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?

See you just can't make a comment without positioning yourself as the morally superior good guy 😂

To be fair to you you've been nicer on this thread than on a lot of the others, but we are not deserving of your scorn so you being nicer than previous threads isn't something we should be grateful for 😂

Worth saying too re Allitt that the chart presented there is apparently one of many; others having tracked the movement of visitors and cleaning staff and documented contact with the children.

I've no reason to say that investigation was perfect, but it certainly seems to have been far more rigorous than the Letby investigation.

Stuart Clifton has said that he made the decision on 21 May that he would have Allit arrested.

Okay - as I said, it's not a case I know in detail. But the question is whether or not it had been established that a crime had been committed. And he did not in fact have her arrested before September, so presumably the investigation proceeded to that point.

I've no skin in this game. It's clear that there were more substantial grounds to suspect a crime than in Lucy Letby's case, and it's clear that the police consulted appropriate, genuine experts . They did more than simply pay lip service to the question of whether any crime was committed. But if they fell short of an ideal investigation in any way, that really doesn't undermine the current concerns about Lucy Letby's investigation, some of which Clifton has recently articulated.

You are already in a minority in believing that her trial was fair if current opinion polls are correct.

I think you will find your point of view increasingly marginalised as time goes on, there are some big hitters getting behind a retrial now.

See you just can't make a comment without positioning yourself as the morally superior good guy 😂

Well hardly! It just seems odd how some things are general consensus that you don't argue against (even if they're far from proven) and other things aren't. And I don't like double standards.

To be fair to you you've been nicer on this thread than on a lot of the others, but we are not deserving of your scorn so you being nicer than previous threads isn't something we should be grateful for 😂

Thanks I try!

@Firefly1987
It just seems odd how some things are general consensus that you don't argue against (even if they're far from proven) and other things aren't.

Like what?

That just proves the general public are fickle. I was in the majority when she was first found guilty. Look at the hysteria over the Nicola Bulley case- that even got an "expert" having us all believe she couldn't possibly be in the river. All sorts of wild theories about her friend dressing up as her etc. Everyone was wrong weren't they, it was as the police said all along. Shame people haven't learnt from that tragic case.

Andrew. I don't see anyone claiming he could be innocent?

Maybe no one thinks he is innocent, doesn't mean that there's a consensus not to argue about it, just that people either think he's guilty or just don't care. I have no interest in the Epstein files tbh so I have no idea what the evidence is.

But if there was a trial then presumably the evidence against him would be dissected and if the evidence was weak then some people would think it wasn't proven.

So because the police say something it's true - well that removes the need for any appeals going forward, if the police say you're guilty then you are, it's not like they've ever made a mistake. Thanks for the clarification.

Not really sure what Nicola or Andrew have to do with the LL case - Nicola wasn't a criminal case and Andrew hasn't been charged with any offence - chalk and cheese.

I'm sure most people weren't paying much attention either way, but there have been developments since the trial that have changed minds, even if you don't agree with them.

I would say the publication of Rachel Aviv's article in the New Yorker was the first major shift, and Shoo Lee's international expert panel's was the second. After both, the numbers of doubting comments online seemed to grow. So there are people who have been taking things seriously, reading, informing themselves. I wouldn't call that fickle - it shows an open mind.

So because the police say something it's true - well that removes the need for any appeals going forward, if the police say you're guilty then you are, it's not like they've ever made a mistake. Thanks for the clarification.

Er no, but they are probably saying they believe something to be true because they're investigating it and it's led them to a certain theory not to deceive the public. I am really not on the police's side in general btw it pains me to defend them.

Nicola wasn't a criminal case

We didn't know that at the time. The similarity is that huge swathes of the public were convinced it was all a conspiracy and they were wrong.

Andrew hasn't been charged with any offence

You'd certainly think he had.

@Firefly1987

What the police believe to be true isn't good enough though, there's loads of cases where they believe something to be true but they don't have the evidence so it stops there, or the CPS refuse it.

In this case they put it forward anyway, the narrative convinced the jury, but they haven't proved she did or that any crimes were even committed, which is why we're now seeing calls for a retrial.

I think that there was only one expert who came forward in Nicola Bulley's case to say her disappearance as explained by the police seemed unlikely? (Though not impossible - it was a search, not a criminal trial)

If there were only one expert speaking for Lucy Letby, that would be less persuasive.

