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?

Absolutely! Free Allit now! In fact free all the murderers. Somewhere along the line, in each of their cases, there must be something that some jumped up statistician could skew to suit their narrative. But it seems statistician extraordinaire and his disciples are only interested in freeing killer nurses.

Ben Geen and Michael Stone have got absolutely nowhere with the “highly respected, very experienced” Mark McDonald trying to get them to an Appeal Hearing and Letby will be sitting in her cell 20 years from now too, waiting for him to come up with a plan to get her off on a technicality.

Of all the batshit YT interviews and podcast rantings from these “experts” they all have one thing in common. None of them have followed the court trial from the beginning, none of them have read the COA Judgements and all of them have great difficulty in understanding the terms “unexplained” and “unexpected”.

Letby is going nowhere!

“I and everyone else will have great sympathy for their loss, however not one person is going out of their way to support a serial killer of babies. Rather to question the evidence, absence of any defence experts and the judicial process which as we know has got it wrong before.”

This. The constant weaponising of the parents in order to shut down discussion in such a serious matter is wrongheaded.

We all have great sympathy for anyone who has lost a child, but a (potential) miscarriage of justice is not the balm for grief. There should be a review, which will either strengthen the convictions or see them overturned. Either way, justice has to be seen to be done and there is too much expert doubt currently to hand wave it all away.

It wasn't just that Letby's and the parent's' statements were submitted independently of each other and the timings didn't match up, though (and phone calls could obviously be verified by phone records).

The parent's' statements were agreed by Letby and subsequently read out to the jury as agreed facts in front of her, and it was only on her cross examination that Letby challenged what the parents had described once the significance of seemingly trivial details in each case were pulled together to form a bigger picture by the prosecution.

How is it weaponising the parents to discuss the evidence they gave?

Several of them were witnesses so how can we discuss the trial if we have to pretend that their evidence doesn't exist or is somehow ringfenced? The trial is about their babies and how they died.

Surely if Letby is innocent and there were no murders, then the parents are victims here too, as it would mean that not only have they had to endure unnecessary police interviews, giving witness statements and hearing all of the circumstances around their babies' collapses and or deaths in graphic detail, but they have also been misled into believing their babies were murdered or deliberately harmed when they actually died of natural causes.

I don't think it makes sense to consider the miscarriage of justice that Letby might have suffered without also holding in mind what that means the parents might have suffered through the same mistakes.

Doubters of the conviction have asserted, on this thread and elsewhere, that they are free to discuss their concerns about the evidence, which is perfectly true. But some of the evidence is from the parents, so it's hypocritical to shame people for talking about the parents' evidence as if that's somehow unfair or below the belt to discuss. Either we're allowed to discuss all the evidence, or it's all in poor taste - even the medical evidence is about those same parents' dead babies, after all.

I think you think I’m responding to something else. I’m talking about people attempting to shut down discussion, here and elsewhere, using emotional blackmail by invoking the parents. I didn’t say nobody should mention the parents at all.

That doesn't make the parents liars if Letby is found innocent, though.

Evans, however (prosecution witness) states that he saw 25 suspicious deaths or collapses in the cases he examined that he recommended for further investigation and that weren't brought to court. Everything brought to court came from the first set of cases he examined.

Now Evans's interpretation of that is that Letby can be accused of more attacks and murders. But we are now told that the further cases all had clear explanations excluding murder.

Which makes you wonder - why is anyone trusting Evans on the question of which deaths are suspicious?

Nobody has attempted to shut down discussion. The bereaved parents’ view of what’s happening now is highly relevant. More so than anyone else’s.

The parents are certainly best equipped to speak of the impact of this crime, if a crime was committed.

But being bereaved, however tragically, does not equip people to judge the cause of death any more than anyone else.

We don't know, in any case, what all of those affected now think about these deaths, and that is not a question anyone can or should ask them.

That doesn't make the parents liars if Letby is found innocent, though.

When she said their testimony wasn't correct in her cross examination (when it had been accepted by her previously, so the opportunity to cross-examine the parents and get to the bottom of what the truth was had gone), it was her word against theirs.

In the several instances where Letby belatedly denied the parents' claims of what happened, the jury had to decide which version they believed, because the two conflicting versions can't both be true.

And yes, while they were free to conclude "ok, so Letby is probably lying to make herself look less guilty on this issue and that issue, but she still might not have committed murders", I think that each time during her cross examination that she changed her mind as to which pieces of evidence had previously been agreed by her, her version of events became less and less palatable to the jury.

