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?

Yes LL did considerably more overtime & the reason given was saving for a property. Also she was full time, where many nurses were part time. Add to this LL was a higher qualified nurse & thus was called upon more due to this.

That does or doesn’t make her not guilty

This.

I didn't follow the case too closely, so have no opinion if she is innocent or guilty, but I also had a premature baby in NICU who took a turn for the worse one evening for no apparent reason, she wasn't even the most premature or sickest baby in the NICU, yet things turned badly very quickly and unexpectedly. Thankfully she recovered but she was also in a NICU with impeccable standards.

If questions are being raised now by experts, it is in everyone's interest for a thorough independent review of the case to ensure there has been no miscarriage of justice.

I read the link above about the innocent man who spent 17 years of his life in prison for a rape he didn't commit, and the ludicrous conclusions as to why he was repeatedly denied review after review of his case. Its absolutely shocking.

And I have only just realised that this drivel is the work of judge Rinder?

Who needs a justice system when we have tabloid TV.

Has anyone asked Jeremy Kyle for his opinion yet?

It reminds me of the carry-on from Alfie's/Charlie's Army, but without the endless rows of blue hearts and gifs of weeping angels

At least some of us admit we've not seen all the evidence, lack the expertise to assess it anyway and remember there have already been two trials and a failed appeal, but others it seems know better

I have only just realised that this drivel is the work of judge Rinder?

Edited to add what else did you expect? Unfortunately, in today's SM world, Rinder - and yes, Jeremy Kyle - are the experts for some

Unfortunately the jury only heard one side ; the defence put on no medical expert to counter the (very spurious) claims made by the prosecution expert (who by the way isn’t even a neonatologist).

Don't you think the judge or journalists in the room might have said something if the jury had only heard one side of the case?

Letby herself was on the stand for ages, so the jury heard from her directly too.

The defence clearly made a deliberate decision not to offer their own expert (because they also open themselves up to risk as any witness will be cross-examined) - they had years to plan this and obviously decided on the best strategy given the circumstances and the information they knew (that we don't). It wasn't like they weren't allowed to present a witness - they deliberately chose not to as part of their strategy.

Since the trial the public have had the benefit of hearing from a whole range of medical professionals , many of whole have far more specialist expertise than Dr Dewi Evans (and a much less problematic history of offering themselves as prosecution witnesses in criminal medical cases and giving dodgy testimony).

Yes, but those medical professionals won't have had the benefit of having seen all the detailed trial evidence that the jury saw (lots of which will have been subject to reporting restrictions) so while they can make broad brush comments about neonatal care and the various potential causes of death, they don't actually have all the information that the jury had about the specific incidents where Letby was accused.

And Evans' credibility issues were examined in detail during the trial already, so the jury had that information when they made their decisions.

Well Rinder is actually qualified. No one thinks Jeremy Kyle is an expert. Does anyone think they know everything and claim to know all the evidence? No, they are just questioning some of the known “evidence”.

Letby herself was on the stand for ages, so the jury heard from her directly too

Letby wasn’t in a position to challenge the expert medical testimony! Hence her agreeing that there must have been a poisoning with insulin - disaster.

It has been well reported that the jury only heard from prosecution experts- as you yourself acknowledge in your post.

Rinder is actually qualified

As a barrister not a judge, which raises the question of why he uses the handle "Judge Rinder" at all
Also his own website makes it clear that he "focuses primarily on international fraud, money laundering, and other forms of financial crime", so I'd have thought that stepping into medicolegal issues might be a bit of a stretch

But not to worry - doubtless the "judge" sounds good to some, even though it's not even accurate

"If they can manage it we can too."

Nobody here is sitting through 10 months of evidence. They're finding half-truths and titbits and clinging onto them.

She was almost always present, right on the scene. Often when she had no business being there. She was also often there afterwards, acting inappropriately, taking babies to the morgue, photographing them, telling the parents of the baby that wasn't yet dead 'You've said your goodbyes now' and trying to take their still-living baby from them.

