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?

You’re on the internet, I don’t care what experience you say you have, I’ll make my own mind up about issues thank you.

And you say juries are not infallible, I agree. I would also point out that her case has been sent for appeal twice (iirc) and those people have decided she has no grounds for appeal.

What youve said, which is probably true, just shows how poor the British justice system is. Very sad state of affairs.

The jury had access to evidence that we will never see and, let’s face it, neither they nor us are qualified to properly understand.
The expert panel, however, had access to that evidence and were fully qualified to understand it. They also, unlike Evans, were working pro bono and had no financial interest in their conclusions going one way or the other.

Juries can only work with the context they are given. They were told that swipe card data placed her at x point on y date. Having worked in NICU and other ICUs, I can give you at least 10 explanations of why swipe card data is completely inaccurate and cannot be relied upon to place anyone at any place at any point in the day.

It’s disappointing but she’s in prison forever anyway, and rightly so. There are no “serious doubts” about her conviction. Thankfully the court of TikTok has no sway in the British justice system.

And the defence were mute were they, and couldn’t have disproven this?

Why are people so keen to defend a baby killer?

I have enough faith in the justice system to believe that she will, but nobody thinks it’s going to be quick.

It is absolutely fucking unbelievably wild how many people think shes innocent. Someone murdered those babies, it wasn’t incompetence, I have worked in care/hospitals/hospice and seen some of the most stupid people imaginable work on skeleton crews of seriously ill patients and they didn’t die with any spontaneity like the babies who were stable who died suddenly in the care of letby did. She murdered those babies. Ben Myers her originally defence lawyer is very well respected in his field. His defence wasn’t particularly good because she didn’t have one, she did it.
She murdered those babies for attention. That was her motive. Im not a psychiatrist and she’ll never tell the truth to one but she’s clearly a killer. People who were her friends have come out and said they believe she did it, parents, the most important thing here of babies have literally said they saw her hurting babies. Those poor parents, many ivf parents, have to live life with seeing her face daily and comments from 100s of people supporting the woman who murdered their precious little babies. It wasn’t a miscarriage of justice, but the people who can’t bare to imagine she was capable of it are causing more harm to those poor parents. I don’t know how they cope. I’d have gone insane.

I don't rule out the possibility that LL is guilty, but there's no getting round that there are some serious problems in the way it's been handled. We also quite clearly don't have a justice system that can quickly identify and remedy miscarriages of justice, which again is a substantial issue even if there hasn't happened to be one in this case. People know these things, because they're bleeding obvious, and naturally that feeds into their views about the case.

For me, one of the major points to take from this is that we need to think about specialist juries in cases where there's very complex and technical evidence. So things like medical and fraud cases. Whether or not it later turned out to be significant, we had a prosecution expert making an honest mistake about some of the medical evidence and nobody in the proceedings was able to correct him. That can't happen again, and yet we have completely inadequate safeguards to prevent it.

I have no idea if LL is guilty or not, but I think too much troubling information has come out since the trials for anyone to have confidence in her conviction.

Dewi Evans approached the police and told them he could prove the case against LL. That is not the job of an expert witness. They do not decide on guilt or innocence; their job is to examine the evidence in their area of expertise and present it to the jury in a way that it can be understood. Dewi started with a conclusion of guilt and made the evidence fit.

The author of the research paper Dewi based his claims on has said that his paper was misinterpreted by Dewi and used in a way that was misleading.

That same author led an independent panel of insulin and neonate experts who found no evidence that any of the babies were murdered. Dewi is a paediatrician with no expertise in neonates or insulin.

Dewi decided if a crime had occurred based on LL being on shift, not the evidence. Similar deaths were ruled out as murder because LL was not on shift.

Dewi changed the method of murder after his evidence was disproved after LL's guilty verdict.

Witnesses were proven to have lied on the stand.

LL wasn't even on the ward during one of the murders.

How anyone can think her conviction is still safe, given all that came to light after the trial, is beyond me.

I agree. They are frightened that she now has a decent defence lawyer.

That's the likely concern, whether she is guilty or not, the first trials evidence is shaken to say the least - if she is then found not guilty on additional charges that would certainly undermine the original convictions.

Lucy letby wasn’t on duty every time a death she was accused of occurred

if she is not guilty, was there actually any murders?

Hahahahahahahahahahaha good one

It’s all strange in my mind

normally there are victims of murder, then the investigation by the police looks for the murderer

with this case they had a murderer, then they searched for victims and evidence she killed

Really? The only hope she has is the criminal cases review commission so let’s wait and see. I doubt it. She had two jury trials and there were no grounds for appeal found. She had a top level defence team and now is being represented by someone with political ambitions, nowhere near as well respected as her KC at trial and who just wants to bring media attention to her case and won’t help her get out.

