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/

Beverly Allit BTW has admitted her crimes (or at least some of them) and the insulin evidence was in fact collected and analysed to a forensic standard in at least some of the cases she was convicted of.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2270251/#:~:text=None%20were%20present%20in%20Paul's,with%20all%20the%20clinical%20evidence.

So you see I don't have any trouble believing that healthcare serial killers exist but I do think there are very good reasons for being cautious when investigating such cases as the potential for poor understanding of statistics and medical evidence and biased salacious reporting has resulted in miscarriages of justice in such cases in the past.

This does seem like a lot of evidence of infection. Maybe it was bacterial infection they said there was no evidence of? Or maybe they were just wrong. I'm not in a position to really understand all the scientific evidence myself so I'm kind of only half following the case.

Hip fracture is very commonly a terminal event in elderly patients. Anyone who says that an elderly lady dying after a hip fracture op was not expected to die AT ALL just has no knowledge of common medical facts.

I'm not reading the whole thing but I don't get it being very common from that article. It says 16.6% (11.9% female) died within one year which is not a huge percentage, and only 4.5% died during hospitalization.

Obviously I know that Drs predictions of death aren't accurate largely because I am a bloody Dr.

The only thing I have to say to that is I hope you have a great deal more professionalism than openly hating and mistreating patients as Colin Norris did.

From Wikipedia-Police would later discover that Norris had repeatedly mistreated elderly patients in the early months of his nursing career at the same Leeds hospitals in which he would later go on to murder patients. Two elderly ex-patients said that Norris had verbally abused them after they rang an emergency buzzer on a ward when an elderly patient climbed out of bed, with Norris then saying to them "I hope you suffer" and "rot in hell".

Nice man you're defending! Ahh but it's just that dark humour again.

It is the view of the legal body set up to review whether a miscarriage of justice has taken place. So you may think as you please but legal opinion is not with you on this one.

Well I personally hope he never gets out to terrorise anymore elderly people even if innocent of murder (he's not) he's clearly an abusive POS that should be nowhere near vulnerable people.

In 1990 my maternal Grandmother who had severe COPD and was increasingly frail, was admitted to hospital to try and stabilise her and give my Mum some respite. (We lived with her).She had oxygen at home, was largely bedbound, and had been using a wheelchair on the rare occasions we could get her out of the house. She was fully composed mentis.

While in hospital, by some miracle she managed to get out if bed and sleepwalk, resulting in a hip fracture.

She was transferred to a different hospital across town for the operation to fix it. It had to be done with local anaesthetic as her breathing difficulties made her too high risk for general anaesthetic.

We visited her a day after the op. She seemed relatively bright, told us all about it in detail. Once she was rehabilitated she was scheduled to come home.

The next morning my Mum appeared at the shop I worked in white as a sheet. Halfway through a bed bath happily chatting with the nurse, she died. Just like that. It was a blood clot.

An elderly friend of mine had surgery for esophageal cancer which had been caught early. Same thing happened. Two days after the op - blood clot.

Just throwing in a couple of direct experiences. Both medically unexpected deaths, but both illustrating that if you're in hospital with several issues, you're at higher risk of death and no matter how good things look it can happen.

In my Nanas case I think her sleep walking episode was a bit suspicious from a potential negligence point of view but I don't think she was murdered.

One of the posts on the blog I linked to (the Law, Health and Technology substack) also notes this - we may be looking at the same source @kkloo ?

Baby A - treated for ‘suspected sepsis'.
Baby C - treated for ‘suspected sepsis'.
Baby D - according to Dr Rylance 'likely had sepsis'.
Baby E - a doctor noted ‘suspected sepsis'.
…..and the further cases noted by kkloo.

And there was also another child, named in a double-spread local newspaper report as 'Baby Jacob', who was born premature at the CoCH, taken to the neonatal unit and was there at exactly the same time period in June 2015 as Baby A, B and C. On the day that Baby C died, Jacob was also diagnosed with sepsis and transferred out to Liverpool Women's Hospital.

He was transferred back to CoCH 4 days later only to again develop abscesses and bone infection (an indicator of further sepsis), and went back to LWH. Thankfully, he was eventually discharged home healthy.

This is very, very sad and worrying. These were not well, stable babies. How could it have been claimed repeatedly in court that they were doing fine, their extremely low birth-rate wasn’t a problem, and so on….?

That substack was the first place that made me think hey wait a minute, the soundbites and headlines do not match up at all to what the actual evidence was.

The doctors were saying these babies were in 'good condition' and there was 'no concerns' even though clearly they were not in good condition and there definitely was concerns and the evidence for that was all there in the notes. It seems that they weren't as concerned as they should have been in some cases because the signs were there that things were wrong yet the care was suboptimal.

But to find that list I just quickly looked through the Tattle wiki and searched for sepsis and Nec on the babies pages, that website is shocking but the wiki is helpful for quick references and it shows that the evidence of infection is there already in the public domain but it's just completely ignored and people keep insisting the babies were all doing great, no signs of infection, no concerns at all 🙄

I think the author of that substack is going to be on the channel 5 documentary.