Certainly lots of people seemed to believe in an alternative explanation in Nicola Bulley's case, without much cause. But that doesn't mean people are always wrong to doubt a police explanation (any more than the police are always wrong because they've made mistakes in the past).

We just have to judge each case separately on its merits.

That the police (Cheshire in Lucy Letby’s case, a different force from in the Nicola Bulley case which was Lancashire) are always right is a really odd takeaway from the Nicola Bulley case.
Another one might be that the obvious tragic accident is more likely than the complicated crime. And the renegade expert in that case was far more of a Dewi Evans than a Shoo Lee, it was just that the police were more level headed and didn’t take his claims so seriously.

Your last sentence made me laugh. What people learned from poor Nicola Bulley was that the most likely cause of a death is accidental or natural death. RIP Nicola.

What it proves if that when presented with further information the general public are capable of coming to a different conclusion. Rigid thinking is not an valuable trait.

Well you wouldn't, would you, there is evidence that he isn't.

It doesn't prove that at all. You often think things prove things they're not proving.

Of course the majority of people thought she was guilty at the start, most wouldn't have followed the trial in any great detail, they just would have seen some damning headlines, and the natural assumption also would be that if someone is on trial for something like that then there's strong evidence.
For those who followed the trial more in-depth there was no real defence so of course naturally most thought she was guilty too.

It's been said that intelligence is the ability to change your mind when presented with new compelling information, doesn't mean you have to change your mind of course, but people should be at least able to consider something properly without clinging onto their previous opinion, absolutely nothing fickle about that.

I don't really see the point in a retrial. Even her own experts didn't necessarily disagree with the prosecution case in the last one. And I think they're not really allowed to expert shop? There might be dozens of "world renowned" experts (I've lost count on how many there are supposed to be now) but the vast majority of experts in the world if they saw the medical records would probably agree with Dewi Evans et al. They just don't feel the need to do that because justice has already been done. Just because the expert panel shout the loudest doesn't mean they're right.

People think there's plenty of evidence against Letby. I wonder why people rush to defend a young female nurse but not a middle-aged entitled man...

I didn't say the police are always right...It was more about the public getting swept up in conspiracy theories than a comment on the police. I myself almost did in that case, it's easily done.

I don't know why everyone holds up Shoo Lee as some sort of super expert. I'd take Evans opinion over his any day. This happened in the UK, he knew how high the stakes were. Shoo Lee lives the other side of the world, he doesn't have to hold up criminal justice standards (or whatever the name for it is!) or care about any fallout, he can say whatever he wants.

Well maybe you don't, but many others see plenty of points for having a retrial, the fact that there may be an innocent woman locked up for life, the fact that these families may have suffered further unnecessary trauma because they may have been told that something happened that didn't happen, there's also all of the other investigations that are going on as a result of this, they might be all being conducted based on a false premise.

As far as I know they are allowed to expert shop, it's just discouraged, and they have to waive privilege over the previous expert reports so the prosecution etc gets to see them. Maybe someone else can confirm?

but the vast majority of experts in the world if they saw the medical records would probably agree with Dewi Evans et al. They just don't feel the need to do that because justice has already been done.

'Would probably agree' is a guess, you don't know that they would, they could easily have not agreed publicly because they don't in fact agree.

He has an international reputation. Evans had been retired for ages at the time of the trial and had never even published a paper. Can you say what you think Shoo Lee’s motivation was for weighing in and potentially risking his credibility? What is the basis of your confidence in Evans over Shoo Lee given the significant disparity in their professional status and the fact that Evans had a clear financial motive for his involvement?

You're still speaking as if only Evans had access to the evidence and therefore only he can know the facts, when it's been explained to you multiple times, this is not the case.

All of the evidence discussed in court is a matter of public record. More of the evidence has been published online as part of Thirwell. Shoo Lee and his panel had access to the medical records and DE's reports.

The original pathologists, the coroners, the RCPCH, and Jane Hawden had access to the medical records and the ability to question the consultants and Letby's colleagues.

You cannot say most experts that have seen the evidence would agree with Evans because all of the experts speaking out have seen the evidence and they do not agree with Evans. Many of them have gone so far as to publicly ridicule some of Evans' findings.