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…

Years far more likely than months, unfortunately

I understand it is normal practice to publish in certain journals? I was thinking it’s been held up in the peer-review process or can’t be published until the CCRC decision is made.

@kkloo It isn't just one excuse after another, it's people showing that there's alternative explanations for everything that has put forward as a sign of guilt.

There were over 20 charges and you think they can all be explained away to the point it's credible she could actually be innocent?

No it's not ironic, I think the most obvious explanation is that she didn't do it, but I accept others are convinced by the evidence, you should do the same and accept that others aren't, but you won't do that, you just keep trying to label and other people and come up with all of your theories and project things about yourself onto others.

Am I just supposed to accept antivaxxer arguments or 9/11 conspiracies too?

You definitely don't understand human behaviour and wouldn't run rings around anyone, you've mentioned several times you're interested in the psychology of her as a serial killer but you don't even understand psychology of normal people, you should start there.

I don't think I'm amazing in that area either, just an average woman with average levels of perception.

And yes someone good at science or stats will often overly focus on that area, there's literally nothing wrong with them doing that, but yet to you that means they're robots and cold and emotionless. Those people are important to society.

No one said they're not important to society. It'd be nice to be highly intelligent so I'm certainly not knocking it. I think where I draw the line is Gill having to be warned off by the police for making threats. No doubt it's the "great injustice" he's convinced himself of here that drives him crazy. Oops there I am psychoanalysing people again!

It wouldn't let me post a screenshot of that sub but they basically compared the baby deaths to being like a miscarriage or stillbirth and said they were likely to die anyway and the parents just wanted someone to blame. Whilst crying about the tragedy of Lucy being taken away from her parents and locked up. 10 upvotes. You're right I shouldn't have called them cold and emotionless. They definitely seem to care and feel empathy for the serial baby killer. Pity it's not for anyone else in this case.

No it wouldn't be normal at all. Medical journals publish short case studies - a page or two usually - when they have something new to tell medics. They wouldn't be at all interested in hundreds of pages of case analysis on children whose deaths and collapses are explained by existing science.

There are always going to be ten people somewhere on the Internet to upvote something. I wouldn't have upvoted what you have written there, but there's no reason to blame anyone on this thread for it. Most people worried about the conviction wouldn't necessarily believe that the seven children concerned would have died anyway - they are concerned like the first external reviewer about suboptimal care contributing to deaths. So that doesn't sound like a majority view at all.

It's possible there's something worth publishing in much reduced form eventually, but medical journals don't really want cases where the cause of death is in dispute, so I wouldn't expect that before any acquittal. Even then, there may not be anything scientifically interesting - depends on the detail.

You are half right. We should take experts' opinions seriously when they are talking about their area of expertise. That is where Richard Gill and Jane Hutton should be respected.

They have no clue if she's guilty or not. How do stats solve this issue?

I don't follow Richard Gill's activities closely, @Firefly1987 . But I don't remember him being warned by police about making threats. Could you point me to some information on that?

I remember him being threatened by police with contempt of course proceedings: https://www.thejusticegap.com/is-lucy-letby-another-miscarriage-driven-by-courts-failure-to-grasp-stats/

But not aware of anything else

Stats were used to build this case. You yourself often use them to defend it, talking about how Lucy Letby was "always there" for various things. The significance of her being "there" can only be judged when we know how likely or unlikely her being "there" was. The significant of Chester's run on deaths can only be judged when we compare it with other hospitals taking equally sick children. These and other comparisons need to be guided by expert statisticians.

Yes I think there is explanations for everything. As do many people. If we didn't then we wouldn't even care about the case would we? we might think the science is dodgy for some but it's clear she killed other babies so who cares.
Why even ask these obvious questions?

You don't have to 'accept' their arguments if by accept you mean be convinced by them.
You should of course accept that other people believe different things than you do though, which is literally all that most of us have asked you to do on all of these threads. I think occasionally a couple have tried to convince you but by and large I think people just want you to just accept that other people have different opinions than you do and it's not because of any of the theories you come up with.

Ok so if you average levels of perception about human behaviour then here's a question for you.

