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

Evans called the unit the safest place in the world for the babies, during the trial.

After the trial, when he was told about some of the unit's sanitation problems for the first time, he said that it should have been closed until they were resolved.

Like this one?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/mar/03/lucy-letby-case-expert-witness-peter-hindmarsh-was-under-fitness-to-practise-investigation-during-trial

Thank you.
I think I might be thinking about what he said in the 'Conviction' documentary but I can't find where I watched it now.

Yes obviously sometimes the most obvious explanation isn't the right one, but they are still supposed to investigate and rule out the most obvious ones first.

It hasn't been ruled out. I asked you to explain how they ruled it out and all you could come up with was that they deferred to Dewi Evans.

Show me a single medical expert, other than Dr Evans and those who worked with him to put the case together, who agrees that the deaths and collapses were the result of deliberate harm. I don’t think you will be able to do that.

Have you listened to Dr Svilena Dimitrova on this at all? Or will your bias not let you listen to the experts you don’t like.

This is why the case needs to be thoroughly reviewed, without the dodgy statistical slant placed on it.

In what way has the sub-standard environment and staffing levels been ruled out, and by whom?

I previously cited the recent news story about the investigation into Oxford University Hospitals Trust, between 2019 and 2024, where there were 32 stillbirths and 26 neonatal deaths

At least 58 cases were graded C or D, indicating that different care either "may" have or was "likely" to have made a difference to the outcome.
For context, separate BBC investigations have found 56 baby deaths in Leeds may have been preventable over the same period, and 55 babies may have survived with better care in Sussex between 2019-2023.

This is from the BBC news website 19/3/26
In addition it says

It was estimated there were more than 800 preventable baby deaths across the UK in the NHS in 2023 and 2024, according to the Sands and Tommy's Joint Policy Unit,

So my question in particular to FF is this.
Given that investigations into baby deaths have produced these appalling numbers, is there not at least the possibility that the deaths at Chester were caused by poor care rather than a serial killer?

Crucially these investigations started by looking at all the deaths and trying to find out what went wrong, rather than looking at only the ones that coincided with a particular member of staff being on duty ( one who was there many days due to overtime)
If 800 babies have died due to preventable conditions in 2 years across the UK.... isn't it possible that the babies LL is accused to have killed could be in addition to that?

I have no loyalty either way.
However I am concerned that justice for the parents and wider society hasn't been done. I also wonder why if the conviction of LL is considered watertight by the powers that be that the investigators in these later deaths didn't start with a " oh no here we go again" and the hunt for several more killer staff weren't started ( alongside appeals for intelligence about staff who were over affectionate with their cat/ showed unexpected emotions/were frequent Facebook users/ could orchestrate deaths when not on duty)
Sometimes the sound of hooves are horses....

Dr Steve Watts has major issues with investigation. I wonder what the die hard guilty side think of his comments or do they just ignore what he said?

I see he said the NCA were recommending that they appoint a panel of experts but Dewi Evans didn't think it was necessary so they didn't bother.

I saw Dr Svilena Dimitrova speaking about this and how upset she got thinking about what has been done to these families because of this disaster of an investigation.

I have no idea how I managed to attach the news report above.. that's a different one to the one I was quoting but gives yet more examples of poor care leading to babies losing their lives, this time in Sussex

Between 2019 and 2023, UH Sussex carried out 227 internal hospital reviews into maternity deaths - known as Perinatal Mortality Review Tools (PMRTs). This was revealed in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request made by Truth for Our Babies.
At least 55 cases were given grades of C or D by the trust, indicating that different care either "may" have or was "likely" to have made a difference to the outcome.
The reviews are likely to have included nine antenatal stillbirths that occurred between July 2021 and February 2022 at Worthing Hospital, which is also run by UH Sussex trust.
There had been "missed opportunities in all cases", concluded a 2022 review of the deaths (also obtained after a FOI request by Truth for Our Babies

There had been "missed opportunities in all cases", concluded a 2022 review of the deaths (also obtained after a FOI request by Truth for Our Babies).

Many maternity units in the UK are under performing and the more you look the more you find. We should all be horrified by this, it could be ourselves or our family and friends who require their service. That's a national problem leading to untold tragedies.
Another tragedy would be if a young woman is incarcerated for the rest of her life because of these failings.

Which is appalling. There's a problem somewhere in the system when an expert witness can be put in front of a court without having access to such significant and basic information as this. It's not fair to anyone involved, him included.

The figures on the settlements for newborn injuries and deaths is insane, I say Jeremy Hunt said it was £3.5bn compared to £4bn for maternity care,but Dr Svilena Dimitrova recently said that they're spending more on compensation than the care. Either way it's terrible, especially when you consider the fact that many times when there's hospital errors, even serious ones that babies can be lucky and come out of it unharmed.

It's extremely concerning.

