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 think the horrific nature of the crimes & the fact they were such vulnerable, premature babies has clouded the judgements of everyone involved. The interviews with the police involved show how desperately they wanted 'justice' for the parents & the judge, jury & defence would have felt the same.
There was so much public pressure to 'get Justice' & everyone had huge sympathy with the parents that it's possible that the conviction was unsafe.
I can well believe she is guilty and obviously we may not have seen all the evidence the jury did but certainly there's questions that need to be asked until we can say there's no reasonable doubt.

I'm glad that people are raising questions about the safety of LL's conviction.

I know to say so will have some people accusing me of being a baby murderer apologist or suggesting that I would take a different view if she wasn't white and blond but I really don't care about that.

If she is guilty she deserves to be in prison but the evidence did not seem conclusive to me. I have always understood that, in a ten month trial, the public would only learn about a fraction of the evidence presented in court but news media will report what is most compelling and sensationalist and I was not convinced.

I worked in health care for years and there were things that were written about which just did not add up and did not have the support of scientific consensus. Sometimes it just seemed like they were really reaching.

She maybe guilty but I would rather the case is reviewed and any doubt about the validity of the evidence used to convict her is cleared up.

Yes but the doctors who work there must be aware of this and yet they became suspicious because it was simply not an expected pattern of events. There was no external pressure calling for them to explain their huge death rate causing them to point fingers - the doctors became suspicious because the deaths were not what was expected.

I think you are right.

People have totally lost faith in the system. They see time and again how circumstantial evidence can be used against ordinary people to gain an unsafe judgement.

It isn't just the NHS. Look at all the sectors that are currently struggling to recruit. Teaching, fostering, childcare, healthcare, social care.
It's not just lack of financial reward, People are terrified their families will be torn apart by false allegations and they know the authorities will take the slightest evidence to use against them, rather than admit they got it wrong.

Even when they do finally admit to errors, it takes years to compensate. What redress have the post office workers received to date?

I think the point is that BA's previous antics are yet another reason why it's a poor argument to say the different attitudes to the cases are due to the way they both look.

the entire case seem to have been built on making a case around LL and finding her guilty, not finding out if it was a murder case and if some did murder the babies.

This, in spades.

David Davies is on the case. One of the sharpest minds in British politics, he thinks.

Exactly this.

Those babies were the victims of a failing hospital and suboptimal care. Far less sensational a story than a serial killer nurse

I haven't followed the case closely but presumably others who know much more about law and evidence have I don't have an issue with a review if one is warranted.
But I can't help thinking that if she was older, less attractive, working class, and of colour then she wouldn't have attracted so much attention or sympathy.

To the people saying that we were not party to large parts of the trial.... I read the court transcripts online, papers like the Chester Standard were publishing them in real time. Did they miss stuff out? I suppose we didn't get to see evidence bundles but I'm not sure what else was missed?

At first I thought she was guilty but now have my doubts.

As a medical professional I fully understand hierarchy, the threats to whistleblowers and the constant need to cover your backside, its very clear to me why a medical professional wouldn't want to be involved with the defence.

Imagine the costs involved in a retrial, both financially and emotionally. Imagine how much compensation she would be due if found innocent.

This is an interesting point. Mostly, the question of whether the public would feel differently if there was something different about the case has been focused on Letby being a young white female. But that question can be turned around. The people asking it should also question whether there'd have been the same willingness to accept that eg the notes she wrote were relevant, if the dead people had been a less sympathetic group than sick babies.

Personally I think it's all a bit more complicated than that. But if that question is going to be asked, there's more to it than Letby being a young blonde woman.

So - those of you who think she's innocent and the babies all died of natural causes (even the ones who demonstrably didn't) what do you think happened in the case of Baby E?

The mother came to the nursery to bring milk she'd pumped for her baby on a schedule. She found her previously completely stable baby screaming in a manner that chilled her and blood coming from her baby girl's mouth, and asked Lucy Letby, who was in sole charge of her, what was happening, and Lucy Letby said there was no problem. That the tube was probably irritating her throat and forcibly asked the mother to leave. The mother felt deeply uncomfortable and called her husband to say she felt there was 'something wrong'.

In the trial, Lucy Letby said that the mother never visited the nursery that night, and that there was no blood coming from the baby's mouth. The phone records proved that the mother did phone the father at the time she said she did and the father corroborated that his wife had seen the baby and was worried. So who's lying - the parents who lost their baby girl or Lucy Letby? By the way, the mum is a GP.

