Defence witnesses for this sort of case are indeed rare as hens teeth. And were pretty thin on the ground 30 years ago when I was left to try and build my own "defence" in yes, the family courts, but which is no less a traumatic experience when you're facing the permanent loss of your child to adoption.
One witness I found was close to be struck off for allegedly working outside the scope of his expertise because he had identified alternative explanations for the discovery of metaphyseal fractures in large numbers, in often premature babies and multiple births. At that time the medical dogma in place for decades insisted that the only explanation for these occult fractures was violent and deliberate abuse - and if there were no bruises it must be careful torture. Things have thankfully moved on a bit by now.
My solicitor wouldn't call on that witness because the court would not accept his testimony. The idea was that going to this "charlatan" would emphasise my desperation to "get off" and the courts would hold it against me. The expert in question was a highly respected biochemist heading up the Brittle Bone Society in Scotland and had decades of work examining collagen disorders under his belt. When he successfully challenged too many cases in family court, prosecution experts got him struck off as it was challenging and undermining the dogma they followed.
I'm not trying to make this all about me, I'm using this as an example of when medical evidence meets the legal system. It can be complex. I've said on other threads that the adversarial system is not about the "truth" it's about winning, and that came straight from my solicitors mouth in the first meeting I had with him, when I was 6 weeks post partum, had just been accused of the worst thing imaginable and was told from the get go that if I couldn't come up with an explanation for occult, mostly symptomless fractures, then adoption was the only outcome. He went on to be a respected circuit judge in the family courts, so he knew exactly how it all worked.
I didn't follow the Lucy Letby trial at the time. I'm painfully aware of my own natural bias and I tried to believe that after Sally Clarke, Angela Cannings etc these sorts of cases would only make it to court on the back of virtually incontrovertible evidence. Once the trial was over, and I saw the other experts coming out saying essentially WTF about some of the medical evidence, despite my better judgement I had to look closer. It was some of the language used against her that really struck me, the phrases used by the experts - forcce of a car crash is one that gets trotted out because it's dramatic, sounds terrible and will push the buttons of a jury. It's clear that in 30 years, very little has changed with regard to medical evidence in complex court cases.
I've looked at all the alleged mechanisms of death as forensically as I can as a lay person with only Google to hand. They don't add up. The circumstantial evidence and character assassination has been allowed to obfuscate the forensics and that is wrong. Our justice system should be better than that. No system can be perfect but how many innocent people or miscarriages of justice can be comfortably written off as acceptable collateral damage? Especially when the reason it happens can include perjury, group think, institutional gas-lighting and arse covering, and when challenging it is regarded as nutty conspiracy theorising.
I have actually been there - not as far as being prosecuted, although a SW tried her damndest even after the police didn't want to pursue my case, but in my mind, the stakes were higher - permanently losing my child.
I'm fully expecting to be scoffed at and told I'm making this up because I, like Lucy Letby, am an attention-seeking narcissist intent on harming babies - after all, lots of important educated people have said so. Based simply on medical evidence. And the fact that I disagreed with it.
Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk.....
(Yes, I'm still bitter).