Let's say there's an innocent woman, accused of a horrendous crime like killing babies, this woman loses her job and gets arrested several times and deals with all that that entails and then locked up pending trial. This woman gets diagnosed with PTSD and depression.

If the woman in the case struggles to remember some details when questioned, gets mixed up with things, appears flat or a bit odd at times, when she's on the stand she shows emotion when she's talking about the things that she's lost etc.

Is that normal behaviour in the context of the situation?

Yes or no?

If I recall correctly he made some stupid joke about wanting to go into court with a machine gun.
Obviously just a joke but he should have known better. I have enormous respect for his intelligence and ability as a statistician but he isn’t very good at being circumspect in his speech.

Oh and yes I agree with @Firefly1987 that the dismissal of the opinions and feelings on this thread of the parents whose children died is appalling. I knew about babies D and E and I’ve just been reading about Child F whose mother saw Letby attacking her baby. “Trust me, I’m a nurse” she (chillingly) said to the mum. It’s them I’m much more inclined to believe rather than anyone posting here or on Reddit. Their feelings and opinions matter. I can’t imagine even in the tiniest way possible the trauma and grief they and all the other parents may be feeling, forever.

Also, I recommend the (paywalled) Times coverage (I think you could get a free trial), it’s pretty in-depth.

Yes, that would be daft and ill advised, but obviously wouldn't affect his expertise in statistics!

That said, I believe it's Jane Hutton who compiled the statistical report for the CCRC review anyway, not Gill.

The parents’ feelings do not supersede the possibility of a miscarriage of justice, it really is as simple as that.

The parents' feelings matter, but given that none of them suspected that their babies had been harmed by Lucy Letby until they were contacted by the police years later, their opinions have obviously been shaped by the legal case against her like anyone else's.

The mother of child E and F thought about asking Lucy Letby to be a godmother at the time. She obviously had no problem with her until she was arrested for murder.

Absolutely. But that wasn’t my point.

Tone Is hard to convey in text so I need to clarify that this question is very genuine - what was the point, then?

I think it was pointed out before that Beverley Allitt was also asked to be godmother so assume based on that logic she's not guilty either? You know people stuck by Harold Shipman for quite a while despite the fact he'd actually killed more than one of their family members? These people are manipulative, they're excellent at getting people to trust them. It's such a bad argument for why they're not guilty.

A lot of crimes are only apparently in hindsight when you've got all the facts and you realise the same pattern happened to many other people. I mean this is the kind of thing which makes me think people have a blind spot when it comes to this case. You can't possibly think because they didn't suspect a nurse of being a literal serial killer at the time that it means anything?

The significant of Chester's run on deaths can only be judged when we compare it with other hospitals taking equally sick children. These and other comparisons need to be guided by expert statisticians.

I might be misunderstanding here but are you seriously saying you can completely disregard the possibility of a serial killer at one hospital based on other hospitals death rates?

I'm not assuming Lucy Letby was innocent based on the idea that they might have asked her to be godmother.

I'm pointing out that their impressions of her at the time didn't contribute any evidence that she was guilty, and that their later opinions were liable to contamination by the murder accusation, police investigation and trial.

There's no reason to doubt their recall of facts, even if times, identifies of nurses etc can be disputed. But there is also no reason to treat their evidence as impervious to challenge, however much sympathy you have for their loss and suffering. We can't do that and expect to have justice.

I’ve made my point, clearly. Perhaps copy and paste my post in Chat GPT.

Indeed not, and it's actually rather appalling that some people try and criticise others for understanding that.

Possibility? No. You could have a serial killer in a hospital with a perfectly average death rate; even a below average death rate. But you can use statistics to consider whether events are likely to be consistent with natural causes.

You have to have some understanding of the base rate of deaths in equivalent circumstances in comparable hospitals before you can declare a specific hospital's rate as unusual.

I understood your point the same way as @plantseeds

I try always to write respectfully about the parents. That doesn't mean their recall or interpretation of events can't be queried. I haven't seen anyone write disrespectfully about them on this thread, that I can remember.