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 may of not used the exact wording of the act. But the reality is still there, that an accused choosing the right to remain silent, cannot have that right used against them as some form of proof of their guilt.

Dr Lee piped up at appeal saying he didn't think the rashes in the case matched the skin discolouration his research described. The prosecution said:

1. Shoulda called him the first time then
2. Dr Lee didn't see most of the babies described in his own paper either
3. In their opinion, the skin discolouration DID match what Dr Lee described. Some could even be proven using Dr Lee's own diagnostic method.
4. Dr Lee hadn't seen any of the eyewitness testimony from the trial or the babies' records so wasn't qualified to say what the rashes did or didn't look like!!!

Seems like Dr Lee shouldda done his homework and also perhaps that the defence knew his testimony wouldn't be allowed so they pinned the appeal to it as a bit of a long shot.

Im sorry but you’re wrong here. It can. Section 35 is in force. Yes you have the right to remain silent, no, that doesn’t stop a jury being able to draw an adverse inference from that. However the judge must give a direction about the fact that there is a right to silence and that silence alone cannot be the basis for a guilty verdict. I don’t know what part of the 2003 Act you are referring to so you might want to specify.

Not by itself but together with other evidence. As per section 35. Google it.

Oh yes because more misuse of statistics and flawed investigations will really quiet the concern about the safety of the original convictions. That won't look like a blinkered witch hunt at all.

It's like people have learnt nothing from previous miscarriages of justice.

If the original convictions are safe then they will be strengthened by robust testing and scrutiny of the investigation, evidence presented, and conduct of the police and prosecution. That would serve the interests of justice.

In their opinion, the skin discolouration DID match what Dr Lee described.

Hang on... you see no issue with the prosecution - legally but not medically qualified - stating that they think they know what Dr Lee was talking about in the paper better than Dr Lee knew?

So the retired paediatrician and legal prosecutor know what was meant in the paper better than the person who wrote bloody it? And you think that sounds fine?!

I think Letby's defence went for a strategy of challenging the prosecution's medical evidence from a common sense perspective rather than offering two conflicting sets of expertise. Whether they were fully on top of the medical evidence they could have brought, I don't know.

They did apply at her trial to have the prosecution evidence ruled inadmissible, with no case to answer. If their case was that there was no reason to consider initial post-mortems inadequate, calling medical witness might well have harmed their case.

There's an interesting blog on the matter at https://emptycity.substack.com/p/the-lucy-letby-case-some-thoughts

They are allowed to undermine and challenge the defence evidence, yes. I don’t see a problem with that. We wouldn’t get far if we had to accept all medical evidence as fact.

Well if that isn't the definition of a circular argument...

Huh? I mean if you’re saying that we have to accept all medical evidence as fact, shouldn’t LL be accepting Dr Evans’s evidence too?
Of course the prosecution can challenge the expert witness’s conclusions and vice versa. That’s how it works.

Legal isn't my area so I can't comment on if it's usual, but I can say that as someone with medical knowledge, if I were on a jury and a dr for one side (irrelevant which side) claimed something from a scientific paper, then the author themselves argued for the other side that this was inaccurate because xyz, I know which side I'd lean towards

To see that the author was not allowed to argue for the defence because the prosecution think they have a more accurate interpretation of what the paper actually meant is jarring.

So it essentially boils down to which interpretation you prefer, not necessarily established fact?

Well yes because you can often get two medical experts, similarly qualified, who totally disagree with one another on a particular point. So it would come down to whose evidence you prefer as a jury or judge. Both sides’ lawyers will seek to discredit the other side’s expert. If it was the case that one person’s expert view should be determinative, you’d have a joint expert. But either side could still cross examine and challenge if they felt that their clients case warranted it.

Dr Jayaram claimed after reading Lee's paper that one child may have had a rash matching Lee's diagnostic criteria.

That wasn't noted or photographed at the time. Jayaram may certainly have been influenced in his memory by the paper, whether remembering accurately or not. But it's also possible (though utterly unprovable) that that child had an air embolism, having just had a procedure that creates exactly that risk. This was the only child whose death was unexplained at post-mortem.

