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/

And why do you think the defence didnt produce any expert witnesses? The lead defence barrister is an incredibly experienced renowned advocate at the top of his game, knowing this is the trial of his lifetime. He's ran dozens of trials effectively utilising expert evidence.

Do you really believe he's just so incompetent that he forgot? Or is it possible that there were no CREDIBLE experts willing to come forwards and testify beneficially to the defence theory?

This issue has already been addressed. Expert witnesses are not able to come forward to give evidence for the defence in child murder cases because it will potentially destroy their careers. Nobody wants to get involved. You have to look abroad for people willing to testify.

Staff at the unit have also now said they were pressured not to be witnesses for the defence. This means crucial evidence wasn't covered. We know, for example, that another nurse came forward to say that LL hadn't turned off a monitor she was accused of doing (it was a doctor). How much other evidence that might have supported LL could also have been suppressed by staff not being able to testify? Small details like who was on a ward at particular times could totally change the outcome.

Expert witnesses need to comment on the evidence provided. If evidence was deliberately suppressed this makes the whole situation impossible.

I've not seen any mention of how many normal witnesses the defence called. We're there any nurses or the babies parents? What about doctors from the hospitals the very sick babies went to?

The pathologists who did the original post mortems showing natural cause of death don't seem to have been called which I find very odd.

I'd also add that the small number of expert witnesses who do testify in these cases are often considered credible due to the number of successful prosecutions they have helped with. There are far fewer still who have made their name in the opposite corner and I can name two who have been struck off for attempting to do so in both the family and criminal courts. Credibility can be a subjective as anything else.

Research and new findings take time to be accepted as consensus. There's peer review to consider. In child protection in particular the medical angle can fall foul of dogma because there probably aren't many people who can stomach the distressing aspects of such research which has to be done retrospectively as ethics prevent, quite rightly, live experimentation.

Plus if something comes along that proves a significant number of people have been wrongly convicted or permanently lost their children to adoption, the fallout would be incredibly damaging to every system / authority involved.

Which is why each case should be treated impartially and individually and held to the most robust standards, not rubber stamped by a small group of experts with a possible bias to maintaining the status quo and their reputations. How devastating would it be to discover your opinion was wrong in a majority of cases you'd worked on? Could they live with it? Apologise? They were working with the best evidence they had at the time after all and were trying to "do no harm" and indeed prevent harm to the most vulnerable.

No doubt some could and would, but would some also dig in their heals and attack the credibility of the "new" position and experts presenting it.

It's a pretty pickle indeed.

This is just utterly not true. Honestly the parallel fanciful universe you guys have built for yourselves is astonishing.

Have any of you been on a jury? In a courtroom? Read the Evidence Act? Read any judgments? What you are saying just simply isn't reality.

I am a criminal (defence) lawyer. There are good arguments that Letby may be innocent. Unfortunately they're not being made here.

If the defence thought that witness evidence could have assisted, they would have subpoenaed the witnesses. Plenty of witnesses are reluctant to testify but do so anyway when forced by subpoena.

Yes but my point is that generally even a conviction which is considered ‘fact’ is not generally not disclosed at other trials in Australia, as it is seen as prejudicial. You want the jury to only decide on the fact presented to them for that case not come in with preconceptions, or be influenced by a previous conviction.

It was a criminal barrister who actually said that about the expert witnesses.
Other barristers have also suggested that Letbys defence might have taken the wrong approach.

It's not something that people just dreamt up on MN.

And it puts Jayaram’s testimony at the first trial at odds with the log data and Joanne Williams testimony. Turns out nurse Joanne Williams entered the unit at 3.47am when she was originally held to left it.

We’ve covered this. Myers is a KC with all that implies. The solicitor was a local criminal defence solicitor.

We don’t know why there were no expert witnesses for the defence. One criminal lawyer said it was hard to get expert witnesses to testify in child abuse cases because of what happened to Waney Squier. And that they therefore generally have to come from abroad - US and elsewhere.

I have heard doctors say that medics in the U.K. are often not willing to risk their careers to act as expert witnesses (whether in relation to Squier or generally I don’t know).

Plenty are now speaking out online and to journalists though, some have gone on record.

It may just have been poor strategy as with other aspects of the defence - the failure to challenge the air embolism and insulin theories was a big mistake.ke. But you can’t really do that without expert witnesses. Likewise failure to call epidemiologist/microbiologists to flesh out the implications of the plumbing.

I have no idea why such an eminent barrister made such apparently poor decisions, but I’ve read all kinds of posts from lawyers puzzling over it.
What doesn’t make sense is to suggest that because he is at the top of his profession nothing he did can have been a misjudgment therefore Letby had the best possible defence she could have had therefore if she was found guilty she must be guilty, which is a chain of argument I have seen on here several times.

I don't think that is correct. I think bad character evidence rules are the same in Aus and here. The judge can find previous convictions inadmissable if they will be prejudicial but otherwise they can be admitted, especially if the defendant is making claims of good character e.g. 'I would never hurt a woman' when they have prior convictions for violence against women.

Letby wasn't doing that of course. But the prosecution also was not using the previous convictions to make out the case for guilt in the Baby K trial. They still had to prove she did it, with eye witness evidence she was at the scene etc.

