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/

The character assassination side is interesting. Most people would have something you could pick on and use against them. Too quiet, too loud. Quirky interests = wierd, boring interests = withdrawn.

The only other person I know anything about who was involved is Dr Jayaram who stars in 'Born Naughty' which parades vulnerable children and their families for entertainment. I most certainly wouldn't want my autistic child anywhere near him.

He certainly seems to have difficulty recognising safeguarding concerns not to mention a shaky relationship with the truth.

This is interesting on the ‘not nice Lucy’ angle.

amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/07/lucy-letby-smiling-nurse-female-killers

"Why do so many people still think Lucy Letby is innocent? It’s worth asking...."

Is it worth asking though? People are being quite clear about why they think she might be innocent, they're not convinced by the evidence against her. Nothing to do with her as a person.

I would have zero issues accepting that any person at all, no matter what their gender, skin colour, profession or their perceived attractiveness was, if the evidence against them convinced me.

This trial is one salutary lesson of my life: that the general population, even relatively well educated people, simply cannot get their heads around quite basic scientific data.

Quite. Because the scientific evidence does not add up to murder that’s why.

If you’re going to write the umpteenth article on the subject at least do some bloody research.

Well, the evidence was strong enough for a guilty verdict in two trials and there’s little hope for an appeal.

That's awful 😓

A poster earlier in the thread said that their son was a patient of one of the expert witnesses in this case and that she was accused of abuse by that expert because he'd missed something very clear and obvious that explained her sons symptoms.

The evidence was very very weak. All the verdict means is that the jury didn’t understand that. And that cases involving complex medical data cannot be put to jury trials in this format particularly if the defence bring no expert witnesses to counterbalance the prosecution ones.

The fact she was already a convicted baby killer was allowed to be used as evidence in deciding whether she had harmed baby K.
Without that there wouldn't have been a guilty verdict in a second trial.

Some people seem to think that the retrial was a good safety net for prosecutors in the event of an appeal, but if there was a successful appeal for the first trial then the retrial falls very quickly.

Weak in your opinion, based on what has been reported, not the full evidence presented in court. Not weak in the opinion of the 24 men & women who actually heard it all.

You might well believe in judicial reform of the courts, but you’d be opening up a huge can of worms.

What about voting? You could argue that almost every topic from economic strategy to climate change is too complicated for lay people to evaluate. So should only the scientifically literate be able to vote? I’d argue anti-vaxxers are unable to understand the scientific data so are we going to leave their medical decisions up to experts?

The defence team are skilled and experienced. There will be a reason they didn’t present experts.

Most of it was weak in the minds of at least 1 of the 11 jurors as there were only 3 unanimous guilty verdicts.
That did show that they all believed that she was a murderer, but a juror (presumably the same one but maybe not) in each of the other cases was unconvinced.

Also important to note that the 3 unanimous guilty verdicts were in regards to the 2 insulin poisonings which there is now much question about (I'd actually be very curious to know if that juror changed their mind in any way now but we will never know) and also child O, presumably the unanimous guilty in that case was due to the child having a serious liver injury.

However I believe if I had been a juror I would not have been satisfied with the evidence provided in regards to that liver injury as straightforward answers weren't given, going on about helicopters and pots and probabilites not possibilities and not being clear. But it looks to me like not being clear was what got the guilty verdict in that case.

If at least one juror wasn't convinced for most, even though they did in fact think she was a baby killer, then of course it's going to follow that a certain % of the public will also have doubts.

Not sure of the point of this post. Yes, not everyone agrees. Doesn’t mean the evidence was weak. Doesn’t mean she is innocent. Just means not everyone was convinced to ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. That in itself is a subjective benchmark. You weren’t in court, you haven’t seen all the evidence so whether or not you would have believed it is entirely irrelevant.

“Dr Shoo Lee, an academic who researched the phenomenon of air embolus in babies in 1989, gave evidence to the appeal court on behalf of the defence, telling judges that the “only sign” of it was pink blood vessels “superimposed” on a pink or blue body.

When questioned by the prosecution, Lee accepted he had not assessed any of the victims’ medical records in Letby’s case or seen any of the witness testimony provided by other medical staff, who noted strange rashes on a number of the dead babies.”

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/02/lucy-letby-appeal-court-what-could-happen-next

Thank god they're looking into her entire career and all this "there's no evidence" nonsense can stop. There will be far more she's guilty of. Remember the police only looked into a year long span for the trial. If there were unexpected collapses that didn't involve LL they would've been brought up by the defence-that wasn't possible as she was on shift for all those too and obviously the defence couldn't risk highlighting that. I really think if it was a man there would be no question for posters over guilt.

