To think the Lucy Letby case needs a judicial review?

[Edenspirits73]

2 more detailed articles in main stream papers today questioning the Lucy Letby verdict - mirroring the well known New York Times article that wasn’t allowed here during her trial- surely with this much questioning, there should at least be a judicial review?

aibu?

If she is guilty after review then fair enough, but yet again convictions are being viewed as unsafe.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/09/lucy-letby-evidence-experts-question

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/09/lucy-letby-serial-killer-or-miscarriage-justice-victim/

An 'agreed fact' doesn't necessarily translate to being an actual true fact though.

I would imagine in the case of an appeal that that definitely won't be an 'agreed fact' at all. That's if appeals are like retrials? I'm not sure what way they work.

They tried to mislead the jury by saying it couldn't have happened accidentally because no insulin was being ordered for any baby on the unit at the time.

When the case first made headlines I thought she's probably incompetent, poorly trained, too stressed, it's a cover up etc etc so I followed the trial closely and yes, the statistics and the air embolism evidence didn't seem strong to me but there was so much more to the case that sadly it was clear these poor babies were deliberately hurt by Lucy Letby, her behaviour, the tampering with records, the obsessive behaviour.....there really was a lot.

Letby’s defense team said that it had found at least two other incidents that seemed to meet the same criteria of suspiciousness
What was the criteria? Why wasn't this not presented as evidence during the trial? Why only 'seemed' to meet rather than 'meet'. Seems a very woolly statement to be taken at face value.

Because the defence were shit?

Or else because they weren't allowed to bring it up?

Who knows?
An awful lot about this trial just doesn't sit right and that's the reason why so much concern is being expressed now from people with medical backgrounds and legal backgrounds or experts in statistics etc.

The defence team was the best money could buy. You can’t polish a turd.

Because the defence were shit?
Or because although they might have 'seemed' to meet the criteria, it was identified they didn't.

My point is why mention this statement in the article as one argument against Letby's verdict without some context to it.

Without some explanation of what the criteria were and how it seemed similar and therefore justify why it was wrong to exclude it, it is a totally worthless, unsubstantiated comment that has no weight at all. Yet some people will take it as 'evidence' for a potential wrong verdict.

@vivainsomnia

Dewi Evans, the retired pediatrician, told me that he had picked which medical episodes rose to the level of “suspicious events.” When I asked what his criteria were, he said, “Unexpected, precipitous, anything that is out of the usual—something with which you are not familiar.” For one baby, the distinction between suspicious and not suspicious largely came down to how to define projectile vomiting.

That was the paragraph from the New Yorker above what that poster quoted.

She's guilty a sin.
Maybe spend some of your time and thoughts on the poor babies that lost their lives when they had only just begun, after a difficult start too.
And the families that have to live their lives knowing how much their poor babies suffered at her hands.

Bollocks to the newspaper articles. She can rot.

So why didn't the doctor who saw this do something at the time? It's an obvious safeguarding incident.

And the first pathologist said it was consistent with CPR. He/she will have seen the hospital notes.

Marnerides simply supported Evans’ theory. However Evans is not a pathologist.

Air embolism cannot be diagnosed retrospectively from X-ray. Interpreting gas on post-mortem cross-sectional imaging is very difficult. Several factors are involved - trauma, sepsis, resus, uvc, post mortem decomposition etc. Identifying the source is very challenging, and distinguishing decomposition from pathology is also very challenging.

Do mean on the ward? In the baby’s body? Babies tested positive for hyperinsulinemia but there was never a test for exogenous insulin so that is purely theoretical.

That the defence did not challenge the insulin theory in full is one of its major mistakes.

“Unexpected, precipitous, anything that is out of the usual—something with which you are not familiar.” For one baby, the distinction between suspicious and not suspicious largely came down to how to define projectile vomiting
So it's a possibility that this wasn't challenged by the defence because the criteria themselves are questionable, at least in the cases that were not included in the list generated by the prosecution, rather than by a very basic error from the defence team.

Either way, it shows some confounding biais from the NYer journalist on this point.

The defence obviously weren’t that shit, that they cast enough doubt on some of the cases that verdicts couldn’t be reached - or were defence doing a good job for those ones, but a shit job on the ones she got a guilty verdict?

Baby O with the traumatic liver injury was a unanimous verdict, so even the juror’s that were swayed by evidence to go no verdict on others such as baby Q and H - all believed she murdered this baby - or were the jurors wrong about baby Q and H as well?

cant have it both ways

I think things like the traumatic liver injury need further investigation. The emotive descriptions of car crash level forces due to violent impact require further analysis. What is the proposed mechanism exactly? A punch? A violent poke? With an implement or just her hands? Would such a violent attack really leave no other evidence and only be visible at post mortem?

No doubt someone will critcise me for asking distasteful questions. Does it matter? She did it. She's guilty. Let that poor baby Rest in peace. In the context if a criminal trial however, such distasteful investigation is absolutely necessary to ensure a safe conviction.

Like many others, the insulin issue at face value almost sealed the deal for me. Test results showing that are damning indeed. But then you see that those results were not investigated until the vtiminal investigation was under way and that the test used is not designed for forensic purpose. The numbers don't add up. The blood sample may have not been tested within the test protocol guidelines.
Because it wasn't tested fir at the time it has to be assumed that one, or two feeding bags were contaminated by Lycy Letby.

