremost expert in the effects of insulin in pre-terms babies which explains why these results were not unusually high for a neonate - again in conjunction with the lack of evidence supporting that Letby even had access to insulin, this is more plausible than murder and definately more than enough for reasonable doubt, which is all we need for the case to be unsafe. There doesn't have to be irrefutable evidence of her innocence; there just needs to be enough plausible theories to introduce reasonable doubt.

Each of the alternative explanations on its own is enough for reasonable doubt. DE testified there was no other possible cause other than insulin poisoning. That is now demonstrably untrue.

I found it interesting how they tried to claim that there was no insulin ordered for any babies on the unit at the time when child F was supposed to have been poisoned, but his twin had been on insulin until he died, the day before the poisoning was supposed to have happened.

Except that Lucy Letby wasn't there for all of those "suspicious" collapses.

The hospital did two audits of sudden collapses. For the first, they searched their digital records for collapses involving Lucy Letby. Obviously, that only threw up collapses involving Lucy Letby.

For the second, a consultant and a nurse worked together on collapses of children transferred to other hospitals. These records were anonymised. This exercise threw up no strong association with Lucy Letby.

Despite this, when the consultants sent their cases to the police, they only included sudden collapses where Lucy Letby had been on shift. These were handed to Dewi Evans. He identified a mixture of suspicious collapses from these files - since they were looking at all of the children's medical records, they might have some collapses with Lucy Letby present, some not.

Despite having his cases pre-selected so that all surviving children had been cared for by Lucy Letby, Evans identified 2/3 "suspicious" collapses with Lucy Letby on shift, and 1/3 with her off shift. That 1/3 with her off shift were never investigated further.

The best you can say of the consultants is that they fell victim to confirmation bias in a stressful situation. Perhaps they didn't realize how much they were skewing the data; perhaps they really trusted the police to investigate thoroughly. But it's clear that they presented a selective sample of collapses. That is simply not debatable since the evidence that has emerged from Thirlwall and police leaks on these points.

It is worth adding that it would not have been possible for Lucy Letby's defence to raise these issues at her trial. The judge forbade and discussion of the construction of the case.

perhaps they really trusted the police to investigate thoroughly.

@Oftenaddled

As you would!

I always found it incredible that they hadn't interviewed the nurse who ended up coming forward after hearing the prosecutions opening statement to say it was actually the 2 doctors who had turned the monitor off, and not LL, that nurse was the first to respond when LL called for help following one of the alleged attacks, yet they somehow didn't interview her? It's interesting because that nurse also said she reported it to her manager at the time....makes me wonder if the police deliberately didn't interview this nurse because they wanted to go with 'LL turned the monitor off'.

There's a telling line in the recently leaked police notes (unverified but extremely convincing in language and detail).

The police noted that Evans didn't want to see the RCPCH reports on Chester (which included the external neonatologist and pathologist observations that poor care was implicated in many of the deaths) until "around charging time".

They just took the killer nurse line and ran with it from the start.

Did Lucy murder every child that died in the trust during that period? Of course not.

What this shi t show of an investigation shows is that every parent of babies who died or suffered mobidity within hospital during that period now possibly harbour doubts about cause. Are our thoughts with these parents?

I think you have to question the sinister nature of the police assuming guilt on behalf of the justice system with these rejected charges and let's face it the police will probably tell the parents that Lucy did murder their babies but the CPS were nervous about a new trial.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt37796856/

The new documentary actually is examining whether the original convictions were safe and the title has a clue - a question mark?

In other words ITN and Netflix have rode roughshod over Last Thirlwall's condescending calls for people not to speculate about guilt. Why? Because there is huge public interest in this case and it certainly wasn't in the interests of justice or free speech for a judge to ask everyone to not question the infallibility of our justice system - that was a mistake.

Yes, Lady Thirlwall rather forgot herself there. As someone very senior in a system that has done nothing to deserve public trust wrt MOJs, her best bet would've been a large slice of shut the fuck up on that point. I appreciate that it can't have been easy chairing an enquiry in such circumstances, but nobody made her take the role.

Some people seem unable to divorce themselves from the horror of dead babies and have a huge need to believe one rogue person was to blame rather than a situation having arisen that could happen again in any maternity unit in the country.

Personally, if I was or might become a mother, I would far rather this travesty of justice was sorted. Because if she's not guilty then the death of babies due to poor care has to be stopped from happening in other places.

So where did the insulin come from to murder the babies? None was found missing, LL didn't have any trace on her pc etc of purchasing any?

How many other babies died on the ward when LL wasn't on duty and were their deaths ever investigated?

How many other full time nurses worked on the ward? If LL was full time and also doing overtime, the likelihood of her being present was higher than a part time nurse. I know the statistics was pulled apart afterwards

I think it was generally accepted that insulin was kept on the ward and its use not closely monitored or tracked (other than via individual patient notes obviously), so it wouldn’t necessarily have been noticed if some was missing.