If it had not been admitted you would have two challenges. One if Letby then claimed on the stand she would not have committed harm to a baby it would become admissable as her claim would be falsified by the previous convictions. The defence probably didn't want to deal with that curveball and would rather just prepare in advance for the evidence re convictions being raised by the prosecution at the outset. AND two unless you had a very unusual jury they would all know about the 13 prior convictions anyway. Admitting it means the judge can direct them (as he did) that they should not find her guilty in this case on the basis of her previous convictions and should only find her guilty if the prosecution case shows beyond reasonable doubt she committed this specific crime.

My view is in this case the Baby K trial was fairer with the previous convictions admitted than not. But it was a matter for the judge who no doubt weighed a lot of factors in making his decision.

Baby K, was a retrial, in the original trial this was one of twenty two charges. It was never supposed to be tried in isolation but as part of a pattern of incidents. Therefore the other convictions are relevant.

They still had to prove she did it, with eye witness evidence she was at the scene etc.

The eye witness evidence from Jarayam merely said he found her “standing still”. Which contradicted nurse Joanne Williams testimony that he arrived when the alarm went off and asked who had been in the room. (Implying he had not been in it himself).

What’s reasonable is to look at the evidence
What's reasonable is to look at the evidence that is available at the time

Or is it possible that there were no CREDIBLE experts willing to come forwards and testify beneficially to the defence theory

But there were credible experts, and there are. The defence had a medical witness - Dr Hall - no one knows why they didn’t call him. They also apparently had a statistician. There are any number of credible experts who have come forward since the trial to offer an entirely different interpretation of the medical and statistical evidence.

Where on earth were these perspectives at trial?

Were people afraid to speak out at the time due to fear about the repercussions for their career? ( At least one witness has come forward since the trial and said she was advised by the hospital not to participate in case it affected her career).

Did the defence just fail to do their research?

Did the defence misunderstand the evidence themselves or simply believe LL was guilty?

Did the judge prohibit certain evidence coming in?

Or was this all part of a (losing) defence strategy, the justifications for which we are not privy to?

These are very important questions, that remain unanswered.

What is certainly not good enough is to dismiss all the evidence now before us , that wasn’t presented to the jury, and simply say “well her barrister had a great reputation, so obviously LL had the best possible defence, and all this other information must therefore be irrelevant for reasons we do not need to question or understand”.

Only one of the jurors had a grasp of the case imo.

Oh lemme guess the one juror who didn't come to a guilty verdict for most of the charges! Unfortunately for you they still did for one murder and two attempted.

Reading these posts of people actually thinking (ludicrously) she could be innocent just makes me all the more relieved we had the jury we did and they painstakingly considered all the evidence and could finally get justice for those children and parents. They can be relieved she's never getting out yet they still have to deal with the absolute nonsense of speculation it's all a miscarriage of justice, what an insult.

They didn’t understand the insulin science but they got the rest of it.

Isn’t Tattle missing you?

losing a baby is a tragedy. The parents ongoing suffering was caused by the whole investigation that shouldn’t really have gone past hospital incompetence and mismanagement, along with egotistical doctors who refused to address problems, ask for help, or not take complex cases that they had no business taking.

dr jayram and dr breary should have been struck off from the time of that first scathing report into the hospital. It really bothers me that everyone perceives them as the heroes of the story. They are anything but.

There are a few main reasons that defence won't call an expert witness:

1. they aren't able to convincingly testify to the defences version events (which is called their case theory). This will be tested in witness prep. Noting that an expert witness has extremely rigid rules as to what opinions they can or cannot give.
2. they will not hold up to cross examination by the prosecution, and will end up damaging the defence as a result (this will also be tested in witness prep)
3. they are not credible, which could come down to lack of relevant qualifications, opinions expressed publicly elsewhere, etc.
4. credible experts willing to testify for the defence do not agree to do so when asked.

You genuinely sound like a conspiracy theorist. I'm out now, it is so weird to see something being discussed so confidently by people with literally zero basic knowledge of the institutions and rules they're discussing. It would be like me being certain that a Mars mission is possible tomorrow based on my zero knowledge of aerospace engineering.

I haven't read the entire thread which is huge, I remember when you first posted this and I read what had been posted then.

All I can say is, yes, there should be a judicial review. I always had my doubts about the verdict but of course I don't know. It does need to be reviewed.

Number 1 and 2 aren't supposed to be tested in the UK..or England at least.

What a bizarre post. Nothing you have written here about the possible “reasons” is in a rebuttal or incompatible with anything I wrote.
I’m well aware of the reasons you list why the defence might not call an expert. as I noted, there were/ are credible witnesses willing to speak out for the defence and if the defence decided not to call any expert witness for strategic reasons, it was self evidently a failing strategy.

It’s getting a bit tired calling anyone who is concerned about the integrity of this conviction, and who wants to discuss the holes in the scientific evidence, a “conspiracy theorist”.

This is particularly ironic when believing in Letby’s guilt requires one to believe in a malevolent serial killer nurse - the most prolific in British history - who targets profoundly vulnerable , newborn babies for no particular reason, and whose actions were witnessed and known by several hero drs but who was allowed to continue because hospital management conspired to cover up and ignore the evidence of her crimes !

No. The irony is I am a criminal DEFENCE lawyer who also believes that there are issues with this conviction. Yet the posts of the last few pages are so unhinged from reality that I do not agree with them at all.

please explain how so?i

Perhaps you are offended because you are a defence lawyer and the idea of a defence lawyer f’ing up is offensive to you?