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

That's been suggested online, but when people request sources or links, nobody can produce them. Do you know of any yourself?

It's known that Hindmarsh was part of a case against Helen Webberley, but I don't know where people are getting that the case against him was related to this.

I see here that Hindmarsh complained about Webberley in 2016 but nothing about complaints against him in 2023?

What am I lying about? I'm trying to correct the lies and misinformation!

Guardian says niche issue but since BM would have been all over it.
It has nothing to do with the insulin.

I can see how there would have been people trying to discredit him after he was critical about transgender care issues so they could well be related and I'm remaining open-minded about it.

....but then the other side of it is I wonder who the complaints came from, from what I've seen he didn't seem to have transgender patients himself so the allegations of harm must not have been related to transgender patients (with a whole lobby behind them) complaining he harmed them by not giving treatment etc which suggests that it's other patients who were allegedly harmed which makes a scapegoat situation less likely.

Incredible that BM failed to tell the Jury though even though he was allowed to...

I'm not saying it's impossible or even unlikely but I don't see any information about it anywhere.

Hindmarsh said it was a niche issue. That's all we know. To be honest it doesn't really matter what issue it was unless it was something highly relevant. The point is that his rigour had been called into question, and that the jury seems to have been misled about his connection to Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Not great, from the prosecution, but I don't think it will end up being too important to the Letby case with everything else they have to consider. I doubt he would have defended his statements at any retrial either way.

It's all very speculative about Hindmarsh himself. I think what the jury was or wasn't told was more important.

gosh that could turn all the LL supporters on here in an instant!!!

What do you mean?

Well the prosecution weren't opposed to them being told but BM chose not to tell them 🤔🤔

That's what the Times says.

The Guardian says the CPS was opposed to the jury being told! The Times says the prosecution was not opposed!

I am sort of standing back from this one on the hope it becomes a bit clearer in the near future ... hard enough trying to understand Ben Myers's strategy without this confusion

Oh, interesting that they both say different!

Yes it's hard to have an opinion on this one either way at the moment.

If it was a trans issue that could possibly prejudice people either way as a sensitive issue. This may have caused a mistrial etc so understandably cautious . It's a fractious issue.

But yes hard to say unless we know what the complaint was about officially.

I do think its a matlin job though why its in the news today.. Just my view.

Q for Oftenaddled (or anyone else), does this change (or would this be regarded as changing) the truth value of his testimony?

It would totally depend on what he's alleged to have done.

If the complaints were related to serious error of judgements and patients being harmed because his 'expertise' was wrong then I think that would definitely affect it.

Absolutely disgraceful that there was no conclusion to the accusations. Why do the NHS just not continue with their investigation and disciplinary process to conclusion? Strikes me as alarmingly unprofessional.

I don't think so. I think it could add to general criticisms of the expert witness system, but that can be dysfunctional without being illegal. It could add to criticisms of Judge Goss's management of the trial but we would need more detail.

I think the fact that he seems to have misled the jury, intentionally or not, on his affiliation with GOSH, and the fact that he seems to have waited a month or so to tell the CPS about the case or something could be used to challenge his suitability for future cases. That's assuming the unresolved GMC case wasn't a problem anyway.

There have been a lot of challenges to Hindmarsh's evidence anyway, especially around the difference between newborn babies and older children, since he didn't specialise in babies. There have been serious criticisms of the mechanism he suggested for poisoning and his calculations. So I would expect plenty of robust rebuttals of his evidence, but not really based on the GMC / GOSH business directly.

That's true too - I've been assuming something more minor, but serious allegations could make more of a difference.

On another note, the Sun has given Professor Shoo Lee a 45 minute YouTube seminar on air embolisms, with some helpful animations of Lee's sign and other phenomena. He's a great teacher and obviously a happy obsessive where his work is concerned.

Strange times, but a fantastic presentation that eviscerates the Daily Mail podcast and other critics of his work

Thank you both.

So, scientifically, no, but there are more interesting challenges.

Legally, it depends on what the complaints are but maybe?

She also wrote she hadn't done anything wrong, time and again one is taken as a confession and the other totally overlooked. The notes are available to see if you Google and say 'they look said I did this because I'm not good enough' very different to a 'confession'

As a family we went through an intense amount of trauma last year. Particularly in the early months, my phone is full of notes saying things like "I'm a monster, I caused this".

It's not true, now I know what was happening, I can see that.

I would hate anyone to read those notes and judge me on them. I find these very easy to make sense of and very human.

I think - hope - that if the complaints had been relevant the GMC would have forbidden Hindmarsh to act as expert witness. But then, was there undue pressure to stop the case from collapsing from the CPS, perhaps.

Scientifically, unless a raft of about nine unrelated and disinterested experts are conspiring to mislead, there seems to be plenty in Hindmarsh's evidence that can be challenged.

I think that was my point, but wanted to check. The truth value of his testimony is already questionable at best. This news doesn't affect that much unless more comes out?

Has anyone checked if he knows whether the house he is staying in at this difficult time has a shredder though? Did he cry at the socially approved times during his testimony? Has anyone checked how he labelled the boxes when he last moved house?