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

Wasn't it dropped for lack of evidence?

We all have our biases. That's why I appreciate it when people refer to specifics that can be checked, as Steve Watts does.

But what he was accused of doesn't look like what he is accusing Cheshire police of, does it? He wrote the manual on how to investigate crimes in a health care setting. He has been explaining various ways in which they didn't follow procedure.

Should an accusation against him that was dropped for want of evidence almost twenty years ago affect this?

Ah so Stephanie Davies is the one who thought a serial killer was bumping off elderly couples in the North West...she seems to get things wrong a lot. As I said, totally barking up the wrong tree! And there's our proof she most definitely has a grudge against Cheshire police.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11495647/Coroners-officer-WRONG-share-theory-serial-killer-loose-judge-rules.html

Cheshire Police launched an investigation into Miss Davies and suspended her, accusing her of sharing police information with homicide and forensic experts outside Cheshire Police without permission.
She then brought her tribunal claim that she had suffered detriment as a result of giving the report to these external experts in an attempt to expose wrongdoing.

This is her payback I guess.

And even if certain parts of the investigation weren't done 100% by the book (a big IF) doesn't mean her conviction isn't safe.

Depends on which parts, and how far from the book. The non-blind selection of incidents certainly means that statistical claims of improbable association with incidents aren't safe. That's not a nitpick about one small thing, that's a structural issue. And if the statistical claims are unsafe, then the conviction is too. You yourself often cite statistical claims; there's no reason to think the jury didn't also find them convincing.

Would it have been okay if Dr Brearey had withheld information about a child's death from someone who wasn't going to be at odds with the police a few years later?

Davies has always been upfront about her conflict with the police.

It is often easier to dig for dirt on people than to address their points. But what points have Davies or Watts made that don't stand up to scrutiny, about the Lucy Letby case?

@Oftenaddled they're criticising the police when it seems their own procedures have been called into question. Pot kettle comes to mind!

That's not really how things work, though.

I mean, if you take the position that nobody should ever accuse anyone of one thing after themselves being accused of another thing, that's up to you.

But when people make a claim - say, that there was no justification for handcuffing Lucy Letby; or there was important information missing from the Countess of Chester report to the pathologist for Child O; or that police are warned to "believe nobody" at the outset of a police investigation - these things can be checked and considered on their merits by listeners.

If Davies or Watts were saying, trust me bro, Hughes is a bad'un and asking us to take it on trust, I'd be less interested in what they had to say.

Davies seems to have been disciplined for a genuine data breach - and to have owned it. Watts has never been found at fault at all, so to drag an accusation up against him two decades later seems a bit low

But I'm not terribly interested in their characters, their motivations, their histories. I'm interested in what they have to say and then I may be interested in checking some of it further. Useful information comes from lots of sources, and on significant points, what Watts and Davies say seems securely grounded in fact. Neither is essential to the case for a miscarriage of justice, but their contributions have been interesting.

Have they made any points you found problematic?

You falsely said I'd argued something. It all adds to you not arguing in good faith.

It's like DE said "the case had nothing to do with statistics and I'm not quite sure how many ways you can tell statisticians that the case had nothing to do with statistics."

Like I said she was a bog standard nurse, her data is not going to be THAT much of an outlier. Unless of course she was deliberately making things happen...

It's a shame she wasn't caught after the first or second murder, then not only would it have spared so many babies' lives but no one would be bringing up statistics constantly. Murder is murder whether it's one baby (and not an anomaly for that unit) or seven. You can't wait until she's killed 30 and satisfied the statisticians.

She was one of only two nurses in her (cheap but specialist) category. One of these two nurses was needed to take on a night shift whenever there was more than one baby in intensive care. She was happy to do this.

So there were very good reasons for her to end up on shift for more deaths.

You see how wrong Evans was to say the case had nothing to do with statistics? You've just introduced a statistical argument. But because you haven't considered that Lucy Letby had a higher probability of being on duty for child deaths, your argument doesn't work.

Right so if she killed 50 you'd say the exact same thing. You'll never not have an excuse for her. And I AM taking it into account, it still doesn't explain her numbers. Maybe the statisticians should go read up more about their profession because if they think it exonerates her they're very wrong.

You called her a bog standard nurse whose data isn't going to be that much of an outlier.

It's very likely her data would be quite atypical because she wasn't a "bog standard" nurse - she was an unusually cheap IC qualified nurse. But how atypical, we can't tell without seeing more information.

That's all anyone is saying here. If they wanted to use statistics to shape, present and argue the case, as they did, they should have conducted a proper statistical analysis.

@Oftenaddled

Do you plan to argue until your own death about the conviction of Letby?

What is it you are trying to achieve here?

You seem to be constantly debating what the court accepted as evidence?

Someone said on here that babies were collapsing when Letby wasn’t on shift - I’d be keen to see the proof of that? As my recollection is the nurses were saying collapses were very rare and they didn’t happen often

Will you be asking anyone who thinks Letby is guilty and has made a lot of posts whether they're planning to discuss the subject until they die also, or is that reserved for people who hold a different view to you?

The arguments on this thread, by the "guilty" side are getting more ridiculous - and mostly repetitive. I'm trying to stay out of it, I do notice that they demand evidence while not providing any evidence for their own wild assertions.

