Lucy Letby’s scribbled notes

[Figmentofmyimagination]

At times when I’m feeling acutely distressed, it’s not at all unusual for me to scribble all sorts of dreadful thoughts down on paper eg die die die, hate hate hate, I hate you, I hate you, what’s the point of you, my fault, stupid me, etc etc etc, usually scribbling them all out so nobody can see what I’ve written. I’m pretty sure this is quite a common response to acute mental distress. I agree with this article that it feels very surprising that Letby’s scribblings were used as evidence of a ‘confession’.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/sep/03/i-am-evil-i-did-this-lucy-letbys-so-called-confessions-were-written-on-advice-of-counsellors

To be useful to Letby though, the fact that there were problems at the unit would have to be shown to be a factor in each baby's death? And it wasn't, not to the satisfaction of the jury. Problems of the kind described in the Guardian article today would not cause a previously stable baby to collapse in front of staff members and fail to respond to resus? Myers knew this would be pointed out in the cross, so he couldn't make any more of it than he did. It's a background picture sure, but at trial it just ended up looking like it made it an easier environment for Letby to operate in.

So it’s a fact and not an opinion that the investigation and conviction were shoddy now? I see - and when was this officially announced?

"Previously stable" is not what I have seen. Obviously I don't personally have access to the babies actual notes, but they are reported as being treated for suspected sepsis. Sepsis and stable are practically antonyms, a well adult with sepsis can suddenly crash

@SweetcornFritter the difference there is whether you put the focus on what @Tandora is replying to being "only your" or "opinion".

Also remember she wasn’t present at one of the deaths. For that one they decided she must have tampered with a feed bag (with insulin iirc) so not only are they saying she caused the deaths as she was there she was blamed for deaths where she wasn’t there.

if I was a crazy psycho murdering nurse I would just tamper feed bags and IV bags and put them back in the cupboard. They might not be used for a few days 🤷‍♀️. No need to draw attention to,yourself by being there though I accept maybe for a psychopath being there is part of the thrill?

There was a similar case to this back in the 70s and a nurse was found guilty of murdering a patient by insulin injection and attempting to kill 3 more, and sentenced to life. There were another 23 deaths which she was suspected of. Two years later she won her appeal and not only was released went back to nursing. I don’t know and can’t find enough out about that case to have any sort of opinion about whether she was initially wrongly convicted or whether she got away with it on a technicality……there is something about the judge not directing the jury correctly when summing up……but nevertheless she had her conviction overturned.

These factors certainly could cause previously stable babies to collapse - failures in care.

Perhaps more to the point though, they cast significant doubt on the reliability of the description of these babies' state as stable.

From the information presented at trial alone, you see a neonatologist conclude that

"There were delays in realising babies were in difficulty, poor recognition and management of [serious medical episodes known to affect premature babies], delays in instituting treatment, repeated occurrence of failed intubations [the difficult and delicate insertion of breathing tubes into tiny babies],” ... “These factors cause further deterioration of already compromised infants and increase the likelihood of death".

The number of stillbirths increased by 10% in that one year too. That is a huge increase. Yet no one tried to link that to a specific person. Or maybe the maternity department don't believe in boogeymen.

Quite obviously I didn’t mean she was the only person with that opinion, but that it was only an opinion, not a fact!

Can't really blame a jury for running with the only narrative presented at the time? And why didn't the appeal court allow this appeal, if the evidence and defence was so shoddy?

I actually agree with you here @Barbie222 - what else could the jury do but decide on the principle narrative presented to them. That’s why this was not a fair trial.

None of the legal professionals involved in the trial - prosecution, defence, judge, CoA judges have any medical training. This is another the key reason this trial has gone so wrong. None of them have the knowledge to be able to evaluate the medical data scientifically - and the CoA made scientific errors in its findings.

Is it a huge increase? Doesn’t that depend on the actual numbers involved? Ten percent could be one extra or 100 extra?

I used to work in a hospital where we had no maternal deaths for 20 years and then had 3 in a few months. Sometimes awful, awful things happen without there being someone to blame.

Yes - I don't blame the jury either.

Every single baby who died was being treated for “suspected sepsis”. That may be partly precautionary due to their vulnerability but a number of them certainly had red flags for sepsis.

Equally - example of Baby K. Described by Smith and Jayaram as “stable”.

When transferred to Arrowe Park the consultants noted baby was “seriously unwell”, with “severe lung disease” (undiagnosed), “kidney failure”, (undiagnosed), uncontrolled low bp and uncontrolled glucose.

If COCH fails to diagnose very serious conditions of course they are going to believe a baby is more stable than it really is!

Arrowe Park mortality review found noted suboptimal care from COCH and that the baby arrived in such poor condition that death was inevitable. Cause of death was lung disease and extreme prematurity.

(LL had literally nothing do with it).

I meant it’s not only my opinion. It’s an opinion shared by a lot of experts, legal professionals, journalists, public figures and being discussed daily in newspapers across the political spectrum. It’s my opinion that this investigation was problematic and the conviction is unsafe. I also believe that to be the truth of the matter, because that’s what the evidence points to.