No evidence of any murder here, though.

Let’s just say my interest in the Lucy Letby case is academic rather than entertainment.

And this is where we veer into the balance of probabilities versus beyond reasonable doubt isn't it? When it comes to the adversarial court system it means the truth may never be established. I know it's the system we've got, but it's very daunting as the accused to realise that your life and liberty depends on which side fan give the most convincing performance in the absence of hard evidence.

The medical evidence should be the foundation of this case, and it's patently not.

That wasn't why the judge didn't allow it - it was because it didn't meet the necessary criteria for allowing new evidence on appeal.

It was rejected chiefly because there was no good reason it couldn't have been presented during the trial.

But even if there had been a good reason for the delay, the new evidence was deemed irrelevant by the CoA anyway, as the point of introducing it was to prove that the prosecution witnesses were wrong for using the rashes described in Lee's paper to diagnose air embolism, but the CoA held that each air embolism diagnosis had been made on a number of factors, and that no-one had sought to suggest that the rashes alone were conclusive proof of air embolism, so the additional evidence was barking up a non-existent tree anyway.

Whose medical evidence though? They’re supposedly saying different things aren’t they? Dr Lee is saying something different to what the prosecution experts said. That’s the point with medical evidence - you get different people saying different things. It’s not an exact science and of course lawyers should be able to cross examine and challenge any potential flaws, even though they are not doctors themselves.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/manchester-crown-court-lucy-letby-hereford-b2365186.html

Hmm.

Yes but all this shows is that all the doubts HAVE been put to the jury. With a great deal of force. They still convicted her. At the end of the day, the prosecution is allowed to call their expert witnesses and the defence can challenge and undermine them but the jury decides the verdict.

This is an instance of how surprisingly difficult it can be to fight a weak argument (legal system aside).

The specific rash described for air embolism was part of the "soup" of evidence for that mode of attack produced at trial. Properly applied, it would have had higher diagnostic value than the babies' other symptoms. No uncontestable proof of air embolism was offered.

Removing that evidence shifts the balance of probabilities. Does it prove Letby didn't kill an infant through air embolism? No. But Jayaram himself explained that he would not have thought of air embolism without that paper.

If I am a nurse armed with a syringe in the vicinity of a sickly child who is one of the few dozen a year to die suddenly with unexplained causes, how do I prove I haven't murdered that child with air embolism?

I know almost nothing about the trial.

How do other countries and their judicial systems handle/try/investigate/adjudicate allegations such as the ones at the heart of this?

From Myers' speech in the article:

He told jurors: “Scientific evidence needs to be sufficiently reliable if you are going to rely on it.

“What guidance you have had from the experts has been applied inconsistently throughout the case.
“The evidence is so poor it cannot be safely used to support these allegations.”
And the CoA ruled that if he wanted to call his own expert witness to prove what he was saying, he should have done so before sending the jury out to deliberate.

I totally get why they decided to stick with the 'no case to answer' strategy, but the downside of this was that he is just a lawyer saying to the jury "ignore all of the medical experts you have heard from during the past nine months and instead listen to me, the lawyer representing the accused, when I say they're all talking nonsense".

That was always going to be a tough sell to a jury, but it was understandably her best option.

I wonder if the jury would have ruled any of the deaths at all were murder if they hadn't been told there was proof that someone harmed children deliberately (insulin).

That proof has been very strongly criticised since. If you went into the case convinced there had been murders, the sudden deaths which may or may not have been natural might look suspicious. But the evidence for any one case being murder seems very shaky.

As I've said I have no idea if she is guilty or innocent and to be honest all the people on here who are sure one way or the other don't know any more than I do. Being convinced she is guilty/innocent on the basis of her being odd or being so attractive that no one can possibly see her being a murderer is ridiculous.

I agree about people being able to come back and even come back stronger but it does need watching and sometimes people can't see that they need some interventions so someone else has to make that call. That can be tough as I know.