At least one of them is so desperate to prop up weak "facts" I can't help but think they are a lot closer to the case than we know.

That is a very strange question.

I'm in good health and not too advanced in years, so I hope to see Lucy Letby's case back in the Court of Appeal before I die, thanks.

Really, I'm not sure why you would ask that.

I think the point that some posters who are convinced that she is guilty are missing is that many people ( myself included) are only concerned that there is increasing evidence that the "facts" presented at trial appear to be anything but.
I do not know this woman, I have no experience of neonatal units, I am not involved in the law as a career.
But, I am a mother, a friend, a member of the public and I want to be absolutely sure that justice is done in such an important case as this. I feel strongly that the investigation, arrest and trial was not done fairly and was not evidence based. Many experts have also come forward and expressed their misgivings. I repeat myself when I say that if she is guilty then she should serve her sentence but if she is not then we should all be concerned that a similar miscarriage of justice could happen again.
I am not convinced beyond reasonable doubt that she is guilty and until I am I will continue to be concerned.

You seem to be constantly debating what the court accepted as evidence?

Not sure why this is a question, or even a statement, yes that's the whole reason a potential MOJ has been in the news constantly since after the reporting restrictions were lifted. The evidence has not stood up to scrutiny.

Yes it's extremely normal for people to remain interested in campaigns until the truth comes out or it's resolved 🤔 It's still only at CCRC application stage. So it was a very strange question.

Exactly my feelings and I assume the same goes for most people who express concern. What fascinates me most is the absolute absence of reasoning from those who are determined she must be guilty and who devote hours every night to posting drivel and ad hominem insults. Surely theirs is the agenda which bears scrutiny. Perhaps they are closer to the case than they admit. There certainly must be a particular reason for their diligent attention to each and every one of the LL discussions, despite apparently having nothing cogent to add.

Yes please do stay out of it since all you seem to add to the thread is personal insults and nothing about the case at all. I'm trying to ignore you each time you pop up with some new insult.

I do provide evidence most of the time. If I don't it's from memory and I assume we all know enough about the case on here to know what I'm referring to and that I haven't made it up. If you don't know then maybe you don't know enough about the case to comment! Why would I need to make things up when there's already more than enough evidence that she's guilty. Everything in the world is a weak fact to people who don't want to open their eyes.

And no I'm not close to the case. I mentioned before I have OCD and I do post a lot about all sorts of subjects I'm interested in (celeb gossip, mysteries, criminal cases, TV shows, news items) it's usually pretty short-lived then I move onto something else. If it wasn't for all the innocence stuff and feeling the need to argue against it because it's an absolute affront to her victims I would've long stopped discussing this case. It's only that it's STILL in the news and being discussed when she should long have been forgotten about not made into some sort of saint.

Now are you going to ask if any from the other side posting a similar amount are close to the case?

@Firefly1987
If it wasn't for all the innocence stuff and feeling the need to argue against it because it's an absolute affront to her victims I would've long stopped discussing this case.

As discussed before it wasn't for you then these threads wouldn't be constantly going with comments in them daily, people might post news stories and receive a few comments and then that's it until the next time something is in the news.
You're literally helping to create the material online that you're outraged about.

Not much different to Liz Hull being so outraged about the CCRC application that she showed up to speak Mark McDonald and then did a podcast about it 🤔

You're essentially on here saying to people who believe this was a MOJ to state their case over and over again, every time you raise a point you're inviting people to point out all of the issues with it, which they can and do every single time!!!

It would be one thing if you were then able to shut down the points that people were making but you can't, you just dodge them and resort to making digs instead.

@kkloo yes I'm going to post stuff and not just innocence propaganda. Like this-

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/crime-desk/article-15681469/Prosecution-expert-witness-Lucy-Letby-case-says-reputation-torn-apart-campaign-misinformation-against-her.html

Shameful!

He wrote the manual on how to investigate crimes in a health care setting. He has been explaining various ways in which they didn't follow procedure.

Scary how he can get this one so wrong then. He seems convinced she's innocent.

Jane Hutton too. She seems furious in that Botched video lol. Like lady you were dropped from the investigation, get over it! No one wants your stats when you refuse to ever accept she could be guilty.

Jane Hutton does seem a bit indignant that lawyers are trying the, "trial wasn't based on statistics" line on a statistician. As if she couldn't tell.

If the CPS advised the police to drop her from the investigation, they broke the law. It's okay to object to that. It's okay to object to people misusing statistics. Good job some statisticians are interested enough to try to help with legal problems.

I'm very sorry for anyone in her situation - facing medical complaints must be extremely stressful. I don't know how much that has to do with Lucy Letby, though. Guernsey looks like a bit of a madhouse in terms of its politics and these issues have been ongoing since 2015, by her own account.

I do always try to remember that there are human beings, perhaps well meaning, on both sides of these arguments. Unfortunately there were clear problems with Bohin's evidence in many instances. As to complaints against her, I presume they'll be dropped as for Hindmarsh now she is retiring, so no way to know more there. However, if they were relevant to her work as expert witness, Lucy Letby's legal team would have been right to report them to the CCRC.