I think the author of that substack is going to be on the channel 5 documentary

I hadn’t quite picked up that there was a documentary incoming but that’s interesting, thank you.

(btw I failed to notice my typo - should be 'extremely low birth-weight' not 'birth-rate' obvs.

I read that substack too and it was indeed 😳 I suppose the hang 'em and flog 'em brigade would explain it away as being a convenient cover for a determined serial killer....🙄

Another personal anecdote if I may...

My DS was born five weeks early due to sudden onset pre-eclampsia. It should have been spotted weeks earlier as I had massive water retention, so many courses of antibiotics due to UTIs that thrush became a permanent fixture in the last month at least and a slew of symptoms that kept being written off as normal and I kept being reminded that pregnancy is not an illness. So I soldiered on, working in retail, until the Sunday after a roast dinner when I projectile vomited my meal back and managed to persuade my DP something wasn't right.

But, but I hear you cry, high blood pressure??? Well. Turns out I have low blood pressure, possibly related to being a Rh negative blood group which was obviously in my records. So the "normal" they were seeing was high for good old awkward me. Such a surprise for the GP....

Now 35 weeks early isn't early enough to fall into the same rusk category as the babies in Lucy Letbys case, but we were still kept in for a week. For the first 48 hours I was out of action as I'd had an epidural after induction (4 hour labour with 50/50 chance of disaster for us both), which had done very little other than paralyse my left leg. DS was in my room and had a NG tube for precisely 24 hours which he did keep trying to remove, which the nurses said was a good sign. I was EBF. He weighed 5 13 and we had to scrape around for the right size clothes as full term newborn swamped him. He was treated for jaundice. During labour I had to stop pushing as the cord was round his neck. All probably routine things for such a situation although for first time Mum ever so slightly terrifying.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, I can perfectly illustrate how retrospective opinions of medical situations can be twisted to fit a narrative due to what happened next.

When experts had to review my notes and DSs due to a situation I keep alluding to but don't wish to detail and de-rail, the following was stated:

35 weeks isn't "really" premature.

My pregnancy was essentially normal and uneventful.

The delivery was normal and uneventful - the cord incident was shrugged off as routine although I don't remember the doctor and midwife in attendance being quite so sanguine in the moment.

DS had no issues - jaundice is perfectly normal. Well yes it may be common but it's a thing that requires treatment.

When everything went to shit when he was 6 weeks old I read many many instances of things that could have been further examined to shed light on WTAF had happened being minimised, dismissed and not investigated further including family history and anomalous blood test results that weren't even disclosed until it was pointless re-testing as DS was now exclusively formula fed and everything about his circumstances had changed. It was all "the balance of probabilities" and "respected expert opinion" and how dare we argue....

Anyway, sorry for the slight tangent, but I bet there are many stories like mine where the truth was over-ridden by the system.

Suspected sepsis does not mean the baby is infected. It means one of the signs of sepsis has been noted, blood need to be taken and in neonates usually the baby will be given prophylactic antibiotics whilst you wait for bloods to come back. If the babies had confirmed infections then the notes would say that.

The signs of sepsis include jaundice, poor temperature regulation etc which are also common to all premature babies so you would expect to suspect sepsis in more babies than not in NICU and be giving a lot of them ABs and double-checking for infection especially if they have IVs in or have had any procedures performed which could raise the risk of infection.

The threshold for suspecting sepsis should be v low so you can detect it fast. That can and should happen even with a patient assessed as in good condition, in fact that's a mark of good clinical care. I had my appendix out in Jan and was also assessed as suspected sepsis as my resting BP is naturally v low which can be a sign of septic shock - I had my obs done every hour and extra bloods taken. The surgical registrar who discharged me said my case was uncomplicated and I've recovered fully but whilst in hospital I had suspected sepsis. Those two things can co-exist.

The vast majority of premature babies are given precautionary antibiotics against suspected sepsis. The doctors are really cautious about missing an infection in tiny babies.

Yes but some of those babies died.
There's a very high chance that they did in fact die from infection rather than being killed by a serial killer. There's no evidence that they were actually murdered.

they just tried to make out that all the babies were doing great and in 'good condition.

I would say that the Crown definitely overstated the wellness of the babies. I don't see how in any world anyone could say that a baby weighing less than 1 kg and needing mechanical intervention to breathe was 'doing well' or 'stable'

The notes and her behaviour with the babies have been repeatedly brought up when flaws in the science have been raised as concerns
Yes, but only in addition to the other evidence, not on its own.

I think some posters are confusing two debates:

• Whether the evidence presented to the jury should have a led to an innocent verdict because they couldn't prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

• That coming to an innocent verdict means that Lucy didn't commit any of the crimes she was accused of.

This is why I'm curious about what way an appeal works.

Would it be a retrial and so all the stuff about handover sheets and her demeanor etc is presented again in a proper trial or would it be a case of let's say enough evidence was presented to show that a significant number of the convictions were unsafe, for example the air embolism and insulin ones that they then overturn all of the convictions?

But yet some of the babies notes showed many signs of deterioration and the doctors were saying they were doing well and there was no concerns.

