Lucy Letby case - Rob Rinder and David Davies

[LimeFawn]

Going back to thread in summer about Lucy Letby case needing criminal case review- surely that has to happen now?

In the past couple of days, I have seen David Davis MP talking about this on Good morning - apparently senior neonatal doctors contacted him directly;

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5HcW71BSGSM

Rob Rinder who is an expert in criminal law has also raised concerns- pic included below.

And article in guardian about her notes which was used a lot in this mumsnet thread as proof of guilt:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5115849-to-think-the-lucy-letby-case-needs-a-judicial-review

https://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

Surely there is enough new information coming to light to justify a criminal case review - her conviction really doesn’t seem safe at all?

3 healthy babies who are all siblings don't just suddenly die (or almost die).

Are you consciously paraphrasing Roy Meadow here?

Some of Shipman’s patients died of natural causes during the time he was killing other patients. That doesn’t mean he didn’t kill the other patients. Some of his patients will also have died when he was nowhere in the vicinity nor had been for ages before. Again, that doesn’t mean he didn’t kill the patients he was found guilty of murdering.

The case was statistically centred on whether LL was present at the deaths and those stats have been brought into question, not on the status but how they were analysed and put before the jury

3 healthy babies who are all siblings don't just suddenly die (or almost die).

4 Babies dying in 10 years to one set of parents isn't coincidence either?

Absolutely right about juries. My DS was on one for a trial for attempted murder. One female jury member said "One of you men had better be the chairman, men understand these things better." Another one said "Well, I think he probably did it but I can’t say he’s guilty because I feel so sorry for his poor little wife. She was crying." The majority found the accused not guilty and it later turned out he had a long history of stabbing people and went on to stab others.

Bloody hell.

My god that’s terrifying 😬

In some ways I’m hesitant to criticise because I’m not sure what would work as a better system. But I wouldn’t trust twelve random strangers to choose a school for my child or a new kitchen or even an outfit for my sister’s wedding, so I’m not sure why I’d trust them to know if I were guilty of a serious crime.

It’s the timing, one after the other that’s the odd thing, not that they are siblings necessarily. Four siblings could die if each has inherited a genetic fault that makes them more susceptible to die like in Sally Clark or Kathleen Folbigg’s cases. But the chances that three babies who happen to be siblings should happen to collapse unexpectedly within days of one another when all are doing well and with different symptoms too is pretty darn unlikely.

I'm not sure it's so much about faith in juries as it's that some people just want the case to be done with.

"The jury has decided and that's that - now let's all move on and shut up about it."

I think it was the Private Eye article that stated a juror on this case was overheard in a public area to say something like "I've already decided LL is guilty" before the evidence was heard.

In emotive cases like this one, some people put jurors on a pedestal. They forget that jurors are in fact just ordinary people who have been picked out at random to attend court.

it is indeed an interesting read

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00258024241242549

makes for an interesting read

Did anyone watch the recent Channel 4 programme on trial by jury? They recreated a genuine murder trial and had 2 juries judge it. They watched the exact same trial but didn't know of each other's existence. One jury found the man guilty of murder, the other not guitly. It was actually quite scary to watch and see how they deliberated and came to the conclusions.

I've just been watching a video by Blackbelt Barrister who is asking why the jury weren't told that those incriminating notes 'HATE/I am evil' were written as advised by her counsellor.

They are an expression of her conflicting thoughts that she only wrote down on counsellor's advice. She would have thought they would be confidential between her and her counsellor, rather than evidence to convict her.

This context would be very important in presenting this 'evidence'

I know about the criticism of the stats. My point is that, like Shipman, some deaths were innocent. In the case of very young babies, I presume the reason some deaths were omitted was because they weren’t “surprising” - ie they had a believable, natural cause. Each death LL was accused of causing was judged separately. The fact LL wasn’t found guilty of some, doesn’t mean she was innocent with regard to the others.

