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.

Yes indeed. But the fact that people still parrot the fact that no babies have died since LL left the unit shows how prevailing it is as a view.

(Replied to wrong post)

I always find it odd when people say these experts - Shoo Lee, Neena Modi and a host of international professionals of various nationalities only care about Lucy Letby because she is a white British woman. Even assuming that humans tend to care more about people like them - why would this affect the international panel?

Speak for yourself. Not everyone thinks the way you do.

You are usually well advised not to comment on anything complex (or indeed anything at all) under police questioning. Lucy Letby would have had this as legal advice. Though from what I've seen quoted, she explained those famous post-it notes, for example, pretty well, and quite reasonably couldn't remember details of her working days from years before.

Can you give an example of anything you would consider a smoking gun in the police interrogations? We are obviously coming at this from different angles, but I really haven't heard of anything.

I had to "defend" myself after a false accusation that didn't make it to criminal court, but which could have had a very different outcome than the one it did, thank God.

What people fail to realise is that any court setting is adversarial, and "the truth" is no longer the goal after a certain point of investment, winning or losing is the focus.

When evidence is complex and ambiguous, you're basically asking a jury or a judge in civil court to decide which version they like better, or which seems more plausible, which again depends on many factors.

I had to do alot of medically based research 30 years ago, and discovered that things stated as fact by medical professionals were not set in stone, and I was roundly criticised for daring to question them. It went against me in many ways.

So in this case, the first things I did when I finally allowed myself to look at what was being reported, was to look up the diameters of NG tubes, the size of a neonates liver, etc etc. And the implausibility of the proposed mechanisms of death was glaringly obvious. From there, looking at court transcripts etc it was obvious that character assasination was a primary tool in the prosecutions arsenal.

One thing that strikes me is the total absence of anyone coming out after the case to tell all about her flaws or weird behaviour, not one "ooh, we always knew she was a wrong un" which is what is often seen. (Usually for money).

Also lack of psychological reports, which I've looked for, but haven't found.

But I tell you this, when you're accused of something you didn't do, and see how the jystice system works from the inside, the trauma is indescribable. Taking one for the team and accepting that your life has been destroyed as just a legal or statistical anomaly is not as easy to swallow as those outwith that experience would like to imagine.

In this case, the ramifications are dangerous for patients and staff in equal measure. The truth is the obvious requirement, especially for the bereaved parents, and obviously Lucy Letby herself.

She has more mainstream support than Lucy Letby or have you not heard the news or been on any social medial platform in years? She’s a poor innocent victim.

I don't know if I believe LL is guilty or innocent, but I think there's enough credible doubt being shed on the conviction to warrant a retrial.

FWIW I thought the Netflix documentary was well balanced.

It must be utterly horrendous for the parents and families of those babies, but as a society we need to ensure that our Justice system is robust and also be mindful that miscarriages of justice DO, sadly occur.

I can't help thinking that if she was unattractive and not blonde and pretty she would be guilty as charged in most people's eyes, and no one would give a damn about her.

Also noticed when she was charged at first, a lot of men were quick to jump to her defence.

I actually think she’s ordinary looking, unremarkable, but I’m finding these sorts of posts quite frustrating as a feminist.

Was anyone claiming that people only cared about Michael Shirley because he was young and fairly standardly attractive ? I don’t remember that being mentioned once.

How about derek Bentley, maybe one of the best known miscarriages of justice? Anyone saying ‘oh, who cares, you only cared because he was blonde and white’?

It’s purely reserved for women.

Either letby is a victim of a huge miscarriage of justice, or she is not. Her looks should not come into it and we should honestly be better than this. It doesn’t matter if she is as beautiful as a supermodel or as ugly as sin, it is completely and utterly irrelevant.

I really don’t understand why people keep saying this.

Watching the documentary now and I’m more convinced than ever that she’s innocent.
The whole thing is horrific. For the parents of the babies, for LL. Somebody in the Countess knows dam well what happened.

Indeed. Dare I say it, rather problematic of those posters to project their own UK centric analysis of race and sex politics onto a global panel. Very closed minded.

