Lucy Letby ( To understand)

[PassingStranger]

What made her kill these babies. Been in the news again today.

It's hard to understand?
Presume as she is in prison and not a hospital, she is not mentally ill?

Will anyone try to find out, I guess if people don't admit they are guilty it's hard too.

Instead of people saying give me 5 mins in a cell with her, surely it's better to stop this happening or maybe it's not possible?
Why does she want to be one of the most hated women in the universe and not give a shit about the babies families and even her own parents?

So much better to be known for doing something nice and have people like you?
AIBU to wonder why she took this road in life?

Probably because she thought she would get away with it and they wouldn’t suspect her. I don’t think she was mentally ill and she was very intelligent. The opposite is true of HW’s stalker. LL doesn’t have a criminal record. That doesn’t mean that she is not guilty. Her modus operandi was very subtle, she didn’t engage in overt violence so no reason why she would have come to anyone’s attention in the past.
She has a couple of friends who have stood by her and gone to the trial and given interviews. She has her parents of course but the fact that nobody has come out to say anything bad doesn’t by itself mean anything. She obviously kept this part of her very closed off so there’s not loads to say. Her colleagues probably wouldn’t want to sell stories either for professional reasons.

No im not. Im just a scientist with a basic understanding of statistics

This thread is certainly one for those interested in criminal bias. Compare it to the "shamima begum is a murderer/terrorist" or any of the young black men who've been killed by the MET. Or even how the WOC who've been murdered get vuctim blamed. Statistics don't explain all aspects of human behaviour.

Another point to note is why would she continue to kill babies when she knew eyes were on her? When she knew Doctors were raising concerns. That seems like someone who would want to get caught. It just makes no sense at all.

When someone has a very strong compulsion to do something, has not been caught over a fairly long time period ..... Additionally when they've actually been defended and sided with over the people raising concerns about them to management (with their situation being interpreted as bullying of a nurse by senior staff members) ...... It's not beyond understanding that they'd continue to do what they were doing.

She was reinstated after a period in admin. She felt she had won that battle. She even wrote a fairly triumphant, almost aggressive statement to those doctors about her return to the ward.

What we know about her personality is not inconsistent with her continuing either.

You still haven't answered why her barrister didn't rip that piece of evidence to shreds, while you - a non legal professional - apparently could have and would have.

The fact that the hospital/NHS was in turmoil is exactly why LL thought she wouldn't get caught, she thought the deaths would be written off as incompetence etc I don't remember all the details but there were points in the trial and during her police interviews that she tried to steer this narrative.

Yes many of the babies were improving but unexpectedly deteriorated after being alone with LL

There's usually a build up, a pattern of behaviour, small crimes that escalate.

How do you know there wasn't with LL.

Her activities appear to have been limited to what she did, alone, on hospital wards.

How would you or I know what she was doing since first training.

Exactly. She probably did escalate and get bolder over time and it probably started a lot earlier than the crimes she was convicted for. Just because she wasn’t stealing or fighting in pubs doesn’t mean she just suddenly started killing. Her MO was very much keeping under the radar.

And dramatically improved when transferred to a different hospital.

Plus there still hasn't been a single bad word said about her from old friends/family/acquaintances etc

I think the colleague whose notes she altered might have a bad word to say about her.

Or the mother who saw her standing watching their previously stable baby collapse, doing nothing .. . Or the parents whom she gushed over re. their just deceased baby enjoying their first bath and offering to make memory box. And the colleague who saw her do that.

Or the colleague who was told by her that a particular baby wasn't "getting out of here alive, is he" and who reacted with natural anger and criticism towards her.

She wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary while she was at concerts or on holiday or out on the town so why would those people have any problem with her?

Just keep in mind that loads of people did not twig there was anything wrong with numerous serial killers. They thought they were ordinary.

Also, given that she seemed to have a wide social circle and was often pictured in groups, it’s notable that only two of her friends have really come out in support of her. One is an older lady, closer in age to her parents, who sat through the trial. The other is a school friend who stayed in their hometown when LL moved away at 18 so presumably didn’t have loads of day to day contact with her. Nobody else. I’d expect more people to come out in her support if it really was so unthinkable that she had committed these crimes. And several parents have come forward saying her behaviour was off, as have colleagues in their evidence.

I have no idea why her barrister didn’t. Anyone with a basic understand of statistics can see how garbage that evidence is. I’m not a mind reader and no I have no knowledge of law other than as an observer.

Well given that he’s a leader in his field and also probably has a pretty sound grasp of statistics, having appeared in a range of cases including complex fraud, he probably had a good reason for running the case as he did. That reason being that it wouldn’t have assisted his client.

It should be straightforward to wean a child off CPAP and yet it was not in that case - that’s the point.

