Lucy Letby case expert witness was under fitness to practise investigation

[ITMA2000]

Wow! Pot, kettle, black? Need a new investigation?
Lucy Letby case expert witness was under fitness to practise investigation during trial | Lucy Letby | The Guardian

Foretaste of how little the jury's decision, the trial, the process, the court of law etc will mean to lots of people if Lucy Letby is acquitted on a retrial.

Getting someone with medical training, experience as a coroner, and a history of pro bono work is wise. Barristers don't have to have a moral position on their cases. This isn't a fantasy novel with team good vs team evil. Their own background - once they aren't barred from practising - isn't relevant.

Quite as is Hindmarsh's expertise IF it is correct about the trans issues and irrelevant to his insulin experience.

We just don't know what his complaints were about.

I could definitely see there being a vendetta against him for speaking out about the trans care, but then from what I read he didn't have transgender patients himself, so that would mean it was other patients who he was accused of harming and that it was unrelated to the trans issues. It's possible that the complaints about him were because patients were harmed due to his poor judgement which could mean that his opinion on this matter could be in question also.

Hindmarsh’s failure to disclose the fitness to practice investigation, and to incorrectly state his current employment status at GOSH, to the court is absolutely relevant to his fitness to stand as an expert witness.

His views about hormone treatment of children - and indeed whether the complaints about him were malicious - are not relevant.

Whether he had sufficient expertise in neonatology to provide expert witnesses testimony in this case is an entirely separate question.

We don't know the whole details around it. Point is people are slinging mud and it needs to stop.

Wish the CCRC would hurry up.

People are being fairly measured about Hindmarsh as far as I can see. The question is whether he met his professional obligations and duties to the court. These obligations and duties stand regardless of what any complaint was about.

Hindmarsh's role was to give evidence in a situation where jury, court and fellow experts formed a view of his reliability based on his qualifications, standing and affiliations.

Van Dellen's role is different. It will be to present material and examine and cross examine witnesses. His own authority (beyond bar membership) doesn't come into it. This is why courts hear about witnesses relevant experience and status, but not barristers. We don't judge a case according to a barrister's history, but we are guided by an expert witness's history.

I think most people showed restraint about it and didn't assign much meaning to it seeing as we don't know the details.

Yes, the coroner's inquest can't, legally, find anything other than unlawful killing. They can't diverge from the criminal court's findings.

Since there should still be an opportunity to outline failings in care and progression of illnesses in a public court, and to challenge the feasibility of the causes of death as listed by the court of appeal, it makes sense that Lucy Letby would be represented by someone who is medically qualified and has experience as a coroner himself.

Myers did a good job with medical issues as far as I can see, but he wasn't working pro bono so it is hard to see how Lucy Letby could have stuck with him after the applications to appeal anyway. He also did seem a bit out of his depth occasionally, understandably and unfortunately.

Most measured people yes. It is actually scary how many people aren't though.

This is true. There isn't actually any comparison between the two things. Because with expert witnesses, their professional career and how they're regarded in the field is the whole point. This is why you want, say eminent doctors and professors rather than someone who's just started out in the field, or a random member of the public you found in Tesco. It does actually matter a lot if they advertise themselves as working in a particular prestige role, and then they're not.

Barristers and solicitors aren't there for the same purpose. They need to meet the minimum standards required for those professional bodies, and as a client you'd also want to know if there were any ongoing proceedings with the regulator like with a doctor, but otherwise that's not what they're for. Even with those lawyers who are so eminent that they're arguably equivalent in reputation to the expert witnesses, the jury and court isn't supposed to take that into account.

I'm not saying the complaint would necessarily have turned out to be relevant either, but an expert witness should be candid and proactively disclose anything ongoing. He didn't. That's a problem. I have to wonder why Letby's defence didn't do anything with it.