So there was insulin on the ward. How much? Did some vanish without explanation? Is there not a protocol for accessing it? Are vials counted in and out? At any point did someone go "That's funny could have swirn we had a quantity of this potentially dangerous substance floating about - wonder what happened to that?"

It's things like this that make me sceptical.

Jamie Egan has very good summaries of the nonsense of the insulin evidence:

https://jameganx.notepin.co/the-unreliable-relationship-between-insulin-proinsulin-and-c-peptide-in-preterm-neonates-dzdkaanm

https://jameganx.notepin.co/glucose-and-preterm-neonates-koquayom

https://jameganx.notepin.co/more-glucose-science-myswmpxd

https://jameganx.notepin.co/why-the-letby-insulin-science-is-junk-txvmhurx

Not necessarily - it was simply that the prosecution case was weak. Verdicts couldn’t be reached because there was no evidence. There was still no evidence at retrial but at that point the jury had seen the previous guilty verdicts and wall to wall coverage of burn the witch.

The fact that 10 people who don’t understand enough about biology/pathology to know that the claims made were highly dubious merely indicates that lay juries are not the way to deal with these kinds of cases. Unless you can guarantee equal numbers of expert witnesses for the defence so they can hear evidence from both sides.

The jury was wrong about all of them, that’s the point. Edit: no there was 1 juror who got it right in all but the insulin cases afair. Fair play to them.

But we don’t know how long she was standing there could have been seconds she was observed, who is to know. You would be surprised what colleagues would say to protect themselves . If they stood there watching more than a minute why didn’t they act?

Quite. He was standing there watching her watching the baby. So wth was he doing? And why didn’t he report her at the time.

I think the whole incident has grown with the telling.

@Mirabai No it hasn’t. It’s only grown in the telling of you were one of the disgraceful lunatics on the Lucy Letby Facebook pages who were bandying about theories and embroiling the testimonies with your own personal grievances. His story had always been the same. It hasn’t grown in the telling.

What flabbergast me is that people can bring themselves to believe that her defense is bad, the police are all wrong/ incompetent, the experts are liars/ frauds/ incompetent/ the evidence wrong/ misinterpreted manufactured rather than believe that Lucy is a liar and murderer. Hundreds of people would have to be actively bad a their jobs or liars for her to be innocent.

And also, every case was tried as a separate count. So even if the insulin evidence was thrown out that would still leave the over feeding/ assault/ air embolism evidence. Are you saying every expert in this case is wrong? Every conclusion is manufactured or fake?

For example- Baby K

She was tiny, heavily sedated. And yet her breathing tube was found dislodged three time. How does a tiny, sedated baby push her own breathing tube down her throat 20% more than it had been fitted?

The baby K case is not just Dr Jayram’s evidence.

@Ratsoffasinkingsauage You don’t get it and I accept that.

That J’s story has grown with the telling is indisputable - J reported nothing at the time. If what he now claims is true then he was negligent in not reporting it contemporaneously.

I don’t have FB, and I’m not sure why you confusing social media chat with medical professionals expressing concerns about the case.

Active babies can dislodge feeding tubes. According to another nurse, baby K was an ‘active baby’. It took 3 attempts to get the tube in.

It appears that the recommended treatment to initially stabilise very preterm neonates is cpap not intubation + surfactant which can cause problems with infection and lung injury.

The baby should have been in a Level 3 unit more suited to babies of this prematurity with more experienced staff, which is where Baby K was transferred.

I know it might sound stupid, but could she perhaps have confessed to her defence team, but refused to plead guilty because of her parents? She couldn't face letting them know she did it deliberately. The defence then just didn't try that hard and merely went through the motions? It's just a job to them after all. They know perfectly well she deserves jail?

Just a thought. There may be processes to deal with such a situation.

"What flabbergast me is that people can bring themselves to believe that her defense is bad, the police are all wrong/ incompetent, the experts are liars/ frauds/ incompetent/ the evidence wrong/ misinterpreted manufactured rather than believe that Lucy is a liar and murderer. Hundreds of people would have to be actively bad a their jobs or liars for her to be innocent."

Again, hundreds of people are wrong every time an innocent person is found guilty.

I believe there us a mechanism similar to the US Alford please by which a defendant acknowledges the prosecution has enough evidence to secure a conviction but "innocence" is "maintained. Did just have a quick Google.

I must admit that given the role of the defence is to secure the best possible outcome for a suspect for example by introducing mitigating factors etc, I am somewhat curious as to their strategy and how they were instructed. If they were convinced from the get go that there was no hope of winning it must be for a reason. And if Lucy Letby did not explicitly confess I'd be interested to know what that reason is.

Yes at @lawnseed that could be the case. Although it wouldn’t be that her Defence “weren’t trying that hard”, but that if she has admitted guilt, they would not be allowed to put forward a positive, alternative position- all they can do is make the prosecution prove their case. That’s how you balance the lawyers’ duty of confidentiality to their client, with their overriding duty not to mislead the court.

Given the Defence obtained experts who were willing to give evidence for her, my own view is that this is the most likely reason for the failure to call them. This is why I disagree with all those saying she can’t have had a fair trial without Defence experts being called - in these circumstances it would be totally fair not have them called!