I don’t think there is any contradiction in saying that Lucy Letby’s status as a young, attractive, white middle-class woman who was described as nice, garnered a lot of public attention and support that made professionals of all backgrounds take an interest in the case.

Which is quite a lot less than some of the claims being made, though.

And it would only have taken one email to tell Shoo Lee about the gross misrepresentation of his research. So one wonders whether people think he'd have just ignored any contact from fellow professionals alerting him to his research being misused in a baby serial killing trial if she weren't a young white woman?

FGS

No they just seem to be torn between two awful options and there’s no closure. We havent discussed the expert panel but they have expressed total confusion because it’s extremely complicated. The grief is horrendous and the frustration they are experiencing isn’t helped by the fact this is all so slow moving despite so much frantic news regarding it.

That's a fairer statement. If anything were known against her character, for example, I'm sure some people would be more reluctant to get involved. But you can't blame her for that!

Would people think of a junior nurse as middle class, on those wages, anyway? For me that is a complicated question. I've always thought the fact that she and her parents didn't lawyer up immediately consultants started making accusations, for example, would be a sign that they weren't familiar with middle-class professional expectations. Likewise, their pride in their daughter becoming a nurse. Round here trainee nurses are overwhelmingly working class.

In any case, I get that these weak signifiers - looks like a nice girl etc - could influence people's judgement of her when they're just scrolling online. Talk is cheap, online especially. I'm a long way from being convinced that the kudos of being a moderately attractive, respectable woman would draw in experts to give their very expensive time and put their reputations on the line, from around the world. That seems exaggerated.

The “it’s just because she’s white and pretty” is so bloody lazy. The international panel haven’t come to her defence because she’s blonde and pretty, they did it because the science presented by the prosecution was inaccurate. Her looks didn’t cause a doctor to “misremember” on the stand (with damning testimony now proved to be false) which has now trashed his credibility as a witness and made people doubt him further. Her looks didn’t make Evans’ “expert” testimony have more holes than a sieve and bias from day one. Her looks didn’t result in new studies about insulin which give doubt about the evidence presented at trial.

People question the conviction because it’s the biggest case of serial murder of children in the UK and they can see the many, many holes in the case, and therefore aren’t convinced of her guilt or the safety of the conviction. I accept that the general public that haven’t really read anything about it may pay more attention because of her looks but the concerns around potential miscarriage of justice from those that have followed the Letby case, new evidence, and Thirlwell are about the inadequacies of the prosecution’s case more than anything. It’s nothing to do with them liking Letby or ignoring genuine evidence because they just can’t believe it’s true a young, white woman would do it.

As soon as she was convicted the case against her was being questioned. I think that’s unusual. It’s a situation that invites professional curiosity.

I would just say that the public mood on an issue shouldn’t be discounted. The issues with the Horizon IT system in the Post Office scandal were publicly known and reported many years before the ITV drama. It was the drama bringing the issue to the attention of Joe Public that really started the justice process.

She wrote in her mass of scrawled notes "I killed them all on purpose" genuinely interested in how you interpret that.

She was TOLD to write her thoughts down.
She explained that she had been removed from the unit due to her practice being questioned and she felt they were implying that she was doing something wrong as a nurse that hurt the babies.
She wrote her thoughts down as a way of dealing with it. She also wrote “I did not do anything”

And she wrote - I haven't done anything wrong

Brain dump, basically. Standard stuff. Get your emotions and fears and darkest thoughts out and examine them.

But when questioned about that specific statement in the police interview she said "No Comment" - why not just say what you've just said?

I hate to say it but she isn’t pretty and I think it’s dishonest that people are saying she is.

I think it’s valid to point out that people might be giving her the benefit of the doubt because she’s female. There are a lot of cases of infanticide where people take great pity on female killers. But to say she’s pretty and that’s why, seriously, do you honestly think she’s some femme fatale?

Have you watched the latest documentary? You see her literally answer that question. I’ve just watched it. She explains why.