I am confident justice has been served. She’s a very strange person who clearly found some perverse pleasure in killing these defenceless babies. Her behaviour as described by colleagues and parents was highly disturbing. This isn’t some nice ordinary nurse who just happened to get the blame. This is a cold blooded serial killer who finally got caught when her colleagues put their careers on the line to try to stop her. Management backed her to the hilt. They even got the consultants to write her an apology letter. They only called the police when they legitimately couldn’t not call them. There was no witch-hunt, no scapegoating. These were babies who were doing well, where their sudden and often multiple collapses were genuinely shocking to the medical staff.

But yeah carry on thinking she was innocent. I’m sure Harold Shipman was too.

Having worked in health care, I also think it's very telling that her fellow nurses are convinced of her innocence and wanted to testify on her behalf, but were warned against it by the Trust.

Ime, nurses and carers know who is a good carer and who is a bit shit. I've worked with carers who were excellent at their job, but despised by management and higher-up staff because they were outspoken and advocated for their charges fiercely. I've also worked with carers who were not fit to care for a flea but loved by management and higher-ups because they were always on time and never made a fuss about anything, no matter how badly patient care was being managed.

If LL had been anything but competent, the nursing staff working with her would have been the first people to know about it.

LL wasn't even on the ward during one of the murders.

Which one?

I had a baby with complex needs and sadly my son died due to his condition. He would be five now.
If I was a parent who told my son was murdered by the nurse looking after him, THEN it comes to light that maybe it wasn't her because of systemic failings, gross mismanagement of the hospital, shoddy conditions including raw sewage in the wash-hand basins, and actually the evidence that damned her before has a panel of world renowned experts asking questions, I would absolutely want to know. For justice for my child and so that the people responsible could look me in the eye and tell me. Those of us who have lost children have already been through the worst thing imaginable. We are strong people.

This case is highly emotive, but the people questioning the case aren't sympathising with a 'baby killer' as some are suggesting but it is in all our interest to know maternity units are safe and fit for purpose. It's also not right if she has been sent down for this and it wasn't her at all.

Very sorry for your loss, and thank you for such an honest and informative post.

LL was on leave

the prosecutions theory was she tampered with medication before she left for leave, her swipe card wasn’t used when baby C died

baby K died and LL was caring for a different baby in a different room

I don’t think that’s true. Where are you getting the idea that they all wanted to testify on her behalf? We all know the nursing managers and senior management backed her (but some of them have been forced to backtrack now). So she was loved by management. And I doubt very much the defence would have wanted to call character evidence anyway as then the prosecution could have called for example the nurse who failed LL for lack of empathy during her training. So there were never going to be lots of nurses wanting to testify on her behalf. None of her so-called friends bar two people (one a lady her mums age and another a school friend) have backed her or defended her or even done an anonymous interview about how lovely she is (which they could have done if they were worried about repercussions).

Also if some of the nurses had given statements to police that exonerated her in some way, the defence could have compelled them to give evidence. It’s not up to the witness whether they testify. The reason why there weren’t loads of witnesses backing her was that there was very little that would have helped her defence.

And she was not incompetent. She was a murderer. She covered that up in various ways. She wasn’t just someone who was “a bit shit”. She was killing babies and then changing the notes or spinning some false narrative to make it look like an accident.

I swing between thinking LL is innocent and then guilty. There’s so much talk out there about this case.

Having said that, I’ve worked in the legal field with barristers and lawyers (not criminal) and know how easy it is to assume someone is innocent or you have to defend them because they’re your client versus the other way round.

My grandmother worked as office manager for Lord Mischcon when he was defending Ruth Ellis and recalls her coming into his offices. He had no choice but to defend his client despite her being guilty (even though there were other circumstances around this case). That’s what you do as a lawyer or barrister you defend your client no matter how guilty they are.

I’ve also been a juror in a case where the defendant was not guilty and it could’ve gone either way. Very easy for jurors to be swayed. In the LL case as PP’s say they had no medical knowledge and they should have had specialist juries, I totally agree with this.

Further, there’s a case about a Dutch medical staff member convicted of killing babies, her case was unsafe and after being imprisoned and appealing she is now free, but that is clearly a miscarriage of justice and if it happened once it can happen again.

She was convicted of the attempted murder of baby K, not murder. The correct swipe card data was presented at the retrial. You are grasping at straws.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/20/claim-nhs-hospital-told-nurse-dont-give-evidence-lucy-letby/