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…

I think it's advised to say as little as possible without legal representation.

I've read that she was on a lot of medication which would impact her reactions.

None of this points to her guilt. Im not saying she was innocent but her trial was very flawed imo.

Also, as a PP said, many criminals are absolutely expert at lying, convincing and persuading. So her lack of that means nothing.

"No comment" is the recommended reply to police questions, at least until legal advice has been given, and often that is the advice,

If you give any information to the police it can be twisted, so even if you are innocent you say nothing. YouTube will give plenty of legal experts (real ones) explaining why. My DP has the Copper Stopper (?) book which gives the same advice. If the LL case teaches something, it has to be that great care needs to be taken when answering anything other than "No comment" to questions, oh and cry, if you don't cry, tear your hair out and wail at the sky then you are definitely guilty.

I don’t know if she’s innocent or guilty.

What I do know is that the NHS will always look for a scapegoat. Always. A shit department will always blame one member of staff. She may have known this was coming, she was dosed up to the eyeballs on antidepressants. She was probably feeling pretty numb inside.

Nobody knows how they would react in that situation.

I think it's advised to say as little as possible without legal representation.

Yes, very much so. That goes for all of you!

My son was in PICU for 7 weeks and they remember him well but only because he survived against all of the odds
And in that case, baby 'Zoe' died against all odds. That certainly would be a case you'd remember as a nurse.

Based on the documentary, what got me most compared to what I had read was all the notes she kept. Her excuse just did no wash. Not for anyone working in a hospital. Not that level of notes. Doesn't alone make her guilty but something was definitely on with some form of abnormal obsession with these babies.

I think - particularly if you are mentally struggling - it's very easy to convince yourself that maybe something did happen.

Look at all the "recovered memory" scandals in the 1990s. Professionals can easily convince you that something happened. If you are working in a traumatic job, that must be even easier.

No idea of the truth, but I think after a few hours of being questioned I would start to doubt myself. After DAYS of it, I'd be mad.

What about the saying "thou doth protest too much" or whatever it is. So you can't win

Sometimes people don't act how you want them to act.
Different personalities react in a way that we find strange.

Eg I won a large amount of money and a car I just smiled. No jumping up and down.
It was in a public place so lots of people around. They were more excited than me.

I don't know if Lucy letby is guilty or innocent but no one should convict her on her reaction
of being accused and then arrested.

Agree totally 👍🏻

I don't know if Lucy letby is guilty or innocent but no one should convict her on her reaction
of being accused and then arrested.

This thread, and several others on LL, shows that there are plenty of people who would, and they are happy to make up facts if needed to support their decision.

I really don't know what she could have done @Seymorbutts

@TightlyLacedCorset thank you for sharing that, it really does go to show how differently shock can affect people. When my daughter was a newborn she became very unwell quite suddenly and they did lots of tests including lumbar punctures, blood tests, scans etc and I never once got upset or cried, I don't know why because I'm generally quite an emotional person but I think maybe my mind was protecting me or something? It wasn't until we were home two weeks later that I actually cried about the whole situation.

Yes, she took and kept hundreds of them. That indirectly led to one of her lies during her trial, saying she didn’t have a shredder.

The documentary only shows a few moments out of hours and hours of footage. She says “no comment” several times but had already been asked about the notes so that wasn’t necessarily her first answer. I believe the arrest shown was the second or third arrest (and she had just woken up). My boyfriend commented that it was weird of her to think of her cat, but I would probably do the same. I would be in shock, confused, but I’d also have known the arrest was coming, and by that point I’d probably be on sedatives or similar to stop me going insane. I love my cats and I know they’d miss me. I’m about 60/40 that she did it, but some of her actions I can understand. However, I also can’t understand why most of her evidence was just her account and why they didn’t call any witnesses to suggest medical negligence or death by natural causes

I don’t think the case is strong against her because people focus on her strange behaviour like her demeanour or what she kept in her bedroom etc. None of those things are linked to any crimes. They’re just things people say are odd. In lots of other criminal cases people point to more concrete pieces of evidence.

She would have had a handover sheet in her pocket on every shift. She took a fairly large proportion of them home instead of putting them in the confidential waste.

This is not right, but is fairly common. Many, many HCPs have reported doing similarly - usually accidentally, but sometimes for reflective practice.

Part of the process of veing arrested and questioned includes the police saying very clearly "anything you say may be used in court". Their job, and that of the CPS and the prosecution team, is to "prove" guilt. Your defence team / legal representative knows pretty much anything can be used in that quest, by implication and insinuation at the very least, right up to stating as fact that something you said means x, y or z, bolstering your alleged guilt.

Given that there were three arrests in total, aside from all the valid perspectives from other posters about how prolonged psychological pressure affects people differently, Lucy's legal team would have been schooling her on the best approach, because they know all too well how suspects can shoot themselves in the foot quite innocently.

