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.

A diagnosis of exclusion is based on excluding other conditions (as Evans and Bohin claimed to have done, whatever we think of their claims) in the absence of symptoms which can confirm the diagnosis in themselves. That's where the "consistent with, but not diagnostic of" comes in. It's a diagnosis of exclusion. (And as Lee and others have argued, air embolism should never be a diagnosis of exclusion because its symptoms are far too widespread across common conditions).

Arthurs and Marnerides, bringing only findings consistent with Evans's account of air embolism - and being clear on that point - did not bring "an additional and separate basis for the diagnosis". It's by no means separate.

And yes, you are right, Marnerides and Arthurs put things in the strongest terms possible with "consistent with" and that is not very strong. That's not a vague misfortune - it's an indication that only a determinedly unscientific approach can lead to the assertion that these children died of inflicted venous air embolism.

I actually wan't on this site board in early 2000s as didn't have kids and wasn't on my radar - actually took a few years after that as was on another site before leaving to here so was on here from roughly 2007 onwards and have left a few times and come back.

Nor do I see how posts would prove I read computer weekly in early 2000s and thought hmm that sounds plauisble- as I was then woking for a company doing government IT project in completely different area and was busy trying to changing jobs as very unimpressed with them. Though can tell you computer weekly were banging on about air traffic control computer system being danergous and poorly designed at the time.

Nor do I see how I can prove an understanding of family gentics and inheritance of risk - or my maths understanding to know stats don't work like that for Sally Clark case.

Also I thought Jimmy Savile odd not dangerous my Mother thought him dangerous - also shocked at Rolf Harris - though Dmum also thought him odd and said so year before any arrests let alone convitions - no idea why she has a better radar than me.

With so many international experts saying they are not sure the babies were murdered and the medical evidence in dispute I think the conviction may be unsafe.

I've said several times on this thread I don't know if she is guilty or innocent but good place to start is being sure as possible that murders took place and weren't just poor practise rather than focusing on odd stuff around Letby.

Jayaram’s testimony was that he hadn’t realised the significance of the discolouration he’d seen until he conducted a later review of the Lee and Tanswell paper, and that’s why he didn’t record it in the notes. Setting aside whether or not that constituted a failure in his professional duty, I don’t see that there was inconsistency between his notes and his testimony?

A couple of relevant extracts from the Judgment:

You can find it plausible or less plausible - that's a matter of judgement. But Father O had given no other statement so there's simply no comparison between the two cases.

Yes I can see that. It’s perfectly plausible that someone might only remember a salient fact later, with the benefit of hindsight. The accuracy of the memory is what is being questioned in the request for appeal, but clearly it’s a moot point.

However, the inclusion of reference to the father’s testimony in this rejection for an appeal is what is being questioned in this thread. It isn’t relevant

a) because there was no inconsistency so is not comparable to Jayaram’s testimony
b) because prominent veins are neither a rash, nor skin discolouration (nor air embolism)

And why would learned judges include an illogical irrelevancy? They surely aren’t attempting to deliberately obfuscate, so this suggests a fundamental lack of scientific understanding. Which supports Oftenaddled’s view that the judgement lacks rigour.

I think nomas has misread an earlier post and thinks that you are claiming to have been questioning LL’s guilt from the start. I don’t think she’s asking for evidence of your views about earlier MOJs.

As an aside, I did “know” Savile was not a good person, because I worked at the Leeds General Infirmary for a while in the 1980s and was friends with a couple of paeds nurses. It was fairly common knowledge that he was unofficially banned from the children’s wards.