Great article here from a barrister.
Sorry if someone has already posted this!

https://unherd.com/2024/07/the-questions-haunting-the-lucy-letby-trial/

Do you think the CCRC would refer the case back to the court of appeal if the case against him was 'pretty damning'
CCRC are themselves acknowledging that 1 out of the 5 patients were murdered. They seem to think that if they show there is not enough evidence for guilt beyond doubt for the 4, it will put doubt as for the 5th one.

Surely all it means is that he would be re-trialed for the 5th to prove that she was murdered by him.

Nowhere dors it refer to evidence that he can't be guilty.

Anyway, sorry for the slight tangent, but I bet there are many stories like mine where the truth was over-ridden by the system
Or it was indeed quite normal. I too had a GP doing my blood pressure and stating it was normal when my normal BP was much lower. The midwife was horrified when she saw me next and sent me straight to hospital. In my case, no pre-eclampsia.

Having the cord around the baby neck is very normal. I had it twice, my daughter twice also, my son had it 3 times around his neck. They were more cautious but nothing considered abnormal.

Both my children had jaundice. Again, very common.

Their notes don't reflect any extra caution because it really was nothing of medical concern.

I don't disagree that these things are relatively "normal", indeed they would have just faded into memory and are unremarkable in many ways.

However, when they are actively minimised and ignored in a situation like my own to better fit a narrative that supports an accusation of harm, it's not so simple

So 35 weeks "isn't really premature" in comparison to 24 or 28 weeks. However it means a full month in utero has been missed. With pre-eclampsia in the mix there's a possibility of placental compromise and perhaps nutritional deficiency which might not be immediately evident. The cord around the neck might not have been life threatening, but did it in any way relate to areas of concern later identified on a brain scan but not consistent with harm - does a brief interruption of air flow or circulation impact anything?

What I'm getting at is subtle but important, but I do acknowledge I have an axe to grind, so won't bang on.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that something of little clinical importance in general terms might not be when a left field situation occurs, and might deserve more investigation than glib dismissal as "highly unlikely" when a whole situation is "highly unlikely".

I was working on a care of the elderly ward and a patient who wasn't on my team looked unwell. I did all his observations and they were sort of okayish considering his age and diagnosis, but I wasn't happy with him and told the house officer and the consultant who just happened to be there at the time. They both examined him separately and declared he was fine. I advised them that he looked as though he was going to 'go off' (arrest), but they practically laughed at me.

My instincts told me he wasn't well. He actually arrested and died half an hour after I went off duty. Maybe I was responsible for his unexpected demise! 🤔 only I wasn't. I just had reliable intuition.

4 of the deaths were natural causes.
The 5th one (index case they still think might have been murder)

She may have been murdered but NOT by him!

There was no direct evidence against him at all. 16 staff had access to the insulin that night and now that the 'pattern' has been proven to be no such thing just a retrospective witch hunt what is the reason to think that if she was murdered it was him??

If you think that is unlikely well tell it to poor Rebecca Leighton who was imprisoned for 6 weeks and pilloried by the media for the crimes of another nurse

amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/18/stepping-hill-hospital-poisonings-operation-roxburg-manchester-police-victorino-chua

My contention is actually that it is likely there were not any crimes committed for anyone to be guilty of and that the mortality spike was due to statistical variation and poor care.

Quite. The logic that people will use to justify guilt is astounding.
like the poster upthread who said “why else would she have taken 257 handover notes home?”
as if “because she’s the UK’s most prolific serial killer, taking home trophies of her baby victims” (“and even though only and fraction related to babies she was accused of harming, there must be so many more”) is not only likely , but the only conceivable explanation!!! Nutty bongo.

It makes one think, doesn't it, of all the weird, quirky, bizarre things we do that make up each individual with all their foibles, passions and subconscious attachments and how any one of those things could potentially be used against us simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We are fascinating complex creatures and will probably never be able to fully explain how or why we came to be, nor our behaviours.

Whenever there's a thread where people share their fears and insecurities about other people there's always a good proportion of posters saying you can't live in fear and most people even if a bit weird, are unlikely to be bad or evil. Obviously a number of people do awful things and sometimes you can see some sort of pattern leading up to it. Not excuses but plausible reasons. I mean I don't deny we have as a species identified some patterns and possible outcomes in behaviours, but it's dangerous to apply them in a broad stroke and expect it every time because the temptation is to widen the scope way too far.

I think the mistake we make is always trying to standardise and predict things. In the case of criminal profiling the motivation is understandable - try and prevent further and future harm. But it's never going to be an exact science, and in grave cases like this, first and foremost the medical evidence must be as close to irrefutable as it can get before you start stirring the muddy pot of why. Currently we don't even have a plausible how. And the evidence is demonstrably refutable.

Do you also openly hate elderly people as Colin Norris did? Again it's the whole picture, he had motive and had mistreated them before. It's also very different to have a vague idea someone is not well than actually predict the exact time when they'll arrest. I love the mental gymnastics though.

@Golaz well why don't you answer why she took them home then? Considering she would've known this wasn't allowed and she had far more than would've gone home accidentally, they were kept for a reason. Again, it's another part of the puzzle that points to guilt. Some people on here obviously have trouble joining the dots.