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?

I'm not saying the judges are infallible - obviously these things do sometimes go wrong as we all know. It's just that going back to the actual conviction and the reasons given for it (and for rejecting the appeal) is the obvious starting point for questioning whether such a conviction is unsafe.

the reason for the conviction is due to the jury finding LL guilty. The jury and how they reached that decision, nobody but those 12 know. What the experts do know is if the evidence has a flaw. What the experts will never know is whether that particular evidence swayed the jury to find LL guilty

Expert at trial says otherwise. LL was free to call an expert who disagreed and said it was natural causes. She didn’t for whatever reason but usually it would be because she wasn’t able to find anyone who could say that they were. She would have been given funding and leave to instruct an expert as part of her legal aid. I believe she did but the expert was not called.

That's not the consensus amongst medical experts who've reviewed all the available evidence.

Sorry I haven't followed the case closely, obviously lots of you know many details. I was just commenting on the specifics of a. her father's involvement and b. that exchange which would make me concerned on a duty of care basis.

I have no idea if she is guilty or innocent.

It’s clear that many new joiners/ commenters on this thread have read virtually nothing about this case.

That's just unfalsifiable. If babies die natural deaths, either they've died natural deaths or they've been killed by means disguised as natural deaths.

Why aren't our courts full of intensive care nurses for premature babies then?

Two possible reasons:

The statistics, which is the explanation Cheshire Police give for reexamining cause of death. But the statistics they only show that Letby happened to be one of the nurses across the UK who will experience similar clusters of deaths.

The insulin cases - these were the only cases where the prosecution and their chief witness Evans considered they had proof of deliberate harm. They advised the jury that if they found the insulin cases convincing, they could use that fact to bolster the case for the other deaths being murdered.

But the insulin tests weren't reliable and experts argue that the results in fact show that synthetic insulin can't have been involved.

So you're left with deaths which have perfectly common (for the cohort) classified as murder, with no proof of those murder methods that is in any way stronger than the initial findings at post mortem. It's disturbing stuff.

I disagree. Her personality and the way she acted both in court and in interview, along with her previous behaviour, will have been the subject of discussion in the jury room.

Did you watch that docu-drama from ch4 with 2 fake juries judging an old case. It was frightening viewing from the stance of a defendent. The reasons these jurors gave for believing in guilt or innocence based on the personality of the defendent.

That's just unfalsifiable. If babies die natural deaths, either they've died natural deaths or they've been killed by means disguised as natural deaths.

Quite. It’s patently absurd

Thank you, yes I did, but I was hoping you had an official link to what was said in the trial or after by the investigation team.

I’m not sure you’ve fully grasped the point - it’s a problem with researcher / investigator bias.

I would have been concerned about her too but as a line manager, I've often encountered people having bad moments, needing a break or counselling or support, and then coming back strong. So I agree with you - this snapshot is concerning for LL's own stress levels, if it wasn't just a bit of offloading. But I am very uncomfortable with people weaving it into a narrative of murdering when she didn't get her own way.

I'm glad I'm not an NHS ward manager!

Yes, and that's where racial biases, sexism, class prejudices and ablism could really take hold.

Especially since it seems you can't win when you're on trial - too calm, unnatural. Upset - proof you did it. Angry - what right have to be angry?

Even that police documentary refers to her seeming unnaturally calm at one point. Is that unnaturally calm for a murderer or unnaturally calm for someone falsely accused of unnaturally calm for someone on antidepressants or what?

Shipman's deaths were classified as natural deaths because he certified them himself, by the way. But when he came under suspicion, further investigation showed administration of lethal doses of morphine.

Letby didn't investigate the deaths herself, and when they were reviewed, no evidence to overturn the initial findings was offered. The question became, if these babies were murdered, how might they have been murdered. No eyewitness evidence. Shaky use of evidence according to many medical experts. The conviction seems unsafe.

I haven’t followed this thread but have read a lot about it so following. If there is evidence that that her conviction was unsafe it should be reviewed, IMO.

I mean... we really can't start speculating on what they did or didn't discuss in the jury room but I trust that the legal experts gave them the right instructions about what to consider when reaching their verdict.

But the jury only heard the evidence the judge allowed - most of the appeal was around the defence's assertions that the original judge had erred in allowing the jury to hear the bulk of the evidence (Evans' testimony, air embolism stuff, etc). So while yes, the jury made the ultimate decision that she was guilty, the information they used to make that decision was based on what the judge decided was admissible.

The experts speaking up now are experts in their fields, but not experts in the law. If they haven't even looked into the actual details of why she was convicted or why expert testimony was rejected on appeal, etc, it's not particularly helpful to Letby's case as it's too vague and abstract to be useful.