Yeah, all I know is that she was taking extra shifts to save up to buy a house.

And then - just by sheer coincidence - unbeknownst to the people who suspected or even arrested her, it turned out that she:

Had behaved inappropriately with the parents multiple times
Had searched for the parents on Facebook months and years later (even on Christmas Day)
Had taken home handover notes and kept them, moving house with them twice. One she kept in a special keepsake box. And despite having a shredder and shredding other important documents.
Had written, 'I killed them on purpose' and 'I'm evil I did this' on scraps of paper that she kept in her handbag.
Had marked her diary on the days the babies were murdered.
Had been heard to make strange comments (Like 'He's not getting out of here alive is he?' about a baby that wasn't expected to die - but later did.)

Just for a start. Isn't it an amazing coincidence that the person they either believed did it or randomly decided to pin it on also had all this going on behind the scenes that was later discovered (and much more)?

Not to mention he nearly had to pay for his time spent in prison!

I think a big difference between this trial and that of eg Beverly Allitt or Harold Shipman is the role of social media.

In previous cases we didn't know half the information that is being put out about this one. We would only have known what was reported on the news. It's common knowledge you can't trust what you read or hear online, even photos and videos can't be trusted now. And yet we all seem to think we are experts but we just don't have the facts the court did.

I've seen enough travesties of justice in court and mistakes by police and hospitals to say the conviction may very well be incorrect. But I don't have the facts or expertise to have an informed opinion on this case. We really need to leave it to those who do.

Imagine if the court of public opinion got a retrial and she were acquitted only to murder again? That would be just as terrible as if she has been wrongly convicted.

I will watch the case with interest but we can't trust what we read and hear on blogs, YouTube etc...

Agree although my questioning has resulted from what reputable statisticians and other neonatal medical professionals have said rather than random web sleuths.

Letby wasn’t in a position to challenge the expert medical testimony! Hence her agreeing that there must have been a poisoning with insulin - disaster.

Yes, I agree - unless her defence was that they had got the wrong nurse (or unless she was guilty), it makes zero sense to concede that someone had poisoned the babies but that it wasn't her.

It has been well reported that the jury only heard from prosecution experts- as you yourself acknowledge in your post.

Yes, the defence didn't offer an expert witness, but that was the defence team's choice to make. It doesn't imply that the jury haven't heard both sides of the case- they have heard what the defence chose to put forward.

The defence had ample time and ability to put forward a witness (as explained in the appeal judgment) to rebut the prosecution's arguments, but they chose not to (presumably because of the risk they would be running by doing so). They made a strategic decision and it didn't work out.

They argued there was no case to answer on the air embolism issue, the judge told them that there was a case to answer and that the jury would hear the air embolism evidence, and then the defence decided not to really answer the case at trial anyway. Then, on appeal, they belatedly decided that they wanted to rebut the prosecution's air embolism evidence with an expert witness, and were understandably told that it's too late now. They made a strategic decision not to call a witness, but they could have called one at trial if they chose to.

Realistically, though, even if they had called an expert witness, it wouldn't have actually ruled out air embolism, and the prosecution would have been able to use them to support their case too, so it likely wouldn't have helped with much anyway.

It's possible for both these scenarios to be true at the same time.

In fact, the former provides very convenient plausible deniability for the latter.

Indeed.

Indeed.

No one ever really replies to this sort of post when it's raised. It's all "I still believe the conviction was unsafe" trotted out like the new phrase it has become.

Yes, the defence didn't offer an expert witness, but that was the defence team's choice to make. It doesn't imply that the jury haven't heard both sides of the case- they have heard what the defence chose to put forward.

I never said letby didn’t have a defence!
But the jury only heard one side of the expert medical opinion.

