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?

Maybe he’s the television lawyer to Michael Moseley’s television doctor.

Moseley was held up as a doctor but he had never actually practiced medicine.

There are no grey areas.

There are people who are claiming that the conviction is unsafe based on their personal opinions. She was found guilty in a court of law and sentenced accordingly.

Or do you think that a judge, having sat through the trial and witnessed the evidence and then the guilty verdict should say “well, there seem to be some grey areas so it would be unfair to give her a whole life order.”?

if the conviction was ever overturned then that is the time for the sentence to be overturned as well.

And people are talking about miscarriages of justice as if they’re an every day occurrence. They’re not.

Of course some miscarriages of justice do occur. It’s also fair to say though that sometimes guilty people are found innocent, and sometimes a conviction could be overturned in a case where the party was still guilty.

One of the reasons I worry about the safety of this conviction is that the CPS have admitted themselves that swipecard information was wrongly labelled in the first trial and corrected in the retrial. They say they are satisfied that it didn't impact the other cases in the first trial. But that is not their judgment to make.

The swipecard error may have only related to that one case but it highlights another error that could potentially impact other cases. One of the doctors testified in the original case that he came into the room, an alarm was sounding, and Lucy was the only person in the room and she was doing nothing. But the corrected swipecard evidence shows that the baby's allocated nurse was there in the room too.

The doctor's evidence was incorrect. What other evidence did he give? Can his word be trusted on other recollections? Sorry but I don't think it can.

So in your view, does the media/ public ever have a role to play in questioning the integrity of criminal convictions and holding the justice system to account?

It hasn't really occurred to me that I would have a role to play personally in holding the justice system to account in respect of individual murder cases in my capacity as a member of the general public. We have a robust legal system with a series of checks and balances built in, and there is plenty we can monitor or challenge through various processes if we wanted to.

I see this more as the media feeding us tidbits and then we discuss them for general interest / recreational purposes. I enjoy digging through court reports, etc and hearing other people's opinions on things like this, but I can't envisage a scenario where I'd contact a defence team or my MP because I think I've stumbled on something that blows a case wide open that all the seasoned professionals involved must have missed.

The media get money for clicks and we get to entertain ourselves poring over selected bits of evidence and LARPing as the defence team or prosecution. I don't feel any of us are serving any moral duty here at all.

Rinder worked as a criminal barrister for 13 years, specialising in international financial law, before launching his television career. It's a bit shitty to try to rubbish his reputation. Play the ball not the man!

The swipecard error may have only related to that one case but it highlights another error that could potentially impact other cases. One of the doctors testified in the original case that he came into the room, an alarm was sounding, and Lucy was the only person in the room and she was doing nothing. But the corrected swipecard evidence shows that the baby's allocated nurse was there in the room too.

That's significant if that's the case.

I'm sure this has been mentioned already but I'm surprised swipecard data has been used as evidence for a murder trial. I've worked in the NHS and swipecards were only ever used to gain access to the departments and wards, never used as proof that a staff member was there or not. They were not used to clock people in and out or used as a timekeeping system to ensure they were paid etc. Staff members would often go through doors together / hold doors open for each other which would mean the person who didn't swipe their card wouldn't be "registered" as being in that room. If someone had forgotten their card that day they'd have to borrow someone else's or ask to be let in and out by another member of staff, even if they just needed to use the loo.

We have a robust legal system with a series of checks and balances built in, and there is plenty we can monitor or challenge through various processes if we wanted to.

like what?

you do realise that the media, public and political leaders often have a central role in correcting wrongful convictions in the justice system , right? And that this strengthens both the justice system and the rule of law? Why do you think transparency in the justice system is considered an important? It’s pretty problematic if you think this is for our “entertainment”.
I recommend listening to In the Dark Podcast season 2 for a classic example as to how and why public scrutiny of the justice system is vitally important.
in a democracy you absolutely have a personal role and a duty in holding all our public institutions to account.

@LonginesPrime

The nurse wasn't in the room with Lucy Letby. She testified she was elsewhere, and that's corroborated. Lucy was alone with her poor victim which is why the doctor even went into the room. He thought 'Oh no, that weirdo nurse is alone with another one' (I paraphrase). She was standing over the tiny baby as its oxygen levels dropped, doing nothing. She had silenced the alarm. Swipecards don't trump actual testimony and if the CPS is satisfied, you should be too. Especially since they actually know all the evidence.

There are very sick and vulnerable people (especially preterm babies and the elderly) that die frequently when maybe they would have survived with better care in a better run unit with more staff.

I bet you could construct a case for murder by a junior member of staff if you misused stats of who was on shift at the time of death.

We the public accept that some die but expect that staff do all possible. But what if staff can't do all possible due to shortage or individual error. Will they admit that (medical negligence) or pretend all was done or scapegoat a junior colleague if the going gets tough?

I used to be secretary to a pathologist at the national heart hospital 40 years ago. A young boy bled out on the table due to surgeon mistake. Many hours were spent writing the pathology report hiding the error so parents had no claim.

My mother was admitted following a stroke but bad handwriting meant that arthritis was misread as Alzheimer's and short term delirium was mistreated as long term dementia. Simple mistake that was doubled down on rather than corrected. Poor care led to deterioration and death.