If I was a Juror I know I'd be an open-minded and reasonable juror because I'm capable of critical thinking, but naively I would have never expected that the prosecution could completely misrepresent the narrative and have experts stating these babies were all well babies and doing great, when they clearly weren't. I would have also assumed that the fact checking would have been robust.

I think maybe leave it to the police and medical experts?

And round and round and round we go….

@Firefly1987 these are broadly the reasons why I’m not comfortable with the conviction:

1. The police built a case from such a flawed statistical basis that this was obvious to statisticians from court reporting during the trial, and there is now so much information in the public domain that it’s also obvious to any lay person who chooses to read it.
2. The medical expert came up with at least one method of harm that was so outlandish that many people (including practising neonatologists) who read the trial reporting were alarmed and like me thought, hang on a minute, that isn’t a thing. Evans himself admits that there is nothing in the body of evidence, i.e. he made it up. He also cannot show the objective criteria for determining whether an incident was suspicious. Therefore his analysis is not reproducible and is unscientific. This matters. See1. His colleagues in the case rubber stamped his opinions rather than independently coming up with their own.
3. The rest of the prosecution case was built on a web of so called circumstantial evidence such as handover notes and facebook searches which is actually meaningless when you look at it. E.g. the facebook searches do not show any particular interest in the indictment cases, and neither do the retained handover notes. Taking these irrelevant things together does not give them more weight.
4. Material facts were deliberately withheld from the jury.

Could you proffer any cogent arguments for your own confidence?

Cogent arguments?

Now wouldn't that be refreshing!!

They deferred to a medical expert who said these deaths were not natural.

But a doctor missing a (natural) diagnosis is quite common, even when the doctor has the patient in front of them and can order any tests they want. It must be more common when the doctor is working from old notes. So the doctor might rule out natural causes, but how can we rule out the doctor being wrong? That's simply more likely than a murdering nurse. Doesn't mean it can't be the latter, but does mean there must be clear positive evidence of murder, not just "the doctor ruled out other things".

It would be a miracle. We’ll have to wait until later on when he/she comes back on duty I guess 🤔

Evans called the unit the safest place in the world for the babies, during the trial.
After the trial, when he was told about some of the unit's sanitation problems for the first time, he said that it should have been closed until they were resolved.

Interesting -- do you happen to have a source link for these?

He said that about closing the unit down in the Sweeney interview

Sure - page 84 here for safest place on the planet. There are other, similar remarks throughout his testimony

https://lucyletbyinnocence.com/transcripts/prosecution+defence-evans-babies-ab.pdf

At 23 and 35 minutes at this interview for Evans talking about the "sewage problem":

The rest of the prosecution case was built on a web of so called circumstantial evidence such as handover notes and facebook searches which is actually meaningless when you look at it.

And things like misconstrued and inaccurate door badge data…

What I'm hearing is that no one is interested in the statisticians opinions and they're big mad about it.

And when one of them IS indulged and given as much info as DE had just to shut them up, he still can't come up with any stats. Probably because he knows they make LL look incredibly guilty and he's not ready to face that yet.

I mean these are the sorts of impossible asks he required before he'd give his opinion on the stats.

1. How many nurses are there per shift?
2. Are all shifts the same duration and is there a difference between the number of nurses on day vs night shifts?
3. How many nurses are part time vs full time, and how many extra shifts did they do on average during that time period?
4. What are the differences in competencies between nurses?
5. We need to compare day with night shift data due to the known higher incidence of adverse events happening at night; as well as the proportion of shifts in terms of days vs nights that Lucy worked, as well as the other nurses.
6. We need to have a look at all the names of people on shifts when the deaths occurred. And not just the deaths/collapses that ended up going to the criminal court, but all deaths/collapses. For all nurses, as well as doctors.

Suddenly not so willing to be consulted on it without making DE jump through hoops...these statisticians will just keep moving the goalposts, always. All they have to do is moan constantly about how badly the stats were done, they won't ever analyse the stats themselves and give us those numbers. Not when it makes Lucy look so bad. I mean if it didn't I'm sure they'd suddenly have no problem letting us all know...it's about what people don't do and don't tell you that says so much. Same with Lucy not having any defence experts.

I thought she did have defence experts but they weren’t called because they concurred at significant points with prosecution evidence

To me that looks like quite obvious stuff to ask for in order to look at data

Big mad? That’s what you’re getting? They’re concerned, Firefly.

This case gravely impacts many families and the children they’ve lost. It gravely impacts the woman convicted and her family. It impacts past and future patients and the confidence in their care at the hospitals concerned and in fact all NHS hospitals.

The list of data you bullet pointed there is minor to be honest. In fact, the bare minimum. This isn’t a GCSE assignment?

Even if you think she’s guilty then you should be just as concerned about the safety of the conviction in order to prevent the issues that allow for these concerns and doubts.

Big mad? FFS.