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?

The Telegraph is reporting that LL has appointed a new barrister - Mark McDonald, of Furnival Chambers - who will take the case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) to try and overturn her conviction:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/05/lucy-letby-new-barrister-to-try-overturn-murder-conviction/

Mr McDonald, who founded the London Innocence Project in 2007, regularly advises on appeals against conviction and is instructed in cases involving murder, organised crime and terrorism.
The Royal Statistical Society (RSS) has also announced it will “convene a meeting” in the wake of the verdicts, stating that it was aware of “concerns” from members and the wider community regarding the use of statistical evidence in the case.
Since the trial, it has also come to light that the hospital unit was suffering from a deadly infectious outbreak and had staffing issues which could have contributed to the rise in deaths between 2015 and 2016.

I can absolutely understand why people would be desperate to believe that a qualified and trusted NHS nurse didn't kill and torture babies.

I can also appreciate why people would be so desperate to believe that if these kinds of crimes did occur in the NHS, they would be detected and reported quickly. We want to believe that we're all safe, and that there are measures in place to prevent this kind of thing.

Accepting that all of this happened deliberately, especially when you take into account the court documents and the graphic trauma, pain and suffering those babies experienced, can be quite a challenge.

I believe she had a fair trial and that it is what it is, but the whole scenario is still unfathomable to me.

Although I think the jury was right to convict her based on the evidence I've heard, I would still be relieved if it turned out she was actually definitely innocent after all (although then I guess I might lose some faith in our legal system as opposed to the NHS..).

I don't doubt what you say about your own babies but all pregnancies and babies are different. A friend had triplets, induced at 32 weeks, they were all in NICU for some time and remained in hospital until they reached " full term". They were all quite poorly to begin with, one of them weighed about 2 pounds at birth and required oxygen at home for months after discharge.

Surely “a deadly infectious virus” wouldn’t have just affected a few babies, it would have ripped through them all - and the adults - like wildfire.

"don't be silly" nice turn of phrase to speak to another adult.

The deaths were not "out in the open" as "suspicious" at that time. So alas, they'd of course want to shut any talk of there being any blame in them down.

Regardless of this case (I'm not directly saying that's what happened here) lower banded accountable professionals are scapegoated, it does happen. Just highlighting how it can come to be.

She’s guilty as fuck.

And she’s been convicted. Nobody needs to justify their agreement that she’s guilty.

But all these poor Lucy threads are in extremely bad taste on a parenting site where parents of the babies she murdered might have turned to for support and probably feel unable to because they would probably be flamed for talking about what she did to their children.

That's quite distasteful what you've written. I can't think of anybody that would "flame" the parents of those poor little babies. What a crude suggestion to make.

Secondly, I haven't read anybody say "poor Lucy" that's a sensationalist take on things.

All I've read is some people have doubts on the security of her conviction. It doesn't mean that nobody is at fault for the grief those families have been wrenched through so cruelly.

It's utterly heart breaking to think of what those mums and dads and wider families must have to wake up and feel everyday.

Questioning the conviction of who is responsible doesn't equate to "flaming" victims,chastising them and defending "poor Lucy". Not nice.

Since the trial, it has also come to light that the hospital unit was suffering from a deadly infectious outbreak and had staffing issues which could have contributed to the rise in deaths between 2015 and 2016.

But infection was ruled out as a cause of death in each case, as I understand it.

And Letby was invited by the prosecution to state in each individual case whether it was her case that staffing levels, staff negligence, hygiene, etc contributed to that specific death, so where those factors were relevant, that's already been covered by her original defence.

I can't imagine she'll be given leave to appeal factors that they've already raised at trial. It will be like the appeal she's had, where the defence weren't allowed to call Dr Lee, the expert whose air embolism paper the prosecution had relied on, to testify on appeal, as they were asked why they didn't introduce his evidence into the original trial (in which they had months to do so) and they said that they didn't think of it until after they lost...

I doubt she's even got a strong case for incompetent counsel, as it was generally her own testimony on cross-examination that made her look more guilty.

People on this thread are being asked to justify their belief that she is guilty. How do you know they’re not related to the babies she murdered.

For the people persuaded by the nonsense about ‘statistics’. This is nothing to do with statistics. All of the deaths in a time period were investigated by an expert witness. A number were identified by him as being potentially suspicious i.e. unexplained collapse, unexplained cause of death. Lucy Letby was present at them all. It’s nothing to do with statistics, it’s about opportunity and access. If you accept that the deaths were suspicious and were caused by someone, the only person that could have caused them was her. However if the jury did not accept that the deaths were suspicious then the pattern had no relevance as she was just present at an unexplained death.

But infection was ruled out as a cause of death in each case, as I understand it.

They were also ruled to be natural causes at autopsy. Why do you trust the pathologists statement that death was not caused by infection, but at the same time distrust their statement that it was not suspicious?

Two of the babies had sustained traumatic unexplained injuries. She had also falsified their notes. How is that explained by ‘dodgy statistics’

There won't be a new trial. The stats thing is one nutter who is pushing that narrative. He was actually warned by the police during the trial for some fairly insane behaviour (like saying he was going to take weapons and go to the court) and lives overseas. This is all media rubbish because the multiple baby murderer gains clicks. We won't hear any more until potentially the next round of charges against her from some of the thousands of cases they're looking at through Operation Hummingbird.