As I understand it, a list of ‘surprising’ deaths was compiled and the nurses on shift when they happened was plotted. The fact other deaths occurred during the time covered by that period isn’t relevant to her guilt IMO - because those omitted deaths weren’t thought to be suspicious.

If you’re saying that the deaths in the stats were only included because LL was on duty, then even then it would become apparent quite quickly that the some of the deaths were natural. LL wasn’t found guilty on all charges - either because there wasn’t enough evidence the death was suspicious, or, if there was, there wasn’t enough evidence to convict LL for that particular death.

Oh for goodness sake. So as a prosecuting barrister, he did his job? Conspiracy theory nutters abound here and they’re attracted to Lucy Letby like ducks to water.

Your post is an excellent example of how what was presented in court is accepted without question. I worked in adult ICU for many years and your first paragraph just raises questions for me.

How could LL "admit" that insulin was injected into the bag if she didn't do it. I accept that's what she said in court but unless she witnessed someone do it she cannot confirm anything more than the blood tests were indicative of insulin being added to the bag. Her testimony cannot be confirmation that the bags were poisoned. The testing method used did not meet the forensic standard required for evidence in a criminal trial, the lab made this quite clear.

If the bag was poisoned by one of three people then LL is only suspected because she was on duty when other babies collapsed/deteriorated, however the table that presented that evidence, which was treated as compelling by the court, has shown to be flawed because only the babies who collapsed whilst she was on duty were included.

I haven't got time to write an essay on the overfeeding allegation but it would certainly warrant one.

But presumably LL hasn't decided they were written on the encouragement of a counsellor only since the trial ......

So why exactly wouldn't she have communicated that crucial snippet on information to her legal team, and why exactly would her legal team not have raised it in relation to the notes being shown?

But the judges are not ordinary people picked out at random, and they denied the appeal requests.

The jury had nothing to do with that.

The judge who ruled on her appeal request would only have looked at the reasons for appealing, which are very narrow in any request to appeal. They don't even consider evidence of whether she was guilty or not as you cannot appeal on the basis that you disagree with the jury's decision.

especially when dealing with it means spending a fair bit of time shredding

But she managed to shred her bank etc documents as she went along.

She why wouldn't she shred the notes etc she "accidentally" took home as she went along??

And her bank documents might be a security/financial risk for her but that's all .... They weren't confidential medical documents related to other people, that she shouldn't have taken out of the hospital, let alone retained.
So why wouldn't she have shredded them when she found them?

She shredded other stuff as and when necessary.

The fact other deaths occurred during the time covered by that period isn’t relevant to her guilt IMO - because those omitted deaths weren’t thought to be suspicious.

It's relevant that the other deaths still occurred at a higher rate though, same as it's relevant that there were increased still births at the same time. Points to there being a problem at the hospital that was nothing to do with LL.

It's not definitive proof of innocence, but definitely needs consideration as to what was causing those incidents, and are we positive it did not also lead to the deaths LL is accused of? Especially when you consider that all deaths were initially found to be of natural causes and new autopsies have not been performed

She did raise it and her defence did too - notes by a person in anguish apparently and not a sign of guilt. All part of the trial, nothing new. Another sign of people not having read the original evidence and coming up with wild ideas about miscarriages of justice

Yes, but the criteria for giving permission to appeal are very narrow. A negative PTA decision doesn't tell us anything about whether the jury were up to the job, the deliberations that led them to the verdict and the extent to which they were able to put aside the pre-existing biases that they'll all have had because everyone does. It doesn't do that because it's not supposed to.

The appeal was argued on four points related to the judge at her trial refusing legal applications. That's what the Court of Appeal were deciding.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9773l3qzl4o

They released an in depth document on why they denied the appeal.

I know, and at no point did it say that the appeal is being denied because the judge agrees that she's guilty. Which is what you were implying.

Edited as I realised I was replying to the same person.