Yes I've been thinking about this. The consultant was Dr Jayaram - as I understand it he was the doctor who first suspected LL and drove forward the investigation in the hospital. What he has said was wrong for this, given the swipe card data showed she wasn't alone with the baby. We know that the doctors and police were effectively working together to build a case around LL. It feels quite convenient that he provided the smoking gun. Not suggesting he lied in court, but perhaps misremembered.

Now Evans's interpretation of that is that Letby can be accused of more attacks and murders. But we are now told that the further cases all had clear explanations excluding murder.

Which makes you wonder - why is anyone trusting Evans on the question of which deaths are suspicious?

I suspect that goes to the likelihood of a conviction, in terns of proving it beyond reasonable doubt, though.

It may be that a baby was expected to deteriorate or die because of an infection or genetic condition, etc, but that doesn't mean that the baby wasn't murdered or interfered with as well.

In those cases, even if murder is suspected given the wider circumstances, it would be much harder to prove beyond a reasonable doubt because of the other plausible explanations for their death.

I just wouldn't bring the idea of the parents lying into it, @LonginesPrime

Whether they had their facts entirely straight after such a long time or not, I wouldn't see them as having lied, whether of not any details went as they or Letby described.

Except we are now being told the other deaths and collapses weren't sudden so weren't suspicious. So why did Evans believe they should be investigated?

If the criteria were, not easy to find an opportunity for Letby to have murdered these children, that sets up the statistical fallacy we have been discussing.

If the criteria were, too sudden to have been a natural death, what was the difference between these cases and those tried, and why are they now not described as sudden.

Evans's statements to press and at trial have been quite disturbing.

A paediatrician, not a neonatologist. His findings were allegedly peer reviewed by another dr who is now dead. (Was this peer review blinded? I highly doubt it). Since the trial, any number of experts , with more specialist expertise , have come forward and disputed the credibility of his theories, including a specialist who wrote a paper relied upon and misinterpreted / misused by the prosecution. The reasons these doctors have given for why the prosecution’s medical hypotheses are not scientific are compelling and specific. Have you looked into it at all? Where is the broader community of medical professionals speaking out in support of the prosecutions theories? There isn’t one.

I see what you're saying, but the jury heard the parents' evidence as agreed facts (i.e. evidence that Letby accepts as true) when they were read out to them (with Letby sat there listening too), and were then blindsided by Letby suddenly suggesting n her cross examination that the parents' accounts weren't true after all.

Because the parent's' testimony had been agreed by Letby before and during the trial up until that point, the jury didn't have the benefit of the parents having being cross-examined on those points (and yes, I absolutely appreciate the optics of that and why it was preferable to spare the parents, regardless of Letby's guilt or innocence).

So while it might have been perfectly plausible that the parents had misremembered something or had mistaken which nurse called them, etc, the jury never got a chance to hear that evidence as the defence agreed their statements and so didn't need to cross-examine them and ask the question.

Therefore, the jury didn't have any idea what the parents' answer would have been to the question "could you have been mistaken, given everything that was going on at the time?", as it was never asked. It may be that a parent would have answered "yes, I suppose I might have been mistaken", but they might equally have answered with "no, it was definitely Letby because of x reason".

The jury just don't know, and so they couldn't just make up a conversation in their head of what they thought might happen if the parents had been cross--examined, and then pretend it's actual evidence of what that parent said - the parent was never asked in the trial, so that evidence of their answer didn't exist for the jury to consider.

Again, I haven’t said that the parent’s views of anything are irrelevant so I don’t know why you keep asserting that I did!

I am talking about people saying we should not ask any questions in case it upsets the parents - that is an attempt to shut down discourse with emotional blackmail and it is very wrong headed. The parents are constantly being evoked (without their knowledge or even their opinions being known) by people in this thread and elsewhere to shut down discussion.

While I have every sympathy for the parents, their views are not more important than everyone else’s I’m afraid. In matters like this, where the integrity of the justice system is in question, the case does not exist in a vacuum. A miscarriage of justice on this scale would not just affect those directly involved. The tendrils of it go far and wide and every citizen of this democracy has a right to engage in the discourse. In fact, scrutiny from the media, experts, and the public, is a crucial check to the justice system and always has been. There would never have been a miscarriage of justice righted without such scrutiny. It is an important element of democracy, just as jury trials are, and while not perfect it cannot be silenced in order to protect anyone who may be hurt by such discourse. Again, a miscarriage of justice is not the balm for grief.