This. I have no idea if she's guilty but I think after a nine month trial particularly, it would be incredibly difficult for the average layperson to 'see the wood for the trees' and synthesise that amount of information effectively. It does seem as if the prosecution relied on a real patchwork of evidence cobbled together, much of which is very much open to interpretation. It doesn't add up to a clear picture IMO. Multiple MOs, LL apparently very normal, conscientious and caring as far as anyone knew (childhood friends etc). It's so bizarre. Even the 'hiding in plain sight' type of serial killer usually has something in their background that points towards some kind of serious dysfunction. But the high number of deaths, unusual circumstances and the way they appeared to follow her from night to day shifts are difficult to explain too.

😂 Yea, brexiteer and all that.

I guess he’s well known tho and apparently has form with challenging miscarriages of justice

She wasn't whistleblowing anything though? In fact she was having an inappropriate relationship with a doctor. Her only complaint was that the doctors were 'ganging up' on her when they all started to get uneasy about her being around the babies. And when the doctors reported their concerns, they didn't even know about the insulin results. The babies' deaths were reported as natural causes initially. Nobody was pointing fingers at the doctors or the hospital. This idea of a 'cover up' is ridiculous - if anything, the doctors who spoke out drew attention to the issue.

@Peakpeakpeak it's an interesting question.

There's a prison near me that has had an unusual amount of deaths recently. I wonder how many of the "100% guilty" posters would be so insistent that she is guilty and evil if it were prisoners who died while she was nearby?

Now I'm not arguing that they would because I find the "pretty and blonde" argument to be a bit vapid, but it's still worth thinking about

This is all appalling.

The woman is guilty. If it weren't for the youthful face, blonde hair and sing song name not one of you would have questioned it.

Shame on all of you.

To me the case just wasn't proven beyond reasonable doubt. There are too many questions now emerging. It absolutely MUST be reviewed.

Exactly. She whistleblew nothing. There’s zero reason why the doctors would just accuse her of murder. There was no pressure from above to explain deaths - the doctors had to push management to take it seriously. It took years for them to do so. The idea that she was a scapegoat to cover up failings is absolutely ludicrous.
Plus hospitals don’t generally like it if it’s revealed they employed a serial killer. No reason for them to want such an outcome.

Rubbish - there is new evidence that has come to light and it’s becoming a very unsafe conviction.

If she’s still guilty after a review then so be it- but if she’s not then it’s a huge miscarriage of justice.

Ok, well in that case you wouldn't be saying this if she'd been on trial for killing convicted paedos and murderers in a prison hospital. Telling people they'd think differently if there was something different about the case works from multiple angles.

She chose to say in oral evidence that in her opinion (unqualified) it looked like insulin poisoning. I doubt this was a hugely influential factor for the jury though.

I think if I had been on the jury, the fact that even the defendant agreed that someone poisoned those babies with insulin would have influenced my opinion when set against all the other evidence.

If she had said she didn't know whether the bags had been tampered with because she didn't do it, then that would make sense. But agreeing that yes, it was attempted murder, but no it wasn't her didn't look great when the prosecution's case was obviously that she was the only one who had the opportunity to tamper with the bags.

Conceding that someone was actually going around poisoning babies completely changes the defence narrative that 'these were all natural but unexplained deaths and it was just coincidence that Letby happened to be on duty' - if I were a juror, knowing that these two collapses were accepted by Letby as deliberate poisonings would have influenced my view of her guilt when she was the only person who had the opportunity to do it.

So now, as a juror, I would need to consider whether I believe Letby's argument that not only did all the deceased babies die of natural causes, but also that there is an unknown person who deliberately poisoned several babies who is still completely unidentified (even by Letby, who was also present at the time of these incidents that she accepts occurred), despite several years of police and hospital investigations into this very issue.

That's a much tougher scenario to accept than mere natural causes and coincidence, but it's what the jury would have needed to accept as what probably happened to believe Letby's version of events once she accepted that some babies had been deliberately poisoned on her shifts.

The babies' deaths were reported as natural causes initially.

The coroner found the deaths to be of natural causes.

Where is the evidence of insulin?

I googled "evidence of insulin in Lucy let case" trying not to put bias into the search box

and this came up www.scienceontrial.com/post/criminal-justice-in-england-disagreeable-facts#:~:text=This%20test%20showed%20that%20the,%2FL%2C%20which%20is%20normal.

I wasn’t calling her a whistleblower. I was outlining the reasons why I believe very few people would want to be involved in the defense.