To think Lucy Letby could’ve done more to help herself if she really wasn’t guilty?

[Seymorbutts]

Just watched the new Lucy Letby documentary on Netflix. I think there’s one of C4 too, don’t know if it’s the same one? I’m leaning slightly more towards that she did it, but only about 60% sure she did it. 40% sure she didn’t do it. On this doc there’s a lot of footage of all her arrests and police interviews. What strikes me as odd IF she’s innocent, is how little she protests her innocence, how calm & composed she is. It’s the same during her arrests. I understand she must’ve been in shock when she was arrested so that could explain it. But she was interviewed for hours. Not once did she say “I didn’t do this” (unless directly asked, which she just answered with “no”) “I’m innocent”, “I could never kill a baby”. Nothing like that. Very little crying too. I know she’s supposedly very quiet and reserved and I’m sure was very scared, but I don’t think personality can account for a total lack of defending herself (or maybe she was just following the advice given by her lawyer). But still, if it was me I’d be absolutely raging, and protesting my innocence at every opportunity and giving clear, detailed reasons why I couldn’t have done it when they put it to me that I did. Or maybe she did do it and she’s a psychopath and unable to show remorse, which could explain her lack of any kind of emotion at all 🤷‍♀️ I really don’t know. If she is innocent though, I feel like the way she behaved made her look guilty. Interested to hear if people think she did it or not and why/why not…

Don't think it is. This was only brought up because of the previous link to that ridiculous YouTube.

It did happen in baby A isn't that the disagreement?

She did remember drawing up medication for baby D, this should have said!

No, if it was known to have happened in baby A we would have evidence of air embolism which would put all this to bed. (Though Baby A had just had a procedure which could cause accidental air embolism. That's why it was considered and excluded at his inquest)

It's a blood clot which is supposed to have travelled from baby A's venous to arterial system I believe. Lee didn't claim things couldn't travel through the foramen ovale. He very specifically said that they could.

But he explained that pressures in your body would make it unlikely that injected air would do so, and that it had never been known to happen and produce Lee's sign of red-pink discoloration on a bluish background moving around the body or patchy discolorations in the cases he had examined of air injected in a vein with a syringe.

So then we are just back to who we agree with Shoo et al or Evans, Bohin Kinsey etc and all the other circumstances around it.
I also think BM did a good job at defending her questioning and raising doubt. But as always people disagree with that.
Roll on CCRC!

Yes indeed!

I have just been reading that the CCRC took ten years to get back to Jeremy Bamber on his most recent application, which whatever you think about Jeremy Bamber seems a bit casual. I hope they really have improved since their resignations and reform last year.

I agree with you in that. That it shouldn't take so long ' if' it is a MOJ. That the court transcripts shouldn't cost 100k.
Though to be fair to them this is an absolutely massive case with lots of information.

Yes I think if people are honest with themselves and look beyond their feelings about this one case, it's clear that a system functioning as slowly as this is bad for everyone. We all deserve a speedier mechanism for identifying MOJs than we've got. Could be any of us one day.

True that Letby's case is particularly voluminous and complex, but if I were a betting woman I'd say it's probably still going to move faster than some of the others. I doubt that the CCRC would be able to get away with anything like the poor use of public funds argument they used against Malkinson, for example.

This is what is most troubling. Colin Norris similar. It seems to take the best part of a decade which just really isn’t good enough.

Air Embolism is so rare that there wouldn't be enough cases to definitively say what can or can't happen. It's a theory that's all. The only other cases would be accidental, unlike at COCH. Shoo Lee only collected the cases together, he's not an absolute authority on the subject.

When something is rare, one can still state whether or not it has ever been reported to happen. That's one of the uses of the kind of literature review Lee (and many other scientists) have done.

So: air embolism is rare.

Air embolism injected into the vein has simply never been shown, in case reports, to travel into the arterial system and produce Lee's sign

That's all Lee is saying: it has never been reported to happen. You can't, for that reason, take Lee's sign as evidence that it has happened. Because there is literally no evidence, not a single case, for this claim.

In the same way, zebra bites are rare. They have never been shown to produce the same marks as giraffe bites.

If therefore I see someone with giraffe bite marks, I have no justification for assuming they were bitten by a zebra. If I say, it's rare, you're not an expert, it could be ... you're obviously going to say, we need some evidence that a zebra bite would look like that.