On Dr Jayaram, I would not judge his reliability as a witness based on that evidence only, but also from:

The many changes he made to his account of Child K over time: the case where he claimed he had found Lucy Letby doing nothing to help a child in crisis

https://www.reddit.com/r/LucyLetbyTrials/s/ZEtSYHRyZT (long but a great read)

The eventual revelation that he had emailed to say that Lucy Letby had in fact called him for help
https://archive.is/Krydn (Unherd)

The gradual evolution of his memory of child A's distinctive rash, which he failed to mention not only in his medical notes, but also to the coroner's court, after he had read Lee's article, when specifically asked to help the court with any further information

(The coroner's inquest came up at Lucy Letby's trial, so the Court of Appeal had this information as well as the information on notes, but for whatever reason doesn't mention it. I would say that that omission doesn't reflect well on them. There was indeed another reason apart from the medical notes adduced to question Jayaram's reliability, and that was the evidence he had given in another court of law, the coroner's court)

https://www.reddit.com/r/LucyLetbyTrials/s/wyE0ZX8uu4

I suspect that one of the issues that the CPS must have weighed when considering new charges is whether his testimony, in old or new cases, could now stand up in court. It doesn't seem right that she can remain in prison for the rest of her life with this man's testimony having played so large a part in her conviction.

Honestly not sure what she arguing at this point.

I wasn't questioning LL guilt at start - even now I don't know if Letbys guilty or innocent.

I am concerned as have said several times on this thread that there are a lot of questions being raised about the medical and other evidence used at the trial.

I've read on here and in press lots of people "knew" about Savile and even Rolf Harris - but I wasn't in those circles of awareness and didn't guess there were issues- seen similar said about Weinstein - saw media podcast they said often happens when they can't prove enough to print but rumours swirl for years fairly or not - and if true everyone then comes out and says oh yes everyone knew.

But again, what was the inconsistency in Jayaram’s testimony? That is exactly the CoA Judges’ point isn’t it - that there was no evidential basis for the defence suggesting that EITHER Jayaram OR the father of Baby O were making up the discolouration they had seen, yet it was only Jayaram that this suggestion was put to.

How is this either deliberately obfuscatory (of what?) or suggestive of a fundamental lack of scientific understanding? What it relates to is the Judges’ view of the way the defence was conducted in the trial, which is entirely their prerogative to discuss (as is of course also the case for the conduct of the prosecution, the trial judge, the jury etc where it is relevant to the appeal grounds).

Of course there's an evidential basis. If you saw an extraordinary rash that you had never seen before, why on earth wouldn't you note it in the child's medical records? This baby died - it would hardly have been trivial information.

Jayaram's reason is flimsy, and even if you find it plausible, there is no comparison with a case where no alternative account by the same witness exists..

None of what you have written here supports your earlier assertion that the Court of Appeal Judgment is a ‘very flawed’ document though, which is the only point I’ve been arguing in this discussion about Jayaram’s evidence. And I’m really not interested in Reddit links, thanks all the same.

Some of this applies to what I wrote about the Court of Appeal - that judgement stated that the only reason to doubt Dr Jayaram's recall was the medical notes, when the court had heard that the same issue (whether you consider it a problem or not) arose at the coroner's inquest (a legal hearing)

The rest is expanding on the problems of Dr Jayaram's testimony more generally, since he is under discussion, and is not part of my response to your questions about the court of appeal, no.

The inconsistency is between Jayaram’s medical notes, and his later statement.

The judges’ reference to the father’s statement is an irrelevancy. There was no inconsistency in the father’s statement, and it has nothing to do with any rashes.

Why have they included it at all?

The judges could have said ‘“yes, Dr Jayaram’s statement was inconsistent with his contemporaneous notes but we don’t think that matters; we believe his recollection is accurate and that it’s unremarkable that he only realised the importance** of the rash later on”.

But they didn’t. They chose to remark on the father’s statement not being criticised by the defence. Why would the judges do that? What bearing does this have on anything?

** but remember the rash does not indicate venous air embolism anyway.

I watched the documentary yesterday. I haven't read the full thread yet as the app keeps bouncing me out. However I felt it was extremely worrying that Lord Justice Jackson was concerned enough about Dr Dewi Evans independence as an expert witness that he wrote to Judge Goss.

It's a really serious step and highly unusual. That the Defence didn't have their own expert in those circumstances is extremely troubling.

Given Dr Shoo Lee's misgivings about the use of his research I don't think this can be considered a safe conviction.

For me this is sounding far to similar to the failings in the Sally Clark case.