Sometimes the NHS is crap but circles the caravans to avoid just criticism and sometimes it sacrifices junior staff to save senior staff from owning up to mistakes.

And such was his concern that he then ... went away again, leaving her with the baby, and having to be called back twice.

Observing babies is exactly what you were meant to do in these circumstances - see if they self corrected within up to 20 seconds.

That doctor's recollections have shifted as other evidence changed, but he has never been able to explain why, if he suspected a nurse of attempted murder on that occasion, he just went on with this day.

@PocketSand I agree it has been very tempting in all professions and industries to cover up mistakes. But to think your colleague is deliberately harming people takes a huge leap of judgement to even go there. The UK isn’t full of murderers with bosses trying to cover it up.

This is why I think this case is so so so important. It’s not just about integrity of the justice system, it’s accountability within the NHS! This culture of lying and covering up and refusing to take responsibility for mistakes has to end.

The CPS disagree with you.

If LL felt that conditions were so bad that babies were dying who should have lived she should have blown the whistle. Surely that is the morally correct thing to do.

The CPS has refused leave to appeal so no compelling new evidence has been presented or any reasonable doubt thrown on the evidence presented in the initial trial.

Er - no he didn't. He left the baby with the baby's designated nurse (who had popped out for a few minutes, giving Letby the opportunity to murder, as so often happened). The baby was then cared for by people other than Lucy Letby until she was transferred to another hospital shortly afterwards.

Edited to add that not once during this trial has any expert said that an extremely premature baby should be left to 'self correct' if it was having a desaturation. That's completely false.

She now has a new legal team who are trying to have her conviction overturned.

What made Dr. Jayaram's account inaccurate/useless?

I wonder what makes them think their application to appeal will be any more successful than the last one.

She was represented by a KQ, a very well known, top criminal defence KC. I am talking about the chap that showed up in court, the barrister.

you do realise that the media, public and political leaders often have a central role in correcting wrongful convictions in the justice system , right? And that this strengthens both the justice system and the rule of law? Why do you think transparency in the justice system is considered an important?

I don't think the articles rehashing random snippets of the case and giving the defence's perspective now that the reporting restrictions have been lifted are being published to scrutinise the justice system - I think they're being published to make money - they have had to sit on these articles for months and months and they know people are eating it up.

If the media actually cared about justice and truth, surely these articles would also explain "actually, this point was raised by the defence already and this was the response" as that would give the public a clearer view of the truth in order to hold the judiciary to account, but instead, it's billed as 'exclusive new evidence' or suggestive of sone mysterious glaring omission that the jury were never told (even though they were in most cases).

It’s pretty problematic if you think this is for our “entertainment”.

To clarify - I wasn't saying that miscarriages of justice are entertaining, I meant that the people discussing them on social media are primarily doing so for their own entertainment rather than to effect change. Sure, there might be the odd few seeking to organise and campaign through here, but I suspect that most people aren't going to turn to Mumsnet with the serious aim of holding the judiciary to account via social media. I guess I can only speak for myself, though, so perhaps everyone else here is a serious activist and discussing cases on social media is their work as opposed to a recreational activity.

Wasn’t it proven by forensic experts, that his sister Sheila, couldn’t have killed herself as was suggested, because the shotgun was a contact wound, meaning it would’ve been up against her neck when being shot. And as it was proved that she couldn’t have pulled the trigger herself as she wouldn’t have been able to reach it from that contact angle, she couldn’t have possibly shot herself.

Which cast doubt over the entire premise that she killed her family and then killed herself.

That's not strictly accurate. She's kept her previous lawyer - he's handling her appeal for the murder of Baby K. She's agreed to allow this new chap to represent her pro-bono to try to get it to the CCRC. He's been trying to get Michael Stone out of jail for 20 years too. He has quite an impressive track record of failing to get murderers out of jail. By the way, only 2% of cases taken to the CCRC ever go back to appeal so I don't fancy her chances in any case, but I'm also confident that a new trial would find her just as guilty as the last, if there was to be one. Which there won't be.

Who else murdered those babies? Also, why have the deaths stopped when she left? Why was she hoarding "keepsakes", paperwork etc associated with the babies she murdered and stalking their families on fb?

I'm sure this has been mentioned already but I'm surprised swipecard data has been used as evidence for a murder trial. I've worked in the NHS and swipecards were only ever used to gain access to the departments and wards, never used as proof that a staff member was there or not. They were not used to clock people in and out or used as a timekeeping system to ensure they were paid etc. Staff members would often go through doors together / hold doors open for each other which would mean the person who didn't swipe their card wouldn't be "registered" as being in that room. If someone had forgotten their card that day they'd have to borrow someone else's or ask to be let in and out by another member of staff, even if they just needed to use the loo.

@cadburyegg if you read her testimony and cross examination, the reliability of swipe card data was actually questioned by the prosecution in the first trial as it was the defence attempting to rely on the data to state that she didn’t have time to attack a baby. Prosecution got Letby to testify that she would often be let in by other members of staff so that the swipe card data could not be a reliable record. The correction of the swipe card data admitted by the CPS just meant that the other nurse was away for longer than originally thought, giving Letby more time with Baby K than stated in the original trial and made the prosecution case stronger not weaker.