Brilliant article, thanks for sharing.

None of the babies had a home office post mortem. They were a standard post mortem. Standard post mortems would never have been carried out if the hospital had reported the deaths to the police as suspicious they’re less extensive and not intended to gather evidence.

A home office post mortem should have picked up the traumatic injuries caused to two of the babies.

They also weren’t ruled to be natural causes. They were unexplained deaths. It’s not the same thing.

Yes, I don't get the objections to the shift chart either - I haven't seen all the evidence, but I didn't get the impression that the prosecution's case was based around "what are the odds?" at all.

Every time I saw the chart used, it was in the context of "this suspicious death occurred on this date at this time, let's pull up the chart to see if you were present then" to show she had the opportunity to do it.

The prosecution is accusing Letby of crimes that required her to be present, so obviously they need to show that she was in fact present on those dates.

I don't see why a chart showing just the dates of the crimes she's accused of is problematic in this context - it's not the initial police investigation, when they probably looked at all sorts of lines of enquiry initially - by the time they go to trial and put forward a case, they've obviously got a suspect in mind otherwise what is everyone doing in court?

It just feels so weird for people to accuse the prosecution of bias towards Letby's guilt - that's literally the case they're presenting.

Wow that really is a brilliant article. She's 100% guilty and she's going to rot in jail where she belongs.

I liked this re motive for the nonsense idea of a scapegoat...

...the only motive they can find requires the preposterous belief that NHS managers wanted to avoid the bad publicity that comes from having a high mortality rate due to poor plumbing and medical incompetence, and so decided to throw Lucy under the bus. In other words, they callously condemned an innocent young woman to die in prison because they thought that making the Countess of Chester Hospital world famous for harbouring Britain’s most prolific child-killer was preferable to taking the indirect blame for a spike in neonatal deaths. Even if you disregard the fact that it was the doctors who raised suspicions about Letby and the NHS managers who shielded her, this is a mental thing to believe.

Because detecting an infection (which, for most if not all infections, will have an objective basis - pathogens are present or not, symptoms are present or not, etc) is far more straightforward than judging whether something is more likely to be natural causes or suspicious.

And I would have expected most of the babies to have been tested specifically for infections post mortem, given their weird rashes and the fact that many of the doctors present described some of the symptoms as being similar to a sepsis type situation but not sepsis.

I think the fact the post mortems ruled out infection is far more reliable than whether whoever conducted them thought the deaths might be suspicious.

I don't know whether LL is innocent but I do believe that our system should be robust enough and believe in the conviction enough so that any avenue of innocent should be allowed to be put forward and argued and then disproved so that it ensures that our justice system is safe and fit for purpose.

For all of those saying "this bitch is guilt" amongst other things, if you are so sure why are you so worried about someone being allowed to disprove what you say is the truth?

Glad to see this is getting this kind of attention. I think this conviction is unsafe.

I don't know whether LL is innocent but I do believe that our system should be robust enough and believe in the conviction enough so that any avenue of innocent should be allowed to be put forward and argued and then disproved so that it ensures that our justice system is safe and fit for purpose.

If they are innocent, the time to refute the evidence against them is at trial - that's the opportunity for the accused to state their case and give their defence everything they've got.

Obviously there is an appeals process to cover things that couldn't possibly have been raised at the original trial or where a serious mistake has been made, etc. And yes, obviously sometimes there is a miscarriage of justice and someone does get wrongfully convicted, and it's right that there is a system to deal with those situations.

But to believe that our justice system is fit for purpose, we also have to be confident that convictions are generally safe and that they won't be overturned willy nilly because a defendant has just randomly remembered something they meant to say at their original trial, or they've just remembered a different witness they could have called that would have helped their case.

Appeals shouldn't be allowed for every whim of the convicted person - it should only be where it's actually meaningful and necessary.

And yet so many innocent people have been freed after they have been sent to prison and have had appeals denied or have failed at appeal.

Given that what we have so far seen about this case, how is new evidence supposed to be found when the case seems to be based on circumstantial evidence and statistics?

There was really very little in the case about statistics. This case was not hinged on statistics at all. Except the statistic that says that for LL to be guilty of murder, she'd have had to be there. Which she was. Amongst many, many other things.

I've read this and there's nothing in it that undermines the concerns experts have now raised.

It has the same misuse of stats that we've seen in other press reports - the assumption that the increase of infant deaths at Chester was extraordinary. It wasn't. Several hospitals had greater increases that year.

It ignores that fact that most people querying the conviction believe that there may have been no murders. So it goes with the statistically dubious argument that since we know there were murders - we don't - we have to accept that the nurse who was present for all deaths - she wasn't - was the murderer.

It invents misleading dialogue between prosecution and an imaginary defence witness, claiming that the only possible explanation for Child A"s death was air embolism. That's ludicrous.

In general it's just more misrepresenting of statistical arguments followed by a rehash of the prosecution's arguments. There's nothing new there. It's a good summary of what people who think Letby was guilty may believe. But the arguments presented here are exactly what medical and statistical experts have contested.

A lot of needless mudslinging too. Passionate about proving Letby's "defenders" wrong, but nothing new here