I say this as someone who's clear that for all I know (and tbf I don't know anything about this case) he might be an unpunished rapist. They're everywhere and most of them never get near a trial. The legal professions certainly aren't immune. I have heard an accusation about one solicitor in his pre-practice days that I personally believe, for example. It would astound me if there weren't rapists at the Bar. There's about 17,000 practicing in England and Wales, men are the majority and even the lower end estimates of the prevalence in the population is going to give us an uncomfortably high number.

Thank you,
I've asked this before but do you know if Myers had a medical expert in court with him advising him? I know some expert witnesses do that but they don't take the stand.

I think most people in general on either side of the debate are measured, of the scary ones I've seen far more on the guilty side.

Michael Hall wrote the defence reports on the infants which Myers asked to enter in evidence to show that Evans was unreliable. (Judge Goss didn't consent). It seems probable from that request and from convention that Hall wrote his reports primarily to contest the prosecution narrative, not to singlehandedly explain each death.

Hall also attended almost every day of the trial, didn't know he wasn't going to be called until after the prosecution finished, and wrote to the British Medical Journal after the trial to express concerns about the air embolism evidence in a manner that coincided with Myers's objections (but was clearer).

So it seems very unlikely that Myers wasn't working directly with Hall and/or from Hall's reports.

I think that at this stage when the general public aren’t reliant on partisan reporting and can read actual court transcripts and Thirwall evidence for themselves, it’s a lot more difficult to maintain a position that there’s nothing to see here. And yet they do. I find it fascinating.

I won't say what I want to so MN don't ban me.

You make up "facts" as you go along, you demonstrate how the jury could easily have been convinced by weasel words, lacking critical thinking to see through the bull.

That'll do.

FF - If you have such faith that the justice system/jury trial always gets it right, how do you square presumably inferring that he was wrongly acquitted and therefore his appointment reflects badly on LL? Is it enough for you that people are simply accused to attribute guilt?

I don't have such faith in the justice system, not sure why you assume that. I mean yeah I didn't come to the case months after it ended and jump on the MOJ bandwagon desperate for it to be one. Doesn't mean I have total faith in the system.

I only brought this article up as I KNOW the pro-Letby camp would be all over it if roles were reversed. So might as well have articles from the guilty side after months of attempted discrediting of every single expert witness for the prosecution one by one. Public opinion is the only card her camp has to play and if it turns (and we know how fickle the public are) it's definitely all over for her.

Except that they didn't narrow it down to her, they started from her and made the evidence fit.

@FrippEnos maybe because it was so blooming obvious. Apparently people think the police should be wasting time investigating staff who couldn't possibly be guilty rather than the prime suspect.

Did anyone see the news report about the Oxford maternity hospitals yesterday.

From the BBC website

Fifty-eight babies at an NHS maternity unit might have survived with better care, a BBC investigation has found.
The deaths included 32 stillbirths and 26 neonatal deaths - which is a death within 28 days - at Oxford University Hospitals Trust (OUH) between 2019 and 2024, according to a Freedom of Information request.
Bereaved and harmed mothers have blamed missed chances, "arrogance" among some senior doctors and a "defensive culture"

They didn't go looking for a serial killer nurse before they reached this conclusion.....

And yet the police have been picked up for doing this.

It is not how police investigations are supposed to work.

I didn't come to the case months after it ended and jump on the MOJ bandwagon desperate for it to be one.

This is such a weird thing to say.

Do you really think we are doing this? Could it not be possible we listened to the trial reporting as it unfolded and thought the evidence tenuous and downright bizarre?

Thorough and impartial investigation usually comes before identifying the prime suspect, surely?

Well exactly. So no reason for anyone to invent or even suspect a serial killer at all (unless there really was one)

Some have admitted they had no interest in this case until talk of it being a MOJ yes. I'm surprised you followed the trial in real time and didn't think it pointed to overwhelming guilt.

You’re inadvertently bolstering the opposing view here. It’s generally accepted that tunnel vision results in ineffective police investigations, identification of suspects and associated evidence and issues at trial.