For example, the idea that offering an alternative explanation would be appropriate. If it was outside of her field of perceived expertise, it could be used to suggest she was arrogant, or had deliberately researched to throw suspicion off her, even if she was innocent, it could be used against her.

As for weeping, wailing, or being perceived as obstructive - all could lead to negative legal consequences, for example resisting arrest.

If you have never been accused of something awful, and are innocent, you may well have faith in the system, and that everything will be fine as long as you tell the truth. There are multiple systemic reasons why this is a naive approach, and why you depend on a good legal representative of your own.

Criminal court (and "family court") are about winning or losing. Where the "truth" is elusive or complex, it becomes the first casualty.

While people on both sides may truly believe in the guilt or innocence of a subject, they have vested interests in winning, sonetimes at all costs. An ordinary person is David in the face of Goliath, and the system, once rolling is a juggernaut that is very difficult to stop, especially in high profile, expensive and complex cases.

This case should hinge on the medical evidence, which is flawed and was proposed by an "expert" who could easily be accused of arrogance and hubris. There aren't many occasions when a judge will write to the judge of an ongoing case to express his alarm at the reliability of said witness. And it should have been taken much more seriously.

I remember being assaulted at work

A bloke thrust his erect penis into my back and tried to shove his hand up my top to squeeze my nipple (all i did 'wrong' was to bend over to change a bin bag)

I froze-i ran downstairs just as a colleague asked me to take a bag of food outside to a car

I grabbed it,ran out,handed over the food with a smile and broke down on my way back in (I didnt cry,I almost collapsed)

Another colleague grabbed me to ask if I was ok,so I told her what had just happened

She dragged me back inside to tell my manager but couldn't get her words out as she was laughing so hard-she didnt find it funny,its how she reacts to anything stressful

The police where called (and they are useless-they had the cctv,my statement and his name/address-they didnt even go round to have a word)

They commented on how cold and unemotional i was

I wasn't,I was in shock-i got home and broke down once I was safe at home (3 hours later)

People react differently to each other,in my case I froze and my colleague laughed (and she would have done if it had happened to her)

I'm not commenting on LL guilt or innocence. But innocent people are horrible when it comes to their defence because they haven't done anything so they have no memories associated with the day of the crime because it's just a normal day for them. Look into exoneries - it's common enough in actual innocence cases that juries think the defendants haven't helped themselves.

I don't know anything about baby 'Zoe' but if she was in NICU, she was clearly very poorly. I can't imagine any baby or child in intensive care described as dying against all odds because they are in intensive care for a reason.

I was warned repeatedly about the intensive care rollercoaster and how good days don't necessarily mean that everything would be fine and my son would definitely survive but how bad days also don't necessarily mean that he definitely wouldn't survive. How it is a journey and that children and babies can rapidly deteriorate when seemingly responding well to care. This was a well regarded paeds intensive care consultant.

All that to say that even if they had expected baby 'Zoe' to survive, I can still see nurses not remembering a particular baby who didn't survive.

I don't know if LL is guilty or innocent. My main point is that she shouldn't be judged on how she reacted because no one knows how they'd react despite how much they may claim to.

* I am on the fence, I don’t know if she is innocent or not*

I agree to an extent.

The police woman kept saying that she answered very well when asked about processes at the hospital and was obviously very competent…but became a lot more vague when asked about the specific babies. And a lot of times just said “I don’t remember”

Well, that’s natural, is it not? There was a large gap between these babies dying and her being interviewed, more than a year, I think?

She dealt with many babies. I’m not surprised she couldn’t remember the exact details leading up to their deaths. Remember that she may well dwell on their deaths and remember details after the fact. But up until they died, she would have had no reason to view them differently than all the hundreds of other babies who didn’t die, thereby not remembering all the details of their treatment / care.

I did think all the “no comments” didn’t look good.

However, she did say at one point, in relation to the notes, that she did wonder if she had killed them through bad practice.

I think this is very natural and probably most people would feel the same. Caring for sick babies is a job that takes its toll on you. When one dies I think it must be very natural to wonder if you were somehow at fault.

Yep.

The large amounts of handover sheets/notes/scraps of paper doesn't strike me as suspicious either. As you said, she shouldn't have kept them at home but I can see how it happens.

Nurses are always writing notes on whatever they can. My son's observations were often noted on a nurses hand/arm and then I assume written out on the official notes later when they had a minute.

I don't know if LL is guilty or innocent. My main point is that she shouldn't be judged on how she reacted because no one knows how they'd react despite how much they may claim to.

And this is just indisputably correct.

It doesn't have to mean taking a view on the verdict either. And one could think she's guilty but still get that people uninformedly bullshitting about what they'd do is a waste of time.

How long is a piece of string?
How should someone act in a high stress life changing event.

You wouldn't be mentally well if you were being investigated for murder.