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/

Is that this week? I might go out and buy it.

I think so yes! Friend sent it to me

Thanks for those two replies - very interesting.

It's the fine details of all alleged injury mechanism that should have been part of the evidence IMHO. I know it's unpalatable but how much air would it take? How long would it take to administer? Which equipment would best fit the method?

Likewise the insulin. Where did it come from? If it was left over on the ward from earlier treatment where was it stored? Was any missing? How much is likely to have been needed to produce the results seen? Are there protocols for this?

So long after the event these questions probably can't be answered, but I would have expected the defence to at least ask them.

Along with discussion of the prevalence of hypoglycemia in premature babies.

Insulin isn’t a controlled drug so there’s no counting of it on the ward, i don’t think any would be missed even if used incorrectly.

no idea how much air could cause an air embolism via the stomach, it won’t be the sort of thing which ever would have been tested. But I’ve certainly read stuff recently about people questioning it and saying the baby would just vomit rather than die 🤷‍♀️

air via a cannula/intravenous is more serious and could cause an air embolism. Probably would not need large quantities, maybe a syringe full of air. But some of the babies who died of an apparent air embolism didn’t have IV access iirc.

Thank you. Most helpful. As they say the devil's in the detail and all that.

Private Eye article is strong: short, clear, focused. Worth buying and reading if interested.

Here's an excerpt:

"Episodes of apnoea and bradycardia are frequent in preterm babies. If a baby fails to self-correct from an apnoeic episode and needs resuscitation, the first thing that's done is to ventilate using a bag and mask. As the mask covers the mouth and nose, the stomach is inevitably distended. This is the likeliest cause for the repeated mentions of gaseous distentions of the stomach ...
In my opinion [neonatology source], the cases all have much more plausible alternative explanations than those alleged. For example, research has found that air embolism is a not infrequent occurrence after cardiopulmonary resuscitation, to which of course these infants were substantially subjected ... On the basis of what I've seen, this conviction is wholly unsafe."

Agreed. This para gets to the core of the use of (mis)use of science in this case (and indeed others):

MD can make not judgement either way as to the guilt or innocence of LL but the way expert witnesses are used - or not used - in criminal trials with complex and uncertain science is simply not fit for purpose and risks miscarriages of justice. It should be mandatory for the jury to hear expert witnesses from both sides or - better still - it should be a duty of, say, the Royal Colleges and Royal Statistical society to provide a team of the best, current expert witnesses on behalf of the court, not paid or employed by one side or other. This is vital for justice to be done. < > There should be mandatory statistical input to ensure both sides use data fairly

This is a great archived reddit post showing the types of questions that people with a medical background would want answers to if they were trying to figure out what exactly happened.

General questions in the original post and then detailed posts about the babies in the comments.

https://archive.is/PtONx

Or just maybe someone was purposely overfeeding babies on the unit and as a consequence they reacted in ways that were wholly unexpected. Dr Dewi Evans is the one who said about the vomit for baby G. I think I'll trust his expert opinion on that.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-63947039

Medical expert Dr Dewi Evans, who was approached by the National Crime Agency to review the case in 2017, told the trial it was "astonishing" for such a small baby to vomit as severely as Child G did.
He said: "For a baby of 2kg to vomit that far is quite remarkable. Even more astonishing is the vomit that ends up on the chair. That is several feet away.
"I can't recall a baby vomiting on the floor. I can't recall a baby vomiting that distance. It was described quite correctly as extraordinary."
Dr Evans told the court that there could only be one explanation for this, that Child G "had received far more milk" than the allocated 45mls down her feeding tube.
He told the court that this "cannot occur accidently" and concluded that a member of staff had administered excess liquid with "intent to harm".

@kkloo thats a great link and as a midwife the questions they’re asking and the care /events they describe make my heart sink.

I think the issue in the LL cases was a possible indication of excess insulin rather than insufficient, which I believe is less common, but still more prevalent in premature babies than full term.

www.clinicalguidelines.scot.nhs.uk/nhsggc-guidelines/nhsggc-guidelines/neonatology/hyperglycemia-in-the-neonate/

In response to overfeeding babies/vomiting.

Nasogastric tubes for neonates/premature babies are incredibly thin - it takes ages for even a small feed to go down.

To overfeed via a NG tube would take a very long time, even if you were forcing it down using the syringe plunger - which would be very visible and likely to lead to instant vomiting.

More likely is that a feed wasn't being absorbed over time or there was some obstruction further down the gut so several feeds/partial feeds were sat in the stomach when the 'surprising vomit' happened.

I've read the Private eye article which is excellent and very concerning and am working my way through the Reddit.

Overinvested - yes, because if this is not a safe conviction then this could happen to any nurse/health care professional - especially if you happen to be someone who speaks out/complains about staffing/ just isn't liked very much - and that is terrifying for all of us, but absolutely tragic for LL.

From that Reddit thread you can see why the Drs / hospital management might be invested in blaming a single nurse rather than acknowledging hospital wide issues.

