To agree with the Guardian about the Netflix coverage of the Lucy letby case?

[justwandered]

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/feb/04/the-investigation-of-lucy-letby-review-netflix?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other]]

I honestly don’t think I’ve come across a show in such poor taste before and I am no stranger to stories about murder and the like.

It crosses a huge line in terms of stripping individuals of their dignity.

I don’t plan on watching it but when I turned Netflix on the other night to put a TV show on for my children there it was - horrid and completely unnecessary.

Can you expand on how it is flawed?

And what new evidence (as opposed to opinion) has been brought since the application?

"Consistent with" is pretty insignificant on this context.

Many children who have CPR to try to resuscitate them have air embolism postmortem and signs of it postmortem, because air has been forced through broken vessels.

These children will have signs "consistent with" air embolism. But air embolism is only diagnosed based on air detected in systems while a child is still alive, or based on observing accidental administration of air embolism. This is because its symptoms are much more likely to indicate other, far more common, conditions.

I've said a lot on this thread already about new evidence. Legally, non disclosure re Child Y (the third insulin baby, whose case wasn't prosecuted) and Child O (the child whose postmortem report lacked significant detail) would be among the most important.

One can add to that any new relevant research or experimental data, for examples Geoff Chase's modelling of the insulin delivery system proposed by the prosecution.

Another category has regard to the impartiality of the prosecution's lead expert witness. His statements to the media since the trial are obviously new evidence there.

Evidence doesn't have to be new to be considered - the courts just need to explain why they are willing to consider it. But the aspects I link above are undoubtedly new.

Is that now or 10yrs ago? I can promise you no data breach happened when handover paperwork is found in nurses houses.

One example of problems with the court of appeal document:

39

'Save that the description of skin discolouration did not feature in Dr Jayaram’s clinical notes, we observe in passing that there appears to have been little evidential basis for the allegation implicitly made on behalf of the applicant, that Dr Jayaram had made up this part of his evidence. We also note that no similar allegation appears to have been
made against the father of Baby O who, as set at para 93 above, described his child’s
veins as being “bright, bright blue”.

This is bizarre and inappropriate. I'll try to keep it short

Dr Jayaram claimed that he had seen mysterious rashes, matching Shoo Lee's description for arterial air embolism, on two children, but that he had never mentioned them in his medical notes. One of the children in the case had a coroner's inquest, where Dr Jayaram was asked if he had anything at all to add that might assist. Again, no mention. Yet in the course of his police interviews, it emerged as a vivid, precise memory years after the event.

The defence very reasonably questioned this. They didn't yet have the email that undermined Dr Jayaram's credibility still further on another eyewitness account. That came out later.

For another child, Baby I, the father had noticed a rash like prickly heat and swollen veins apparently changing colour. The CoA here seems to suggest it's odd that the defence, if they doubted Dr Jayaram re Baby A and Baby M, should have accused this man of misremembering his child's death too.

But why should they? It's a different child. His rash was described in his medical notes and was never described like Dr Jayaram's description of child A or M. This is clear if you can read at all. And in fact the father's description is pretty credible, because it describes the effect of excessive ventilatory pressures which all post trial reviews have raised as a problem with his treatment. There would never have been any reason to accuse the father of having this wrong - it has nothing to do with air embolism, and certainly nothing to do with doctor Jayaram.

I find it plain embarrassing. It's a terrible example of "confidently wrong". No logic, no rigour - just blind assertion.

Well I started in this field in 1989, there definitely a separate neonatal unit & separate neonatologists. Not sure what they are talking about unless the hospital he worked for was very behind the times. Did anyone see they said ‘he said’ are they just relying him telling them his past or have they investigated it?

And you are asserting all this as a paediatric pathologist..? radiologist..? Clearly you have a great deal of specialist knowledge in this area.

”Consistent with” is definitely not insignificant in this context, particularly alongside Dr Marnerides’s conclusion.

I'm working from statements by Professor Neena Modi, where this case is concerned, and relevant medical literature.

