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

Absolute nonsense

She’s had her trial, it’s not like a best of 3 or something to see if a rerun or 2 produces the same result.

She’s had a lengthy trial after years of investigation and a high quality defence.

How many trials does one need?

Why did Ben Myers, Letby's original barrister, who I have read multiple times is extremely well thought of as a defence lawyer, not deal with any of the alleged weaknesses of the prosecution case in her first trial? Can anyone believing in Letby's innocence explain this?

His technique seems to have been to attempt to get the prosecution's case from Evans thrown out rather than to dispute it.

Evans changed his arguments on agreed points mid trial and proposed methods of murder that have never been seen. He also stated that he could identify means of murder / cause of death with certainty without forensic evidence.

Myers's choices were to attempt to dispute this case by case with a defence witness who would not be able to state cause of death with equal certainty, because that's not how medicine works; or to allow the prosecution case to stand or fall on the impression Evans made on judge and jury. He didn't have a strong counter-narrative. It is difficult to prove absence of undetectable murder.

It's certainly possible he'd still have been better off calling the defence witness (and others), but that's an explanation I've come across.

Appeals are a normal and necessary part of the justice system. If you want them banned that's a campaign that will go well beyond Lucy Letby.

@ThatsNotMyTeen it's not nonsense! If the convictions are so safe then why are so many medics, neonatologists, statisticians and other professionals who have examined the evidence with proper scrutiny raised so many concerns about the safety of the verdicts?
These people have absolutely nothing to gain personally by sticking their hands up and raising serious concerns. In fact they have a heck of a lot to lose!
Both trials used the same evidence and reporting restrictions prevented all the issues coming to light before now. The trials are separate cases she has not had two trials for the same cases.
To be clear I am absolutely not saying I'm convinced she is innocent! But the convictions as they stand do not seem safe or beyond reasonable doubt. And it is a slippery slope if we start letting people be convicted of really serious crimes without safe convictions.

Hasn't she been denied leave to appeal? Isn't that the proper process? Are we saying that unlimited appeals should be allowed?

He didn't have a strong counter-narrative.

Isn't this tantamount to saying there wasn't much of a case for the defence? Why couldn't Evans's changes of mind / narrative be pointed out in the trial?

reporting restrictions prevented all the issues coming to light before now

And yet the jury, a jury of her peers as the system requires, heard all the evidence, issues included, and convicted her. They did not convict on every count, which says to me that they thought carefully about which cases were convincing and which weren't.

I didn't follow the trial at all. I did listen to some of the interviews with the doctors afterwards, they had no doubt on their mind about her guilt.

They painted her as the 'scarlet woman', killing babies to get attention from a male senior colleague. They were also very upset they had to apologise to her following a grievance. But, they were totally convinced about this, and in turn convincing. On there testimony, I thought she was guilty.

There is the concept of group think, where a group of people reach a decision without critical evaluation. Just because a group of doctors came to a conclusion, which they passionately believed, it doesn't mean that the conclusion is right.

And 'expert witnesses' have caused miscarriages of justice before.

@BlushingBrightly have you read the link attached in the OP?
The prosecution have used primarily one expert witness who has changed his mind numerous times on the cause of death of some of the babies. Much of his evidence has been discredited.
Some of the methods she is convicted of using haven't even been proven that they would be fatal.
Letby has been massively let down by her own legal team too. I don't understand why they did not being in their own expert witnesses.

You can't expect members of a public jury to have the knowledge to critically evaluate complex medical information. Information that was presented to them as fact - and not challenged in court. Much of that evidence has proven at best to be misleading at worst downright false!

The CPS didn't even get the door logs correct! They were the wrong way round. If they can't even get the basics right how the hell can you trust the more complex evidence?

Which baby hadn't she met?

@Firefly1987 the prosecution used an X-ray of baby C - taken at 48hrs old - to prove that Letby had inserted air into them through their NG tube. The baby died at 4 days old. Only Letby wasn't on shift between the baby's birth and the day before they died. 24hrs after the x ray was taken. The 'expert' witness who to that point had been adamant the case of death was air inserted via NG tube suddenly changed his view to she must have injected air via IV.