A haemophilia case should have been relatively straightforward - and was indeed for the first few days. And then complications started - the first event of which happened when LL was off shift. I am not suggesting a hospital should stock every product, just not to admit a vulnerable patient when they don’t have one of the very products required, and then request someone from another hospital to take it over in a taxi. The child should have gone straight to Alder Hey, which is where it ended up.

Instead of being defensive - why not read the RCPCH report in full detailing the significant problems in the unit. In particular the fact it never had the staffing levels or resources to run a unit at Level 2 at all.

Read the 2 clear cases of negligence in the unit - where one baby died after it was intubated incorrectly and the medics failed to register the implications of the test results. The other - which cost CoC £8.5million in compensation - where a baby was incorrectly prepared prior to transfer to Alder Hey and suffered cerebral palsy as a result.

Consider what, if LL “killed” 7 of the 15 babies, killed the other 8.

That there were not inconsiderable problems at this unit is not slander, it is matter of public record.

well we will see won’t we. There are lots and lots of statisticians who have said that the evidence is garbage and should not have been allowed.

Indeed. The Royal Statistical Society wrote the chair of the Lucy Letby inquiry
regarding the appropriate use of statistical evidence in medical cases. They requested that the enquiry covers this.

The RSS emphasises that drawing conclusions from suspicious clusters of deaths is very challenging in cases that take place in a medical setting.

LL is in court for her sentencing which is about to begin . . .

This article was written in bmj but removed ‘for legal reasons’ but as the reporting restrictions are removed now it should be fine to post.

https://www.bmj.com/content/382/bmj.p2197
But here is original piece

Dear Editor
I am a coauthor of the report of the Royal Statistical Society https://rss.org.uk/news-publication/news-publications/2022/section-group-reports/rss-publishes-report-on-dealing-with-uncertainty-i/. It is deeply distressing that the police investigation into the case of Lucy Letby and the subsequent trial made all of the mistakes in our book. The jury was never told how the police investigation arrived at that list of “suspicious” events and how it was further narrowed down to the list of charges. This is a case in which a target was painted around a suspect by investigators. We call it confirmation bias, in statistics. It is also often referred to as the Texas sharpshooter paradox.
Thanks to amateurs who report their work on Twitter and YouTube, we now know how the list of charges in the Lucy Letby case evolved. It is utterly scandalous that this history was not revealed to the court. Here is the broad picture.
Doctors reported Lucy to the police, against the wishes of the hospital board.
They told the police the exact period she had been on the ward and gave them the files on all deaths in that period and on some of the incidents: namely, exactly and only those “arrests” at which Lucy had been present.
What qualifies as an incident, what is an arrest?
There is no medical category “arrest, resuscitation” under which such events are logged in hospital administration. Probably there were about five times as many such events when Lucy was not on duty, but nobody has ever looked. There is no medical definition of such an event. No formal criteria.
“Unexpected, unexplained, sudden” are also not defined in any formal way. Nor is “stable”.
Next the absolutely unqualified, long retired, paediatrician Dewi Evans, who has a business helping out in civil child custody cases, went through those medical files looking for anomalies about which he could fantasise a murder or murder attack. His ideas that milk was injected into the stomach or air into the veins were far fetched, and later not confirmed by any other evidence. On the contrary, the actual evidence certainly contradicts the idea that Lucy Letby actually attacked any child. He never gave alternative medical explanations, as would have been the obligation of a forensic scientist. All the deaths had had a post-mortem and a coroner’s report. Every single event on the charge sheet has absolutely normal explanation. Lucy was never seen doing anything wrong.
The medical experts for the prosecution merely confirmed Evans’ diagnosis, they also did not do the job of a forensic scientist.
The defence had no experts. They had brought in one paediatrician. But at the pre-trial hearing he said he wasn’t qualified in endocrinology, toxicology, etc etc etc.
This was Texas sharpshooter, big time. Plus utterly incompetent defence.
Richard Gill
Member of Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences
Past president of Dutch statistical society.

The doctors should have gone to the CDOP after the first few deaths in 2015 if they had serious concerns. They actually went in April/May 2017.

The handwringing about not being able to contact police is perplexing, as there is senior police representation on the CDOP.

The deaths stopped once the unit was downgraded from a Level 2 by the hospital board. The board requested the RCPCH review who in turn recommended an independent external review but that never happened.

Sentencing is now being shown live . . .

If your Chief executive is telling you to draw a line under it all or there will be consequences, then it's understandable that he felt threatened. It's not easy to risk your life and livelihood when your seniors are telling you you're wrong.

Dr Jayaram does regret not going to the police earlier, but at least he and the other consultant did go.

Consider what, if LL “killed” 7 of the 15 babies, killed the other 8.

LL was found guilty, beyond reasonable, doubt (or whatever the UK term is) of killing 7 of the 15 babies.

That is all.

They were also being reported to the GMC.

As expected she has another whole life tariff