The standard now is that you are 'satisfied that you are sure' of the guilt, not beyond reasonable doubt. Obviously most of them were satisfied they were sure, that doesn't mean that she actually did it though. Juries can get it wrong.

No it's not really relevant if I believed it or not, similarly it's not really relevant if most of the people on here think she's guilty as sin.

Yes I know that Dr Shoo Lee hasn't seen the medical records, I've questioned that now a few times, is it because the defence didn't bother to get him to look at them or is it because he refused or was there time constraints? We don't know why

I like to think I’m of above average intelligence but as a lay person I’d have really struggled with the science if I’d been on the juries.

I think the point that you're missing here is that for those of us who believe there could have been a miscarriage of justice, if there was more cases which actually had some more convincing, concrete evidence that she had actually harmed babies, then we would actually accept that.

But the evidence provided was not convincing or concrete enough to convince us which is why we are currently not convinced.

You really think if it was a man there would be no question for posters of guilt, well then you're just showing yourself to be incredibly narrow-minded, you just assume or decide something and nothing will change your mind. You just run with that.

The article makes good points about how these things can happen, but one quote from that article, "Doctors may have said things to family (for example, ‘… he/ she is doing well, should go home next week’) when they really meant: ‘… this is close to the end, nothing more we can do, better to die at home’. That can even be hospital policy." is absolute and utter bollocks.

I've been a dr for over 20 years and worked in loads of hospitals across 2 of the Uk nations, and I can absolutely guarantee that if you asked Richard Gill to produce a hospital policy that said that, he would not be able to. Even in the very early 2000s when I qualified, we were told that we should be honest with patients and not tell them they were getting better when they weren't. We still say to family things like the patient is doing well and we are hoping for them to go home, and patients die, but if we know a patient is dying, and going home to die, we tell them and the family this - we refer to palliative care, we send the drugs for a syringe driver home with them etc.

I'd also be interested in Ben Geen's "very good innocent reason" for having a syringe of vecuronium in his pocket - I've got plenty of friends who are anaesthetists who use vecuronium far more frequently that Ben Geen would have done - and none of them have ever managed to put a syringe of drugs in their pocket. When I was a medical student in the 1990s it was drummed into us to use sharps bins.

Dr Gill is clearly very good at statistics, but just because someone is good at one thing does not mean that they are equally expert in another.

Weak in the opinion of god knows how many doctors, scientists, statisticians, specifically neonatologists which, God knows, Evans is not.

The jury was not given the full scientific picture. The opinion of the jury members in that context is thus actually irrelevant. Give them a different set of data they would have the option of coming to a different conclusion.

Nothing will convince you, even a written confession didn't! There was concrete evidence, she was the only one on shift for all the collapses, they stopped when she wasn't there, followed her from nights to days. Stopped when she left the unit-it being downgraded was irrelevant for most of the babies except for baby G as she was very premature and maybe one or two others. A baby collapsed out of no where SIX MINUTES after a very upset LL was told she wasn't to go in room one-then she was found in there right after her colleague left what was a completely stable baby minutes earlier. Explain that. Babies who had family keeping a vigil never had any issues.

Without that there wouldn't have been a guilty verdict in a second trial.

Nobody knows that. It’s a ridiculous thing to present as incontrovertible truth. There might have been a second guilty verdict, there might not.

Nothing will convince you, even a written confession didn't!

There is no written confession.

Exactly. And the judge explicitly told the jury that her previous convictions were not a sign that she was guilty in this case. Given the high profile nature of her case, there is no way to exclude her previous convictions from the latest trial - just make sure the jury know they should be evaluating the evidence before them.

“The judge said Letby’s convictions for murder and attempted murder “does not prove that she has committed this offence on this occasion”.

He added: “Her previous convictions may only be used as some support for the prosecution case if, having assessed the evidence, you are satisfied that it is right so to do.”

There was no written confession.
There was no concrete evidence.
The shift thing has been disputed many times on here.
The hospital wasn't just downgraded, they also added two new consultants to help with staffing pressures, maybe they were a bit more competent than the one who had to google how to put a line in also?

The Guardian article repeatedly mentions that the experts who are querying the evidence have not seen all the records.

The opinion of the jury is the only relevant thing here. Our justice system operates on trial by a jury of peers, presented cases as explained by legal representatives whose job it is to explain the facts. Juries can ask questions, they can request clarification.

It’s astounding how many people who haven’t heard the case in full nor had access to the records and statements are so sure they know better than the people who have.

The jury were presented with a case for the prosecution and a case for the defence. Both sides were given the same evidence on which to form their case. Both sides are experienced, skilful litigators.

Miscarriages of justice happen, of course, but comparisons to the likes of the Birmingham 6 are ridiculous. There is no evidence of coercion or mistreatment here.