I’ve just read the judgment and the Lee and Tanswell paper again.

The judgement repeatedly makes reference to Lee and Tanswell’s observations about skin discolouration, for example

142. The real issue at trial was as to what signs and symptoms were sufficient to enable a reliable diagnosis of air embolus. We again observe that, in the submissions to this court, it was at least tacitly accepted that cases noted in the Lee and Tanswell paper which showed a type of skin discolouration other than “bright pink vessels against a generally cyanosed cutaneous background” were indeed cases of air embolus. It follows that the differing types of skin discolouration observed in neonates in those cases were at least consistent with air embolus.

However, Lee has (and presume had at the time of the judgement) made it clear that the cases in the paper were all of babies with arterial air emboli. There has never been any suggestion that Letby somehow managed to gain arterial access without anyone noticing.

So what was the judges’ point in 142. above? From a scientific viewpoint, it’s irrelevant drivel.

And "at least consistent with" is desperate stuff.

They are trying to tell us that lots of rashes can "be consistent with" air embolism. Of course they can! Most newborn babies have rashes at some point. Shock and infection cause rashes. Piling up the "consistent withs" when the symptoms are so common is pointless.

Yes. They also don’t seem to understand the concept of diagnosis by exclusion.

But why should they? They are lawyers, not medical professionals.

Are you definitely reading the version of the paper that was referenced in the trial? My understanding is that with a view to creating fresh evidence for the CCRC application, Lee has since updated the 1989 paper to say that the skin discolouration was only present in the cases of arterial and not venous air emboli.

The 1989 paper is Tanswell and Lee so that's the one referenced in that paragraph. The 2025 paper is Zhou and Lee.

Yes I am. Why?

You aren’t suggesting that Lee is not being truthful about the source data?

No, I just knew that he had said he clarified re venous/arterial in an update with a view to it being accepted by the CCRC, so was asking if it was the same version. But if you’re saying it’s already very obvious from the original paper then now I’m wondering why he thought it needed updating 🤷‍♀️

Zhou and Lee updated the paper to include all relevant published cases since 1989. Pretty sensible - anything he had wanted to say otherwise could have been undermined by the 35 years of missing data.

A reviewer at the BMJ suggested to him that he should tabulate to distinguish symptoms of arterial and venous air embolism rather than rely on readers to put that information together for themselves.

The distinction is indeed clear in the first, from the narrative, but with an expanded dataset, collating by origin obviously makes the data easier to follow.

That the Defence didn't have their own expert in those circumstances is extremely troubling.

They did have defence experts they just decided not to call them. Now from an innocence perspective that makes absolutely no sense, but from a guilty POV...

From an innocent (or neutral) point of view the decision not to call defence witnesses does make sense to lawyers. I have links to their explanations saved. It was a strategy - hard to say if it was the right strategy, though.

It's a pity none of the documentaries we have have gone into this instead of going over the same points

I've posted links before but putting them together for anyone who is interested
https://davidallengreen.com/2024/07/the-lucy-letby-case-some-thoughts-and-observations-what-should-happen-when-a-defence-does-not-put-in-their-own-expert-evidence-for-good-reason-or-bad/

https://unherd.com/2024/07/the-questions-haunting-the-lucy-letby-trial/
https://jollycontrarian.com/index.php/Lucy_Letby:_the_missing_defence_evidence

And a journalist perspective from Phil Hammond at Private Eye
https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/lucy-letby-28.pdf

Part of the reason the main defence witness wasn't called is because the defence wanted him to be able to address each case in turn directly after the prosecutions assertions, which sounds eminently sensible to me, as the jury would have been able to balance both sides in real time. The judge denied this. So effectively the prosecution was able to flood the court with cumulatively damning opinions and assertions, and it would have meant going through the whole thing all over again when everyone was already overwhelmed with negative information. I can also imagine that if the defence expert had been called after that, the trial would have lengthened considerably, and that might have been undesirable from a cost analysis perspective. Remember it's not about the truth, it's about winning or losing. Which is a crying shame for all concerned.