If you were running a zebra extermination campaign, this might annoy you. You might say, well if zebras bit people more often we'd have evidence. But that would be wishful thinking.

It is still worth reading the letter that Michael Hall, Lucy Letby's original defence expert, wrote to the British Medical Journal after the Court of Appeal gave their verdict

He explains the problems with their interpretation of Shoo Lee's work very clearly, and he also explains why one of the papers Professor Clarke cited doesn't affect Lee's conclusion. Just a couple of pages and well worth the time for anyone who wants to understand the issues

www.bmj.com/content/386/bmj.q1487/rr-0

“You can't, for that reason, take Lee's sign as evidence” - and even if you could, I thought Lee’s sign was not observed in CoCH cases, at least based on contemporary notes?

Nothing like it was ever described in contemporary notes, no. Or (in the case of baby A) at the coroner's inquest more than a year after the child died and after Dr Jayaram was asked for any further information that might possibly help. Dr Jayaram had read the famous Tanswell and Lee article by then, so he would have understood the significance of the rash. Even so, he didn't remember or describe it.

I believe she said she was led out in her pajamas in front of the neighbours. Which was obviously a lie. People will twist anything though! Nick Johnson even offered to play her the video of the arrest but she declined, wonder why...

Definitely. Your input is invaluable. A lot of claims get made on this thread that are touted as fact and it's really useful having someone who knows what they're talking about rebutting them.

The only thing that really matters as it stands is what happened in court. There were plenty of experts that mostly agreed with the prosecution. I guess it took a couple years for someone on the planet to manufacture an explanation for the insulin test results or claim someone misinterpreted their paper (even though the rash wasn't the only thing that pointed directly to intentional AE) but every angle was already covered in court. Nothing stood up but Lucy Letby intentionally harming babies.

No, she didn't say that

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-65854106

He then asked her about her arrest, which he said she had claimed saw her being led away from her home in a nightgown.
He said Ms Letby was actually wearing a blue Lee Cooper leisure suit at the time.
She said she did not know why she had lied about that detail.
"You're a very calculating woman, aren't you, Lucy Letby?" Mr Johnson said.
"You tell lies deliberately and the reason you tell lies is to get sympathy and attention from people."
"No," she replied.

Not sure what you're disagreeing with but she admitted herself that she lied. She lies so much I doubt she can keep track of them all.

None of the other symptoms attributed to AE were particularly uncommon. That is why AE should never be a diagnosis of exclusion.

Lee as is well known wasn't aware that his paper was used in the trial until months after it ended.

Many questions in science aren't asked until there's a reason to explore them, at which stage a year or two isn't an unusual time scale. As our legal system recognises, science moves on, and that is one of the things that can overturn verdicts.

That article doesn't say she claimed she was led away in her pyjamas in front of her neighbours.

It doesn't say she admitted she lied either.

@Oftenaddled I don't think the details of being "led away in front of her neighbours" matters-although you could certainly infer that as why else would it matter if she was led away in her pajamas if her neighbours didn't see her? Fact is she wasn't led away in her PJs/nightie, that much is clear. If it's the time she was in a dressing gown she's talking about then that's on her for deciding to wear it on top of clothes (very strange thing to do!)

It doesn't say she admitted she lied either.

Er yes it does-She said she did not know why she had lied about that detail.
How can you not be admitting you lied when saying you don't know why you lied about something 😆

As, I said, she didn't say anything about being led away in front of the neighbours. You can infer what you like but you can't accuse her of lying based on that.

As to admitting she lied, I see the article does imply that, thanks, but it's a stretch. Johnson was accusing her of lying because she was wearing her tracksuit under her dressing gown the second time; she was telling him she'd been talking about the first time.

NJ: And you remember this, don't you?
LL: Yes.
NJ: Why did you lie to the jury about it?
LL: I don't know.
NJ: You don't know? What advantage were you looking for by telling the jury that you were taken away by the police in your pyjamas? What benefit was there?
LL: Because that's what happened on the first time that was how quickly everything happened
NJ: No no on the first time you were taken away in your blue Lee Cooper, do you want to watch the video?

Such a ridiculous line of questioning to begin with anyway, latching onto that to try to make it mean something, the judge shouldn't have allowed that nonsense.

The whole thing is uncomfortable reading actually. It’s just bullying.