@notanothernamechange24 baby C was the one who she wasn't supposed to be looking after but 6 mins after she was texting about not getting what she wanted (to be in room 1) she goes in room 1 anyway and the baby suddenly crashed? Hmm not sure I have any doubts over that baby sorry. Baby was stable and being looked after by a less qualified nurse, naturally LL hated that so when that nurse briefly left (which she wouldn't have done if any problems) LL goes in room and suddenly baby is at deaths door. Why are people ignoring this? She was there when he crashed for the final time. As soon as she got home she searched the parents of baby C as well.

news.sky.com/story/cold-lucy-letby-failed-final-year-student-nurse-placement-inquiry-hears-13234225

Reading this made me shudder, she should never have been a nurse of any kind, especially working with babies.

You really have to meet a higher standard of proof for murder than "was in the room".

She passed her placement second time and is alleged by some (far from all) of her colleagues to have been socially awkward. She was advised to work on her communication skills. Both Murphy and Lightfoot believed she could reach the required standard in time - Murphy saw it as a factor of youth and inexperience.

Lightfoot despite working on the unit in Chester with her 2015-16 raised none of these concerns then, presumably because Letby's student days were no longer relevant.

If you want to get rid of nurses with this profile, the NHS will be in worse trouble than ever.

Oh come ON. She wasn't supposed to be in there, she was PISSED she was being told no about something. Are you not capable of joining the dots? Is it all bad luck again 🙄What are the chances that the baby only collapses during the few mins the designated nurse is gone and LL goes in there (but she can't remember why) you really don't find this suspicious at all? It's pretty damning circumstantial evidence, especially when you put it together with all the rest.

Yep, some people can just get a sense about people and know they're lacking in empathy etc. and shouldn't be working with vulnerable people/children, and some can't (as evidenced by this thread) I'm sure she knew who she could manipulate and who she couldn't. It's devastating to think she could've been prevented from ever being a nurse in the first place 😢

All of the nurses had to go into that room to get meds; all of them frequently covered for one another on breaks; all of them doubled up to give meds.

Being annoyed about work isn't proof of murder either.

Lightfoot said nothing about her being unfit to work with children.

She said :

"At the moment Lucy requires much more support, prompting and supervision than I would expect at this stage to allow her to qualify as a competent practitioner".

"However I strongly feel if Lucy continues to take on board feedback, continues to work on her weaker areas and develop her practice accordingly then this is achievable in the future.”

I think the Sky News report leaves that out so gives a worse impression

www.chesterstandard.co.uk/news/24654291.cold-lucy-letby-initially-failed-final-year-student-nurse-placement/

If Lightfoot felt that Letby posed any risk after improving and qualifying, she had five years to raise it and never did.

@Oftenaddled she wasn't simply annoyed she was furious, because she's a narc. Yes I can buy if it happened once that it was an unlucky coincidence but it happened so many times when other staff left the room. It's also been said by other nurses that constantly requesting certain rooms and/or babies is very strange and unprofessional behaviour.

You left out-

Giving evidence at the Thirlwall Inquiry into events surrounding the neonatal nurse’s crimes, Ms Lightfoot said: “I found Lucy to be quite cold. I did not find a natural warmth exuding from her which I expect from a children’s nurse.

“I have to be sure that this person is ready and safe to practise and I wasn’t prepared to put my professional reputation and registration on the line at that point.”

no she's probably not going to outright say "this person isn't safe around children" she has to be diplomatic but it's strongly implied she wouldn't make a good nurse.

And from the next mentor-

“She didn’t show good inter-personal skills with children, parents, nurses or the wider team. I believed this to be Letby’s lack of confidence and experience as she was very young and an only child away from home.

Not really - lots of the alleged crimes happened with other people in the room.

She was upfront about preferring to work with the more complex cases. That was her specialism.

She didn't come across as furious - just grumpy.

The postmortem gave a cause of death for that baby as heart failure diagnosed based on physical findings and possible to connect with prematurity and traumatic birth. It would have triggered a collapse 6-8 hours before his death. He showed clinical signs of deterioration and was too small to be cared for on that unit by their own rules.

This case really doesn't need to be a murder.

Sure. Neither of them is saying she is a risk to children. Both are saying she needs to work on particular skills. She did.

You can look at every molehill in Letby's life and turn it into a mountain if you want to, but if Lightfoot thought Letby wasn't safe around children after qualifying, she should have said so then and she could certainly have said so today.