That's kind of my point. An increase in deaths isn't necessarily significant. There were more deaths prebirth, during birth, and in the days after birth, than in any other year, but that doesn't mean there was something nefarious going on. Clusters of deaths and incidents do happen. In a hospital that nurses over 400 babies a year, is 8 neonatal deaths really a lot just because there were only 3 the year before?

you misunderstood my post. It is your opinion only,it is not a fact. The evidence pointed the jury to a guilty verdict, also a fact.

Ah sorry, I misunderstood. Yes, i totally agree with you 😁

The evidence as presented at trial pointed the jury to a guilty verdict.

@Barbie222 offered a succinct illustration of how. Each case was presented in turn; the medical expert opinion was given.

But that expert opinion was seriously flawed and full of holes, say a whole host of other (more specialised) scientists . But none of that was heard by the jury at trial.

The barrister tried to put some of the arguments forward in cross, but that was never going to hold the same weight with the jury.

The evidence as presented at trial pointed the jury to a guilty verdict

I’d say the prosecution evidence pointed to no evidence of murder and the use of bogus science.

If as a jury member you couldn’t see that, (fair enough they’re probably not scientists) then you might take the prosecution case at face value.

But it’s notable that one jury member did not. They found LL not guilty on all counts other than the insulin.

It reminds me of the "MMR vaccine causes Autism" debacle that some people still believe to this day. That was pretty much just scientists looking at data and making links. They noticed that the majority of young children who were diagnosed with autism had also received the MMR vaccine and therefore came to the conclusion that the MMR vaccine was the cause. Ignoring the many children who also received the vaccine and did not develop autism.

Statistics are just statistics and data is data. What you do with it matters. Those scientists got into a lot of trouble for misrepresenting data.

so irrelevant to this discussion.

An increase of 166% in neonatal deaths is significant.
Are you suggesting the hospital just shrug and say “it’s only 5 extra dead babies”?

If would be interesting to tell parents … we have 400 births a year, we normally expect three deaths. But this year, unlucky … yours died and few others, our new normal is 8. Not our fault.

I believe that they either chose a poor strategy of 'no case to answer' and he felt like his own rebuttals/comments were enough.
Or it is as Mark McDonald said and it was difficult to get experts in the UK for this kind of thing.
Or a combination of both, calling the plumber alone was just odd. I would have expected that to be followed up with an expert who can explain the type of pathogens that can be found in the water if there are plumbing issues etc, but yet none was called.

There's lots that is unknown here. He tried to introduce Dr Shoo Lee for appeal, and we don't know why he didn't try to introduce him for the original trial. If we knew the answer to that then we might have a better understanding of it.

Yet they investigated in 2017 and then contacted the families and said they offered them a 'full and accurate' explanation of what had happened to their babies.

Were they lying?

Of course not, but it doesn’t mean the deaths were murder. There was also an increase in stillbirths at the hospital during this time period and this is something I’ve been saying for ages. That the investigation needed to look earlier on, at what was happening in the maternity unit. If there are problems on the maternity unit (and the stillbirth increase suggests there was) then it’s logical there will be more “near miss” stillbirths and this would result in babies being born prematurely and/or in poor condition. Babies more likely to sadly become a neonatal death.

also if you look at it from a stats pov the hospital before the increase in neonatal deaths averaged 3 a year. Then suddenly they were having 2 or 3 a month. LL was charged with 7 of these but there were another 10 she wasn’t charged with. So what’s the explanation for these 10 dying in a short period of time if it was felt their deaths weren’t attributed to LL? Maybe whatever the reason for those 10 is actually also the reason for the other 7.

The medical doctor on the We Need To Talk podcast (I haven’t listened to the whole podcast) makes a good point about from him reading the court notes and especially the parents statements he gets an impression of a chaotic neonatal unit and a chaotic maternity unit. From the original LL On Trial podcast I got that impression too. One of the parents talks about how she was admitted with a preterm rupture of membranes, told the midwives she had tummy ache and was told that would be due to the steroid injection. As a midwife I have never heard of steroid injections causing tummy ache. And my first reaction would be to put on a CTG, monitor, sit with her with my hand on their abdomen and get them reviewed by a doctor. Instead this poor woman at 24 weeks gestation wasn’t monitored and had the baby in the toilet by herself. I’m pretty sure I’ve remembered that correctly though I haven’t listened to that podcast for a year.

The statatican on the .we Need To Talk podcast talks about how it would be very unlikely to have three different clusters - a stillbirth cluster, a cluster of deaths caused by LL, a cluster of deaths not caused by LL. that in fact they are one cluster with likely one same reason.

Another dr on Reddit here gives some detailed analysis of his questions for each baby
archive.is/PtONx archive.is/PtONx]]]]
I’m sure some will say it’s only Reddit, how do you know who he is, what does he know. I’m pretty confident from reading it that he’s a doctor. He also talks about issues of care in pregnancy and labour such as at least one of the mothers of a baby who died not been given antibiotics in labour when she should have been due to prolonged ruptured membranes. Then when that baby went on to have a temperature the staff decided that was due to the heat of the incubator 🤷‍♀️

They're not comparable. At all.