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.

For a start off, the ward was downgraded after she left so they didn't have babies anything like as sick, so you'd be worried if there wasn't a huge uptick in survival.

Other than the obvious fact that if there were concerns on the ward (which there were considerable ones eg the normal number of times a doctor should seeing each baby massively below the recommendation) the death rate isn't incredibly low:

From an NHS site:
https://www.uhb.nhs.uk/media/c0rng5ck/pi_neonatal-unit_patient-information-for-babies-born-at-24-27-weeks.pdf
24- 25 weeks 60% survive
25-26 weeks 70% survive
26-27 weeks 80% survive.
27-28 weeks 90% survive.
The above numbers are based on the data from neonatal units across England & Wales, United, 2019

Or to put it another way:
24- 25 weeks 4 out of 10 babies die
25-26 weeks 3 out of 10 babies die
26-27 weeks 2 out of 10 babies die
27-28 weeks 1 out of 10 babies die.

Do you honestly feel those were great odds and incredibly low.

Or another way:
If you have one baby born at 24 weeks, one at 25 weeks, one at 26 weeks, the chance of all three surviving is 33.6%, so only 3 times in 10 would all three survive.
If you had 4 24 week babies, the chance is just over 10%, that's one in 10, of them all surviving.

And that's part of the problem with the trial. It misused statistics.

I'd agree that the doctor's opinion stands out. It stands out as at best misinformed on prem babies.

So sorry to hear this.

My thoughts are with them. They sound very thoughtful people.

Actually, most people are thinking of the poor parents. If Letby isn’t guilty, which is looking increasingly likely, they have not got justice for their children.
Surely the important thing is making sure the correct person/people responsible are punished?

It sounds from this like you think because someone was tried in a court of law and found guilty, that ought to be sufficient for everyone. With that in mind, maybe you're astonished because you're not sufficiently familiar with the concept of a miscarriage of justice. So I'd probably start there.

In fact you have world renowned experts saying they weren’t murdered .

Might you not be sufficiently familiar that it’s extremely rare?

People want a white, homely woman to be innocent. Wonder why?

@Aquarius91 But I trust the justice system in this country

Then you're very naive. There have been multiple miscarriages of justice and when it's been obvious that someone is innocent like in the Andrew Malkinson rape case, those at the top of the institutions there to protect us and see justice done, have doubled down to save their own sorry arses. Don't talk to me about the justice system in this country. It has failed a lot of people.

I don't know whether Lucy Letby is innocent, but this case is nowhere near black and white enough for the result that was handed down. Jeremy Bamber is another case that I think will prove to be a miscarriage of justice and he's been in prison now since the 1980s.

There was a man released recently after spending 40 years in jail for the
murder of that young lady in Birkenhead.
He didn’t do it.

It does happen. It also happens and nothing ever gets done about it.

@routineiskey you absolutely don't have to answer but I was wondering if they have an opinion either way based on the expert panels views? I think what they are having to deal with is absolutely awful and feel very sad for them.

Shamima Begum?!?! Other white women have been done for murder. There are definitely questions over the trial but it goes beyond conspiracy theorists and macabre from people, as you suggest.

Like pp stated just now, the parents need closure themsleves. She may well still be guilty, or there may be other failures that need to be investigated. Court experts providing any false or misleading evidence to a court is seriously concerning, again, irrespective of Lucy’s guilt or not

By appeal judges who know a lot more about it than we do.

What does extremely mean in this context, what's your evidence for that, what do you think the right threshold is to be concerned and what are your qualifications to assess any of this?

On the subject of demographic factors, Letby's not the only one with those. Presumably you know that it's easier for males to be taken seriously than females, so do you really think there'd be so many people insisting that we have to trust the verdict if the judge and most of the doctors who think she's guilty weren't male?

Honestly, I'm open to actual analysis and reasons why people think the conviction is safe. But nothing in your post does that. Let's assume for the sake of argument that people would be less willing to consider the possibility of an MOJ if LL weren't a young white woman. That doesn't actually tell us anything about whether there was one or not.

It is macabre, to revel over documents and evidence, thinking they have some sort of authority to even understand what they are reading….never mind coming up with a different conclusion to the court and spouting off about it.

I’ve also noticed the lies being told that the families want ‘closure’ .Yes, they want the public to stop supporting this baby killer and not have to go through more appeals.
What family on record have came out and
stated that they don’t believe LL killed their child?

Cola32
Shamima Begum?!?! Other white women have been done for murder. There are definitely questions over the trial but it goes beyond conspiracy theorists and macabre from people, as you suggest.

I struggle to believe Shamima Begum has a lot of mainstream public support. Can you provide any evidence of this?

On the retrial point, part of the issue there is structural. The COA judges were being asked to consider a set of narrow legal criteria. If it does turn out there was an MOJ, it doesn't actually mean they got it wrong.

For the sake of argument let’s say that view holds and the only reason it’s got public interest backing it is because she is white and blonde.

Does that mean she should be in prison for the rest of her life for crimes she didn’t commit? It doesn’t, does it?

I have no idea if she did it or not but her conviction is not beyond all doubt . It doesn’t matter how much legal time is given if the same information is being churned around . There imo is now an unsafe conviction bearing in mind world renowned neonatal experts are saying there were no murders . She needs a retrial .

I don’t think Shamima Begum does but if LL was irrefutably guilty as Begum is I don’t think she would either.

It is the questionable nature of the convictions and not appearance that are the driving factors here.

I certainly don’t think so. As I said in my first post on this thread.

I'll bet the parents of those who were killed in the Birmingham pub bombings didn't enjoy reading newspaper reports, and watching television programmes claiming that the men convicted of the attacks were actually innocent. And, guess what? It turned out they were, beyond a shadow of a doubt!

Sorry; it wasn’t so much aimed at you as the numerous bleats of ‘oh you’re only supporting her because she’s an attractive female!’

I am supporting her as I genuinely believe she is innocent and what’s chilling about this is the massive cover up behind it. It certainly sends a very dark and grim message to anybody in the NHS who considers raising a grievance doesn’t it?

How is it helping the "poor parents" to have an innocent women imprisoned? Surely they want the truth? I believe LL has been scapegoated for the hospital's incompetence and poor hygiene practices.

Underpinning this is the relationship between doctors and nurses which no one really understands unless you’ve worked in wards and units. There’s a power differential always at play. Drs usurp to protect each other. I’m concerned if it’s only doctors being called as expert witnesses because of that bias.

There are experts who do not agree with the conclusions of the expert in the trial- a prosecution expert.

Why the defence did not call their own expert is incomprehensible to me.

My understanding is that the coroner inquests were the cause of death would have been explored did not find anything untoward about the care provided by this nurse.

She is wrong. The ICU cots were removed from the wards in 2016, at the same time that Lucy Letby was taken off the ward. One cot remains to contain emergency cases very briefly where a child born at the hospital has unexpected needs and can't be transferred to a local ICU immediately. That's all.

There have probably been about 500 children through the unit since then, but it's not an ICU and they aren't ICU babies.

When Lucy Letby was working there they had three ICU cots officially, and they were taking as many as seven children at a time needing intensive care.