In addition, we don’t know how all the parents feel or how they will feel as things unravel further now that the defence is sharing all the evidence (yes, everything) with medical and scientific experts.

The other deaths were highlighted to the jury for context, they weren't swept under the rug or hidden. It wasn't said whether she was on or off shift for any part of their care either, it isn't the case that she wasn't there so they just didn't consider them.

this isn’t true.

It’s pretty apparent that she loved the drama and this was one of the main factors - if not THE reason - why she did it. She was desperately trying to stoke sympathy and attention where none was warranted, I can fully understand why her colleagues found her behaviour bizarre and it raised red flags.

She comes across as a sad individual with nothing much going on in her life but with delusions of her own importance - I completely agree with the arrested development comment. It’s as though she is either very stupid or naive or both to not realise how her behaviour would come across. Any “clever” person who wanted to get away with killing the babies in their care would surely lay low and try not to attract attention - but her ego wouldn’t allow this, she wanted to be the centre of the drama and to elicit people’s sympathy. It’s a bit like the killers who send clues to the police mocking the fact they haven’t yet been found - just sitting on what they know and doing nothing is beyond the mentality of such types. It feeds back into the description of her from her schooldays as “loving being at the centre of drama”.

She won’t ever confess because to do so would destroy her parents and bc it’s the only bit of power (she imagines) she has left. A narcissistic, pathological liar lives in their own delusional world and it is very hard to fully understand the reasons behind their behaviour as they present as being normal, even “lovely”. The one I knew supposedly had a normal childhood and his best friend was his dog etc, he seemed like the nicest person ever. When his lies unravelled and he was caught out he ran away, ghosted me and moved house to try to escape any repercussions. I’ve no doubt in his own mind he is without blame, I believe people like this have the ability to file away the bad things they’ve done in a box marked do not open in their mind and are not wired to feel guilt or regret. They just almost methodically do what they deem necessary at the time and don’t think about
the how the overall picture will look to others and that people are bound to start to suspect.

Sorry, bit of a ramble but I’m very interested in criminal psychology and this seems to be a huge factor in why people are struggling with the guilty verdict - bc they think she seems nice and normal - but I know from experience that means nothing.

The evidence that the parent entered the unit at 9pm, was sent back to the ward and made a phone call to her husband at 9.10 to inform him of their baby’s condition is on her phone! Or is that not statistical enough for you?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/sep/08/a-superbug-doctor-shortages-and-a-neonatal-unit-out-of-its-depth-failures-at-lucy-letby-hospital-revealed

Except we are now being told the other deaths and collapses weren't sudden so weren't suspicious. So why did Evans believe they should be investigated?

If the criteria were, not easy to find an opportunity for Letby to have murdered these children, that sets up the statistical fallacy we have been discussing.

If the criteria were, too sudden to have been a natural death, what was the difference between these cases and those tried, and why are they now not described as sudden.

I mean, none of us know the answer to exactly what criteria was applied at what point and all the details of the discussions and reports between the police, CPS, Evans, etc so any suggestion would be mere speculation. The police have released a YouTube video of how they conducted operation hummingbird, though, so that might help to shed some light on their strategy.

I do think that given that Evan's was instructed by the police as opposed to by the hospital, it's reasonable to assume that weighing up the prospects of conviction against the cost of further investigation on each individual medical case probably was a consideration in the work Evans was instructed to carry out, though.

So it seems plausible that there were cases where Evans might have been told "you can drop that one for the moment" regardless of the circumstances simply because the priority was on building a credible case to take to the CPS at that point. There was a huge number of documents to go through so it makes sense that certain cases and evidence would be prioritised for the specific task at hand.

I mean, none of us know the answer to exactly what criteria was applied

this should be known and transparent.

There really isn’t. A few loud mouths in the media and on an internet forum does not mean a judicial review is necessary. A tv judge and one mps opinion is not grounds for appeal. Justice has already been done and quite frankly tough shit to those who disagree . I know absolutely no one in real life who has the slightest doubt over the convictions. And all those who think she is innocent should keep their faux sympathies for the parents to themselves. They don’t need patronising crap aimed at them from people who don’t have the first clue what it is to lose a child.

A paediatrician, not a neonatologist.

Neonatology is a subspecialty of paediatrics.