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?

The only one who doesn't understand anything here is you. Everyone understands circumstantial evidence.

When you've got posters parroting that no one saw her or you can't link the poisonings to Letby it does make me wonder.

You just don't seem to understand the difference between circumstantial evidence that is strong and circumstantial evidence that is weak.

What is strong circumstantial evidence then? Any example will do.

You seem to think that if circumstantial evidence exists that it then has to mean something, they could have gathered 'circumstantial evidence' against anyone on that ward, the doctors who turned the monitor off, the other nurse who the mother thought had harmed her baby, doesn't actually prove anything or mean anything though.

Not on it's own no-if a doctor turned off monitors dozens of times it would go from weak circumstantial evidence to strong circumstantial evidence. What's the saying "once is a mistake, twice is a pattern"?

You see, when the CPS receives accusations, they consult on what the defence is likely to argue.

In this case, if the accusations include air embolism, air in NG tube etc they know that the defence is prepared with robust counter-arguments (assuming the evidence base is similar)

It's not that surprising that the police could find nine cases meeting the low standards of proof that they found first time around. But this time, the CPS is forewarned that they may need to treat the medical claims with proper scepticism.

On top of that, the prosecution only got three cases through without "bad character evidence", and if they wanted to use this again, they would need to face all the criticisms made of the existing convictions. If the CPS doubt this could be done, they might certainly want to drop these cases.

There's a good article on stronger and weaker circumstancial evidence at https://jollycontrarian.com/index.php?title=Circumstantial_evidence

It can ONLY have been Lucy Letby or Belinda Simcock-does this narrow things down for you?

That's assuming an unproven method and timing, that whatever happened on the ward and not in the pharmacy, and that there was no accidental administration of prescription drugs, for example, so no, it certainly doesn't help.

That is the problem with this case. People looked for gaps in their understanding of events and tried to fill them with some wild hypothesis that could feasibly have involved Lucy Letby.

That's assuming an unproven method and timing

@Oftenaddled I don't know what this means.

that whatever happened on the ward and not in the pharmacy

It was agreed in court that it had to have happened on the unit

and that there was no accidental administration of prescription drugs

Someone accidentally put insulin in the bags? Seems like you're the one with the wild theories-anything to defend Lucy eh.

They already proved it was a poisoning in court so I'd hardly call it a "wild" hypothesis. So wild that Lucy admitted that must've been exactly what happened. I have no gaps because Lucy being guilty happens to fill all of them in, strangely enough.

This is all circular. It wasn't agreed in court (never mind proved) that insulin had been administered through TPN bags at the point when the first was hung. That was a prosecution claim, and it's only with that hypothesis that you come to the conclusion that either Lucy Letby or the colleague you named there had to have been responsible.

You don't seem to understand that the entire prosecution strategy was to hypothesise a scenario where Lucy Letby could / must have done it and then to disregard or deny the many more plausible scenarios.

@Oftenaddled it was a slow enough infusion of insulin that it had to have been the bags. Lucy was one of two nurses with opportunity. You don't seem to understand that every possible scenario was already proposed in court and didn't stand up to scrutiny. It's as if you think no one has thought of alternatives to Lucy being guilty. I mean I suppose aliens could've come down and done it, or maybe you're just in deep denial.

The fact you're even asking for an example of strong circumstantial evidence shows that you're the one who doesn't understand it .

I'm not saying that one thing on it's own, but if they had pinpointed that doctor or that nurse as the culprit and started digging into everything about them, then they would also more likely have other things they could have used as circumstantial evidence that could potentially paint a picture but might also not mean anything at all.
Who knows what kind of things they could have found in other peoples homes or on their devices?

Insulin poisoning...Letby must have done it.
Liver injury, Letby must have done it.

Doesn't matter that there's zero actual evidence of this at all!

You have no tests indicating hyperinsulinism with unexpected C-peptide ratios until the next shift. For the rest, you have a child with hypoglycemia, which has plenty of natural explanations. Nothing about this scenario means there has to have been a slow infusion of insulin. That's just a wild hypothesis, scantily modelled and presented without any of the expertise in biochemical engineering that someone like Geoff Chase brings to the case.