Consistent with only means what it says, and to be fair to Marnerides, he pointed this out at the trial. It's not an arcane interpretation. It means, doesn't rule out the possibility. That's all.

Not sure kept in carrier bag under the bed or in black bag in the garage is keeping them carefully. Ones in the box not related to these babies were probably for statement writing.

want to know why you think the keeping of these scraps of paper that only her & her colleges that work in the same field would understand = murder.

why are you so hung up on it?

So if a HCP wanted to murder babies by air embolism, as long as no one sees them doing it and the child isn’t x-rayed while still alive they will always get away with it? Because these are the only two ways it can ever be definitively diagnosed? Seems like Letby really was onto something there then!

Fortunately, the chances of a neonatal ICU nurse doing this unseen are fairly slim, since an alarm is likely to sound for the baby's heart rate before they can flush the line, or there will be an unexpected injection site.

It's always been pretty implausible that Lucy Letby could whip out a syringe and administer an air embolism in a room full of medics, as she is supposed to have done for babies A, E, M at least. In an environment where two nurses administer medication?

But to answer your wider question, yes, if you're claiming a method of murder that leaves no signs, you have no eyewitness, and natural death is plausible (never mind probable), you obviously can't lock someone up for murder.

It's always been pretty implausible that Lucy Letby could whip out a syringe and administer an air embolism in a room full of medics, as she is supposed to have done for babies A, E, M at least. In an environment where two nurses administer medication?

And here was me thinking the doctors were never there and the whole unit was dangerously understaffed 🤷‍♀️

That's true, but it is a separate problem.

It's consultants who have been described as thin on the ground, and nurses with qualification in the intensive care specialism. But registrars and the other nurses would not have expected to see Lucy Letby do anything with a syringe on her own either - it would be very very basic knowledge, and in the cases I've listed there were plenty of them in small, well lit rooms at the only time when the "attack" could have happened.

Yes ten years ago, GDPR isn't a new concept.

Terrifying isn't it. AE is impossible to prove according to some so let her out, and we'll have copycat killers using that same method on other units. Looks like there really is such a thing as the perfect murder.

I think it's interesting that there's been no sign of hospitals organising to try to crack down on these allegedly invisible crimes actually. I think it's likely because once you get down to the practicalities, it's very hard indeed to envisage how she did them. But maybe CCTV or body worn cameras will happen. If so it will be to protect nurses as much as babies I suspect.

And yes, it is true - if you can't prove murder, you can't lock people up for it.

If they can't prove murder then they can't just decide on a method of murder and then say it was one.

'It was Colonel mustard in the ballroom with the candlestick'.

But Jayaram said that it wasn’t until he read the Lee & Tanswell paper sometime later that he realised the significance of the rash, which is why it isn’t in the notes and presumably didn’t raise it at the inquest. Why should he have been accused of lying about that but other witness testimony about rashes was taken at face value? I’m definitely not going to accept this is a ‘very flawed’ document based on this example.

And I can’t see any discussion of baby I’s father’s memory of a rash or any suggestion that it was odd that the defence didn’t question him about it - can you point me to where that is?

Baby O - apologies. Autocorrect changed it. It's item 39 on the appeal document.

Jayaram had read and circulated the Lee and Tanswell article well before baby A's coroner's inquest, but that is not the main point here.

The point is that the CoA is presenting father O's memory of his son's symptoms as if he, like Jayaram, had a professional duty to note and report them; of course he hadn't. And the defence had suggested that Jayaram might have been influenced in his description by reading Lee and Tanswell; which is hardly a suggestion to make to the father about another child, whose rash was recorded in his medical notes at time of collapse and did not resemble the Lee and Tanswell rash either in the medical notes or in the father's description.

A potential failure in a professional duty to note and report a rash is a very different thing to just making a rash up, which is what the CoA is saying the defence accused Jayaram of here.

And I don’t agree with your analysis that the CoA is presenting father O’s memory of symptoms as if he also had a duty to note and report them. It reads to me as though they are simply highlighting an inconsistency around how eye witness testimony about the rashes was accepted or otherwise by the defence.