I think it also leads to shallow media interviews and to the interviewers and interviewees speaking at cross-purposes, as only one knows the details of the actual court case and only the other knows the details of their specialist field, so neither can bridge the gap in any meaningful way for the audience to come away better informed.

What I think would be far more helpful to Letby would be experts speaking up who have familiarised themselves with the detail from the case that's relevant to their area of expertise and the point they are making, so that they can point to specific places where the judges have erred.

That’s true with Shipman. But the point is that LL used quite subtle methods to kill that wouldn’t necessarily have been picked up by a pathologist because they could have been explained in other ways.

The thing that alerted the doctors in the end was that there was a huge number of totally unexpected deaths. These are consultants with many years experience of paediatric medicine. Yes, some premature babies will die and you can’t always save them. However, what kept happening here was that babies were collapsing when that was not what was expect of them by the doctors who had examined them. They were shocked that it kept happening and made them suspicious. Same with the Ben Geen case, there were patients collapsing with respiratory failure where there was no reason to think that would happen. In fact in the BG case, the two victims were initially thought to have died of natural causes. No reason to think it was murder because that’s not how autopsies work. However, as in LL’s case, there continued to be all these unexplained collapses with one person present all the time. That’s when doctors started to put two and two together. He says he’s totally innocent though…

But the jury only heard the evidence the judge allowed - most of the appeal was around the defence's assertions that the original judge had erred in allowing the jury to hear the bulk of the evidence (Evans' testimony, air embolism stuff, etc). So while yes, the jury made the ultimate decision that she was guilty, the information they used to make that decision was based on what the judge decided was admissible.

but the judge never excluded any expert evidence that Lucy Letby wanted to bring did he? If the expert evidence was so flawed then why couldn’t she produce anyone to counter it and offer a sound explanation for why each death was due to natural causes?

Perhaps it was thought that the original post mortems covered that? If there was no pathological evidence to suggest foul play and enough to support the original findings? The suggestion by the prosecution is that in 6 post mortems, the original pathologists missed significant evidence of foul play. Should that not have triggered an investigation into their competency? What is effectively being said is that Evans was more competent at identifying murder through the reports than pathologists who actually examined the babies.

Some of the air injection evidence had already been explained as possibly down to infection etc.

I think everyone who followed the trial FULLY expected her defence witnesses to be various doctors and medical experts who would argue that the deaths were potentially caused by something else. It wouldn't have taken much at all to add 'reasonable doubt' if there were other medical explanations for what happened.

The utter, utter shock when she only called the plumber as a witness was enormous.

But her KC isn't an idiot who likes just losing trials he could win, without even attempting a defence. Tbh I've never even met a lawyer who'd be able to work like that, let alone one as experienced as Ben Myers. I'm confident that if they could have found any medical experts at all to offer an alternative point of view and sprinkle in that reasonable doubt, they would have.

Yes, they wanted to bring in Dr Lee, the co-author of the air embolism paper that the prosecution used, as an expert on appeal, but the CoA refused as there was no valid reason why they couldn't have brought him in at the original trial if they had wanted to rely on his testimony.

Obviously, it would have been a risk to bring him in at trial when things could still have gone either way with the jury, but after conviction, it was worth a try.

That was raised at trial. The vast majority of the points being raised now were raised by the defence team at trial. The jury still convicted her. Even if things are reviewed by the CCRC, the best she can hope for is a retrial. It’s still going to be a jury deciding her fate. People might have issues with jury trials but that’s the way our justice system works. There is no new evidence that points to innocence. She’s already had one retrial for one of the deaths, that also led to a conviction. Okay we could get another 12 people to hear the evidence again but what if they convict her too (as seems likely)?
It seems that people want some sort of out of court inquiry that then leads to LL being freed if any of the evidence can in any way be challenged. That’s not how our justice system works.

No that's not quite accurate.

Hospital pathologists are not looking for evidence of foul play. If foul play was suspected, a whole different process comes into action. The subsequent reviews looked into the deaths in more detail.

On that I agree wholeheartedly. I was astounded there wasn't a range of experts questioning the statistics and inviting speculation on other possible causes of death.

As I've said before I'm in the camp of I genuinely cannot decide one way or other.

Well yeah I totally agree with the CoA here. Appeal isn’t a chance to bring in witnesses you chose not to call at the first trial for whatever dubious reason and basically have a second trial in front of judges only. But had she wanted to call Dr Lee at trial, she wouldn’t have been prevented from doing so by the judge. If his evidence was so compelling there’s no reason at all why he wasn’t used at the first trial so chances are it’s not that compelling.