Medical expert Dr Dewi Evans, who was approached by the National Crime Agency to review the case in 2017

Hang on a minute. Isn’t this the Dewi Evans who wrote to the police saying 'I'm an expert and I’ve heard about this case, it sounds right up my street, can I come and be your expert witness?' He was retired and hadn’t been a neonatologist at any point in his career.

As I said what evidence do you have for overfeeding?

Not sure what you think makes Evans an expert. He’s not a neonatologist or a pathologist, he’s a paediatrician 15 years out of the game. The narrative of his involvement is conflicting: one version says the NCA contacted him; the other says his mate gave him the heads up that this case was “up his street” and he contacted the police to offer his services.

Either way the vomit story is fanciful, theoretical and the claim “there could be only one explanation” is a lie.

Yep that’s the one.

This appears to be the latest conspiracy in between the nutters crying about mrna and yelling at clouds

Yep that's us - all nutters. What a brilliant response to the points being raised here - do you have anything useful to contribute?

Has Dewi Evans never seen a pye baby vomit?

Oh that reddit thread. Very very interesting. Someone else trying to do forensic style analysis with the benefit of actual clinical experience. Which is what one would have expected the defence to do more of.

As to conspiracies and nutters.

Some of us have been forced into that position by direct experience of the system. Some of us had lives devoid of conspiratorial thinking right up until experts swanned into our lives "thinking the unthinkable" and put us in a position where we ended up doing the same thing, only to be told we're just "in denial".

Because if you know, for a fact, you haven't done what you're being told you categorically have, and there is no middle ground or consideration of alternative explanations that actually exist but aren't even examined because "experts" you do end up paranoid. This is what expert medical evidence dogmatically applied does to a person if it's going to alter the entire trajectory of your life.

Even if by some miracle a situation is "resolved" but very very conditionally and with emphasis on the fact that the experts weren't wrong but gracious benefit of the doubt is applied, the damage is done and a person is forever a bit broken. Or very broken. And having to hide it and play nice and normal forever more.

Nutter and conspiracy theorist are almost compliments when you've been accused of far far worse.

Nutters? 🧐 I believe it's professionals that have also questioned some of this stuff too. It's not that we feel Lucy should be let off as such but everyone deserves a fair trial and if there are holes in this which have clearly been found not just by us 'nutters' as you say then a lot of the stuff needs to be re analysed, even for the families of those babies and they need proper answers because IF and I'm only saying IF Lucy is actually not guilty then a miss carriage of justice has been served on a woman who was actually doing her job well, even IF she was released her life will never be the same ever and she will always live with the title of 'serial baby k1ller'

Perhaps Letby or someone else was trying to double up on feeds to save time. Why has poor nursing practice not entered the arena? It's more likely to be that than murderous intent.

It was the fact that professionals were raising questions that drew me in. I am very very careful about what I consume with regard to cases which are resonant with my own experience because I am painfully aware of my own potential bias.

In my own situation it didn't go as far as criminal, but if it had at least one medical expert implied attempted murder, and I could see it being jumped on by the prosecution. Both "bad luck" - that I found myself in the centre of a controversial shitstorm way above my paygrade and, ",good luck" - that certain people were prepared to be slightly more objective got involved and outweighed a few who developed an absolutely rabid obsession with proving I was the worst kind of manipulative psychopath ever. In total it absolutely consumed three years of my life. By the worst kind of manipulative psychopath ever, I mean someone with no demonstrable signs of psychopathy, as evidenced by three psychological reports produced with uneasy language using terms such as "upset" and "challenging," with regard to my demeanour.

So I try to focus on facts and evidence and they are somewhat lacking and conflicting in this case.

Why are you trusting his medical opinion on it when he appears to be deliberately ignoring that there are other reasons?

Throughout this thread your posts have been 'how do you explain this then? how do you explain that then?"

And when people respond with alternative explanations you move on to the next thing "how do you explain this then? how do you explain that then?"

By now have you not started to realise that there's a lot about this case that was presented as true or the only possibility in trial that is just not true and is certainly not the only possibility?

This is why the vomit issue falls down - no clear indication of what constitutes over-feeding, no clear answer as to the volume of feed required to produce the results seen, which of course could be variable depending on the physiology of the child, no testing or questioning of how long it would take to administer the feed via the very tiny tube etc.... which someone else has talked about upthread.

While it would be unethical to test in a live setting indeed, as I suggested in a previous post our advanced technology could surely be used to test all of this via computer simulation.

If we're nutters then you're a sheep who isn't capable of critical thinking.

It's fine to accept the verdict, but calling others nutters says far more about you than it does about us!

I don't think anyone on here is coming up with any far fetched theories or anything remotely nutty!

The only far fetched theory seems to be that there was a serial killer on the ward, fascinating how there was a ward where the care seemed to be suboptimal in so many of the cases, where the babies were not being cared for as well as they should have been, yet the babies didn't suffer injury or death from the suboptimal care at all 🧐 they just got killed/harmed by a serial killer.