And since we have been going back and forth on this a while, just a reminder that I'm not even taking into account the reliability and interpretation of the test results. Even assuming they are correct, there is simply no necessary link between Lucy Letby and the children's insulin levels

Thank you, you have now confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that you don't understand what beyond reasonable doubt means or why it is so crucial for the very many innocent people who are wrongly arrested each year that it exists.

Before you ask. Yes I do believe that when a crime can't be proven beyond reasonable doubt that it is better that a killer go free than that anyone is locked up for life in a prison. I've visited prisons, they aren't the holiday camps they're made out to be in the right wing press.

It's an essential part of a civilised legal system that it tries to punish the least number of innocent people.

You don't seem to understand that every possible scenario was already proposed in court and didn't stand up to scrutiny.

You don't seem to understand that they didn't consider every possible scenario. From the moment Lucy was named they stopped any consideration that the deaths were natural in very ill very young babies or medical mistakes. Even for babies whose deaths had raised no eyebrows as being suspicious at the time.

Or it could have been no-one at all. As has been explained by Prof. Chase, who is an actual expert in insulin testing, regardless of your opinions about him, and who is not alone in his conclusions.

And let’s not forget that the two babies in question did not die, despite one of them allegedly having been administered an incredibly large overdose of insulin.

That is a concern but unless someone is deliberately harming babies then they really have nothing to worry about.

That an incredible statement to make. These threads about Letby exist because of the evident risk to healthcare staff of being blamed of causing deliberate harm where there are clusters of deaths and collapses.

Are you suggesting that this could never happen? Did Lucia de Berk not exist, or do you think she was guilty?

What do you think her defence team were for? She had plenty of opportunity to counter all of this.

I don't know much about her case but it's possible she was guilty yes. Just goes to show it's nigh on impossible to convict a professional using their job to kill. I don't think they should have a much higher bar than everyone else just because people occasionally die of natural causes in their line of work.

I don't think anyone wants a much higher bar, most want the same bar for everyone. You're the one who wants to change the bar and wants it lowered in cases where it's difficult to prove.

@kkloo did you ever give me an example of strong circumstantial evidence you'd accept?

What people want to see in this case is any evidence that children were killed and any link beyond the statistical with Lucy Letby.

There are over 5000 natural deaths a week in British hospitals. You really can't brush them off as a minor complicating factor.

If Lucy Letby had actually committed the murders she was accused of committing, she would almost certainly have been spotted. The lack of direct evidence is very telling in this case.

So I'm just watching a Sky news documentary special and here is an exact quote from one of the detectives-

"The key aspect of this investigation has been always asking ourselves a) who else could it be if not her and what else could it be"

There is so much misinformation around this case.

You don't understand the law. The law says that the prosecution has to prove guilt, beyond reasonable doubt.

The defence does not have to prove innocence. Many cases have been stopped after the prosecution finishes their case and the jury instructed, or magistrates decide, that the prosecution have not proved that the defendant is guilty. In those cases the defence is never even heard. In some trials defence lawyers have decided not to present a defence at all.

Of course it helps a lot if you can prove innocence, but if there is no concrete evidence against you then proving innocence is completely impossible.

You also seem of the belief that it's the duty of the police only to look for evidence of guilt. This isn't correct. It's the duty of the police to look at all the evidence (and pass it to the defence as well) whether it supports their beliefs of who is guilty or not. This requirement is specifically to prevent miscarriages of justice.

No, another poster linked to an article about it, I thought maybe you'd have a read 😀

There was a good example of strong circumstantial evidence in the article

Some circumstantial evidence does — almost —speak for itself. That a defendant walked into the victim’s room with a loaded gun and walked out five minutes later with an empty, smoking one, leaving the victim dead inside the room with a gunshot wound to the temple invites the fairly straightforward inference that the defendant shot the victim. But the inference must still be made. The evidence does not quite speak for itself. Mistakes can yet be made:

They failed a bit there, given that they let the consultants choose their cases for them. If there was really a murderer, why would it have to be a nurse? And if there wasn't, why assume the consultants could give an unbiased view of problems on the ward?

I'm replying to your assertion that they didn't consider other possible scenarios. I just gave you a quote from the police that they did. I could probably dig up a quote from the consultants that they also looked at every possible scenario before they had to concede it was deliberate harm.

I'm not sure what else you want? The prosecution to come up with other innocent theories? They proved it was deliberate poisoning in court-you just don't agree with it.