I disagree with you entirely that hearing from medical experts with opinions that counter/ challenge Dr Dewi’s testimony wouldn’t have helped her defence. The barrister seemed to think that he could poke holes in the expert testimony without a need to put their own expert on the stand . I think that was a grave
miscalculation. Of course the jury weren’t going to give the same weight / put the same trust in the defence barrister’s opinion, when up against a senior doctor in interpreting the medical evidence. Thats not how Jo public thinks- hence the debate on this thread where so many people are saying (no matter how well reasoned) our arguments mean very little without the professional medical credentials to back them up!

Exactly. The TV "judges" and celeb experts wanting to extend their fame have piped up in this case. How honourable.

They don't need to pipe up at all. Probably better for their fame if they didn't tbh.

As many keep saying the evidnece is all circumstantial and sadly wishy washy. Their maternity unit I believe had a higher death rate yet I don't think there were any serial killers identified there, rather possibly a stretched understaffed department

We know juries can consist of anyone, look at the varying opinions on here so if the prosecution had experts surely it isn't difficult to understand a jury may go with their opinion as the defence didn't produce any of their own experts.

Of course it is odd to take handover sheets home and keep them but being odd doesn't mean you're a serial killer.

None of those things come remotely close to proving murder, even if true and with no further explanation

Anyway:

Had behaved inappropriately with the parents multiple times These accusations only came after she was charged with murder, which tend to colour people's recollections
Had searched for the parents on Facebook months and years later (even on Christmas Day) she used Facebook a lot and was at work on that Christmas Day"
Had taken home handover notes and kept them, moving house with them twice. One she kept in a special keepsake box. And despite having a shredder and shredding other important documents. Bad practice, but the keep safe box one was her first, and there's no evidence that these notes were particularly connected with murders
Had written, 'I killed them on purpose' and 'I'm evil I did this' on scraps of paper that she kept in her handbag. Part of a therapy exercise when she was dealing with the murder investigation
Had marked her diary on the days the babies were murdered. Didn't happen - used normal methods to record her shifts
Had been heard to make strange comments (Like 'He's not getting out of here alive is he?' about a baby that wasn't expected to die - but later did.) If she thought a baby was seriously unwell, this wasn't an inappropriate remark to make to a colleague

I disagree with you entirely that hearing from medical experts with opinions that counter/ challenge Dr Dewi’s testimony wouldn’t have helped her defence. The barrister seemed to think that he could poke holes in the expert testimony without a need to put their own expert on the stand . I think that was a grave miscalculation

Not having been on her defence team, neither of us know what factors went into the decision not to put their own expert forward. She had an experienced, well-respected barrister so I'm inclined to believe that her team had good reasons for making the decisions they made to give her the best chance of avoiding conviction.

However, the notion that it might have been a miscalculation on their part is somewhat supported by the fact the defence attempted to bring in expert evidence on appeal (although I don't believe they never even considered bringing in Dr Lee for the original trial - I think it's more likely they went with one strategy that failed and then, when they had nothing to lose, tried to get a second chance to try out a different strategy on appeal).

I suppose my point is not that hearing Dr Lee's (or another defence witness's) evidence at the original trial wouldn't have helped Letby much, but more that this is what her defence team decided, based on the detailed inside knowledge they had of the case (that we will never know).

The fact they could have called witnesses but didn't will have been based on their inside knowledge of the case and risks to Letby's defence case.

We will never know the reasons they chose this strategy, because that may well have been the point of this strategy - to prevent other facts from being admitted into evidence.

It wasn't Letby's job to come up with an alternative explanation. If she's guilty, she might have thought of a better one or not minded trying to blame somebody else.

If she's innocent, how would she know what happened to the babies?

If you come home and your front window is open and you've been burgled, you are likely to agree that someone must have left the window open. Your insurers might think that was you. You might think it was a burglar. Then later if you learn that that model of window springs open spontaneously, you're better informed about the possibilities.

In the event that she is able to answer that question again, Letby will be able to point out that the tests did not demonstrate that the infants were poisoned. But that isn't her job!