Where's the inconsistency? They are different events, one featuring someone whose professional - in fact legal - duty was to mention the rash earlier another featuring another person who had neither duty nor opportunity to mention the rash earlier.

What links them apart from the word "rash"? Why on earth can't one question one eyewitness's reliability (giving grounds) without questioning every eyewitness's reliability? Of course one can (as the retrial judge did, when he cited Jayaram's evidence as open to criticism but no-one else's).

Well they’re not actually saying that the defence couldn’t question one witness’s account and not another, they’re just noting that they did. In any event this tiny detail doesn’t appear to inform the outcome of the Judgment in any way and I am still completely failing to see how it (or anything else contained in it) contributes to making the document ‘very flawed’.

That's one of the silliest moments - what has father O to do with it? Is the defence obliged to challenge all eyewitness evidence because, in a perfectly normal move, it challenges some which contradicts previous testimony by the same witness? Obviously not. Or are we supposed to infer that father O's testimony about one form of rash on one child lends support to Dr Jayaram's belated report of another form of rash on another?

You call it a tiny moment, but it is about quite a major issue - the rashes - and the fact that it's ineffective on scrutiny and cross-reference doesn't make that less concerning. Simply put, there's no logic to criticising the defence on this point, and no justification for doing so.

It's an unnecessary, sloppy, tendentious remark. Similar, the claim that Child B died - sloppy phrasing for a legal document. Exaggeration of claims by both Marnerides and Arthurs for the prosecution. And this occurs among other sections on the central point again, in the statement that the prosecution did not rely on diagnoses of exclusion, which is long enough for a separate post.

So, also from the court of appeal document:

147

"Nor are we able to accept the submissions on behalf of the applicant to the effect that
the expert witnesses wrongly based a diagnosis of air embolus solely on an exclusion of other possible causes. That argument would carry more weight if any witness had given evidence to the effect that he or she could not identify any other possible cause of a baby’s collapse and therefore assumed, on that basis alone, that the baby’s collapse must have been due to an air embolus. Evidence to that effect might well be criticised as mere conjecture.

"But the submissions on behalf of the applicant did not persuade us that there was any instance in which either Dr Evans or Dr Bohin gave such evidence. They considered, where appropriate, whether the collapse may have been due to natural causes, but concluded, for reasons which they explained, that it was not. They similarly considered, but excluded, other possible causes – concluding, for example, that there could be “no innocent explanation” for their findings. The defence were not able to point, in cross-examination, to any possible alternative cause which the witnesses found realistic.

"The witnesses then identified findings which were consistent with, though not in themselves individually diagnostic of, air embolus. Dr Bohin largely reached the
same findings as did Dr Evans (and it was plainly open to the jury to be sure that her
evidence was an independent assessment, and not mere uncritical endorsement of
anything Dr Evans had said); and in some of the cases the evidence of other expert
witnesses, in particular Professor Arthurs and Dr Marnerides, provided an additional
and separate basis for a diagnosis of air embolus".

In what way does this description exclude a diagnosis of exclusion? It describes one. And the claim that Professors Arthur and Marnerides "provided an additional and separate basis for a diagnosis of air embolus" is simply a false account of the trial, where agreed evidence was that they did not do so, but provided accounts "consistent with" the claim.

It's tortuous isn't it? Basically post mortems had provided perfectly likely and plausible explanations, but because they didn't fit the "Lucy must have done something because she was there" narrative, the air embolus theory was introduced by Evans, despite the evidence to support it being twisted to fit in hindsight.

It went from "nothing to see here" to "serial killer" in a most bizarre fashion. This is what I don't understand. If any of the post mortems had come back with "perfectly healthy bouncing baby - no idea how they died" you could understand further investigation being utterly appropriate, although SIDS is a thing, obviously.

Instead we have Evans and the judiciary basically saying we want murders, and murders we shall have, regardless of any evidence to the contrary.