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?

That’s a good point.
We don’t like to imagine a nice ordinary hardworking nurse can be a serial killer; true, but we also don’t like to imagine kind hardworking doctors can lie to save their own skins and send an innocent person to prison.
Both types of person are ones that we are generally used to being very trusting of and grateful to.

I would assume it just means they didn't have enough evidence for the extra ones. It should have zero impact on any retrial.

It should but it won't.

The jury, unless they find people who never listen to or read the main news, know that the Police tried to bring extra charges. They know the CPS have sent the police away with a flea in their ear. They know that the Cheshire Police are angry that they've been sent away with a flea in their ear, they've made a public statement about being annoyed that their evidence has been deemed not strong enough. The members of the jury are entitled to assume from that that the evidence they presented for the first charges was on a level with the charges of the second lot, which have been deemed insufficient. And psychologically they will be unable to divorce the failure to prosecute the new charges from the questions they know are being asked about the robustness of the evidence of the first lot.

They will be told by the judge to put all that out of their minds.

They are humans. They won't be able to. You cannot unhear what you've heard or unthink what you've thought.

The NHS has form for throwing employees under a bus to cover up its own failings.

In the case of Lucy Letby, I'm left unconvinced that anyone has ever proven beyond reasonable doubt that the supposed crimes actually took place. Somehow they managed to secure a conviction but it has been looking increasingly questionable ever since.

I suspect that the CPS is acutely aware now of how this actually played out so are not willing to sanction a repeat performance.

Cheshire Police also seem to be going about this in a most bizarre way. They have a person who they consider to be their perpetrator (Lucy Letby) and have spent their time and resources looking for a crime. It's all very arse about tit. It is by no means completely certain that crimes were committed. It could all equally have been medical negligence and/or incompetence.

I don't think any one individual has deliberately scapegoated Letby. I don't think it's some big conspiracy theory where they all sat around in a meeting and decided they'd fucked up and looked for someone else to blame, I think it is more a systematic failure to not just accept fault but to look for it in the first place.

When an unusual number of deaths was noticed, no one thought to check any of the things Lee's report highlighted; they instantly jumped to laying the blame on a nurse, either by deliberate malice or negligence, and looked for who fit their theory the best, then worked backwards from there.

One or two people might know some of the fault is theirs, but they're ok with letting Letby take the fall because they're doing it in knowledge that even if they did contribute to one death, there are others they didn't contribute to, so Letby must be guilty of those, therefore saving their own neck doesn't seem so bad.

No one has yet answered if they would leave their baby with Letby. Unsupervised of course. That's because they wouldn't, it's all just a game for armchair detectives who couldn't guess the killer in a Richard Osman.book.

(Ps, just because person A wasn't guilty of a crime doesn't make person B innocent of another)

Go and read the thread properly.
OftenAddled addressed this very sensibly at 13.37.

I see we have the same old deranged pitch-fork wielding "Burn the witch" people carefully considering all the evidence, or at least considering the views of those who think the conviction was unsafe...

(note - for the hard of understanding, I do not say she is innocent)

Oh for goodness sake put this in context! We have a thread full of people saying they wouldn't leave their child in any nursery with a male worker.

It's a frankly nonsensical question which adds nothing to the discussion.

It's all very extreme, isn't it? There are about 176 known serial killers in the UK. About 10% are female (according to Google). Most serial killers stick to an MO. Lucy Letby supposedly flipped from air embolus, insulin poisoning, assault, etc. It's very chaotic, yet she didn't present as chaotic.

It just isn't logical. None of it.

What it does add is a sense that the person asking the question doesn't understand the burden of proof in criminal trials.

Similarly, I wouldn't want my DC treated by the various lying consultants from Chester, or Dewi the quack, because these are not people to be trusted. But I don't think that means any of them are guilty of a criminal offence beyond reasonable doubt. It's not a difficult distinction to get your head round, but it is incredibly important.

I suspect everybody has already made up their mind on Letby

However the analysis of the case by Lord Sumption is worth reading (link below)

http://archive.today/NDPxF

TLDR; Not guilty

A tragedy for all of us

Not so. I've made up my mind on the safety or otherwise of the conviction. I'm on the fence about her guilt.

Beverly Allitt used different methods on her victims. Some insulin, some potassium, some air embolism. Serial killers don’t always use the exact same methods of killing.

I wouldn't call the 13.37 reply sensible. No one will answer honestly. This isn't just any woman - she's was a neonatal nurse who would be left in sole charge of newborns. It was her job. No one would trust her, quite rightly. Like I said, this is all just a game to play despite ignorance of the evidence put to the jury. Or, as the PP said, Miss Marples. I'm glad murdered babies are such a source of salacious speculation.

Course you wouldn't call it sensible, it's inconvenient to you.

It's just been done too many times to merit another answer. People think it's a gotcha. It's not.

You can make your point without playing games. That point seems to be that you don't believe people really think she's innocent. But the point other people are making is that they want to see the evidence properly tested in court, not that they want her randomly declared innocent.

What's wrong with that?

Salacious???

There's nothing salacious about not being convinced by the very weak evidence presented.

What's salacious is you coming out with these outlandish theories that people are just feigning ignorance because they want to defend someone who they know killed babies....honestly bizarre.

You're trying to take something as easily explained as 'not being convinced by the evidence' and trying your best to make it sound creepy.

All your question shows is that you don't understand what beyond a reasonable doubt means or how it is applied in criminal cases.

despite ignorance of the evidence put to the jury.

You write as if you aren't aware that all the evidence was in the public domain and reported on at length and in detail day by day of the trial.

Yes - and all relevant information should have been summarised in the judge's summing up, which is freely available. There's no hidden stash of actually useful evidence.

Well, the question from the OP was about the conviction and potential for a retrial.

How is your point about being “on the fence about her guilt” relevant to this ?

I don't know; you'd like to think there was enough evidence in the first trial to convict, but not for the second.

Miscarriages of justice do occur but rarely. I suspect LL will always be argued about.

Mentally ill or unstable people aren't usually murderers or that would be a much higher proportion of society at any given time.

Also being accused of harming babies could destroy anyones mental health, no matter how stable they were before.