Cheshire Police are an incompetent bunch of useless bastards

[GossIsAGit]

After Sally Clark

They should have remembered that If a doctor of medicine tells you that a coincidence is so unlikely it must mean a woman has been killing babies then maybe you should consult a statistician and actually listen.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/10/lucy-letby-police-cps-handling-case-raises-new-concerns-about-convictions?CMP=ShareiOSAppOther

I see it rather like a football match. The man with the whistle may claim he’s completely immune to the crowd chanting the referee’s a wanker, but if that were true there would be no home advantage.
The judiciary don’t usually admit there’s been a cock up until vast numbers of people tell them so.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/13/consultant-tells-inquiry-he-wishes-he-had-voiced-concerns-about-lucy-letby-sooner

Hmmmm.

The consultants really are the blue-eyed boys of this inquiry.

1. If they'd spoken out during her trial they'd have been interfering with the course of justice and liable for charges of contempt of court.

1. Not everyone follows cases like this live. Why should they

1. If they were following live, they were possibly waiting as I was for the actual evidence to emerge at a later stage in the trial.

1. Some experts now have access to case files and data which they certainly did not have before the trial.

I can usually assume people were acting in good faith, in this debacle, but the best I could say of Jayaram is that he lets his imagination run away with him.

He has changed his story too many times, and the part where he sees a nurse attempting murder and does nothing about it for a year is not plausible.

*I can usually assume people were acting in good faith, in this debacle, but the best I could say of Jayaram is that he lets his imagination run away with him.

He has changed his story too many times, and the part where he sees a nurse attempting murder and does nothing about it for a year is not plausible.*

Well given that his name and reputation are now being dragged through the mud by armchair detectives all over the internet (as well as some in the main stream media), I think I can understand why he might have been hesitant about lighting the blue touch paper in the first place.

And if there are other clinicians currently suspicious of intentional harm being carried out in their own settings, then I really can't think that any of this is going to be encouraging them to voice their concerns either...

I'm not criticizing him for voicing suspicions or for accusing Letby of murder.

I'm criticizing him for waiting a year to produce his story and then, repeatedly, changing it, including in media appearances which of course were entirely his choice.

I can't for a minute see how that could be simply a way to try to avoid the process or the publicity. But I am not concerned with him in particular and certainly wish him well.

It's reasonable to point out when the evidence on a charge like this is so shaky, and unfortunately he is responsible for this.

Jayaram has also been criticised by the parents and the court of appeal @rubbishatballet.
There is no interpretation of events in which his actions are defensible.

@GossIsAGit can you point me to where in the CoA Judgment there is criticism of Ravi Jayaram?

From paragraph 19
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/R-v-LETBY-202402750-B4-FINAL-_.pdf

“In our judgment it is of some significance that the critical issue for the jury was whether they were sure of the evidence of Dr Jayaram. Legitimate criticism could be made of his evidence. Although he believed that Letby had deliberately dislodged the endotracheal tube, he had said nothing at the time nor for many months thereafter. There was an inconsistency between his evidence and the contemporaneous records. The nature of the case being considered by the jury was fact specific.”

And he added yesterday that the baby could have dislodged the tube directly, which is also what he noted in medical records at the time (and is not unusual).

He also said that if it had not been Letby, he would not have been concerned about the incident.

Between the trials, he changed his account of when this incident happened. He also claimed initially that the baby was sedated but changed that in the face of other evidence.

He has contradicted himself directly on this story, in media appearances and in court.

Yesterday:

Dr Jayaram told the inquiry that he had not seen Letby harming the baby and if the incident happened in isolation he would have “probably thought nothing more of it”.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/13/i-didnt-invent-lucy-letby-accusation-doctor-tells-inquiry/

On BBC Panorama:

Dr. Jayaram: She was just standing there. Now, tubes can become dislodged, but this was a 25-week gestation baby who wasn’t kicking around, who wasn’t vigorous. The only possibility was that the tube had been dislodged deliberately

So which is true? Premature babies frequently dislodge their tubes, as a starting point.

Jayaram seems to have misled the jury on the improbability of such a tiny baby dislodging her own tube. He was probably ignorant rather than perjuring himself but it indicates how unreliable the anecdotal evidence of these paediatric consultants was with regard to what is expected or unexpected in premature infants.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X0QI6GiA8ZU

If It was perjury by Jayaram, it might be difficult to convict while Letby’s convictions stand.

Perhaps it’d be overly cynical to suggest that the consultants might have found it less… career-limiting… if the narrative changed from ‘clearly failing unit’ (which was ultimately downgraded so far that they may as well have disbanded it) to ‘serial killer nurse.’

That’s probably not overly cynical. I have often found that successful ambitious people are particularly good at not seeing their own part in failures, and to some extent not even accepting reality. I’m thinking of Miranda Priestly in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ wanting to be flown through a hurricane. A lot of men have reminded me of her.
Taken to an extreme, some of the traits that make a successful consultant may not make a reliable witness where there is any conflict of interest. Some people really can’t distinguish between what’s true and what’s convenient for them.

Even ‘The Times’ has come round now. https://www.thetimes.com/article/e1d07275-5357-4539-8f5e-d022ed65368b?shareToken=48d9e8eff06b0b06708c66f5ae43f14c
Shoo Lee is my new hero.
I’m looking forward to Tuesday’s press conference.

@GossIsAGit your "hero" is someone trying to get a baby serial killer off?

No, this is an expert whose work has been (let's be generous) "misinterpreted" to support a serious criminal conviction, and who is concerned it may have contributed to a miscarriage of justice. He disagrees that what was described in court is supported by his paper. He didn't weigh in at the rime as he was unaware of the papers use in proceedings until after the event.

Regardless of other evidence in the case, he is right to challenge misuse of his own research in a court setting as it leads to issues of precedence in potential future cases, and ergo, potential further wrongful convictions.

See Kempe, metaphyseal fractures, and "battered child syndrome", also "shaken baby syndrome" and "MSBP / FII" for other instances of the medical world colliding dangerously with the legal world with disastrous results for thousands of accused parents and caregivers over the last half century or so.

My hero is fighting for truth, justice and the common good.

Very impressed by Shoo Lee. He is clearly someone who has decided he wants to be the cause of good in the world rather than harm to anyone innocent no matter how much work it takes to achieve this.
So good to know he has been beavering away in the background organising a proper academic review.

Yes. He’s got underlying steel.
He’s teaching the British judiciary not to mess with him or his research.

And that article has barely touched the surface of how distinguished his career has been:
https://www.cnf-fnc.ca/about/shoo-lee

It's like having Stephen Hawking drop by to help you with your confusion about the cosmos, free of charge (and saying nope, you see the way we read your work is the right one - stop contradicting yourself )

Regardless of other evidence in the case, he is right to challenge misuse of his own research in a court setting as it leads to issues of precedence in potential future cases, and ergo, potential further wrongful convictions.

Of course he does but the way some Letby fans talk about her and the doctors they think can help get her off is hyperbolic and bizarre. Probably some of the same ones that held a birthday party for her the other week. Air embolism was not her only method of murder so we'd still have overfeeding, violent injuries and insulin poisoning to explain away. Which we can't.

By ‘violent injuries’ I suppose you are talking about the liver damage that hospital notes have shown were caused by Dr Stephen Brearey wrongly inserting a needle?
If after all this time you still don’t understand why the insulin test results are insecure then I’m not sure it’s worth explaining it to you again.
There was never any evidence for over feeding.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to the press conference today.