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

@PinkTonic I particularly enjoyed this one-

No-one is guilty of anything anymore. There are always highly virtuous and compassionate people who come out after conviction bleating and bawling how unjustly the offender has been treated and they must be innocent. It becomes a cause célèbre and if they can find the tiniest straw of the slightest incredulous doubt, not even reasonable doubt, they fight to overturn the conviction whilst ignoring the overwhelming weight of evidence. Sometimes the clamour is all that is needed.

Sums this case up quite well I thought!

But that's just a made up phenomenon?

It is a strange feature of this case that the prosecution, in the end, never had to prove method, or even that the murders were logistically possible. As a result people determined to defend the verdict get very indignant when people point out such details as, that murder method wouldn't work; the door swipe shows she wasn't there; that murder method would have left traces; that witness's story has changed repeatedly ...

The argument that people with doubts about the verdict are just picking at details suggests that there is one coherent narrative proving Lucy Letby's guilt. There isn't. Unless you count the statistics - but we are told the case wasn't built on statistics.

Objecting to people dissecting the detail of the case is just anti-scientific stonewalling.

@Oftenaddled well it's tricky when you seem to think it's impossible to prove air embolism and that all the insulin tests happen to be wrong. You can't just have healthcare professionals using those methods to kill/harm and never being arrested and put on trial for it. It's hard to prove but that's no reason not to try when lives are at stake.

It's not impossible to prove air embolism. There are at least three diagnostic signs - two for venous - none of which appeared in this case.

By all means, people can try to prove murder if they feel they have good cause to suspect it. But obviously that doesn't mean everyone has to pretend they have made a convincing case for it.

You sometimes seem to be arguing that we should keep Lucy Letby locked up even if we can't prove her crimes, because the crimes she was accused of could be difficult or impossible to prove. (Apologies if I have misunderstood you on that point). That would create a grave danger of miscarriage of justice.

In cases where it's difficult to prove but they are trying to prove it then they should at the very least make sure that they get the best of the best to assess it, they should have at least assembled the panel that the NCA told them to assemble, they didn't, so even though you think she's guilty you have to understand this whole miscarriage of justice campaign is the fault of the police and the CPS due to the case that they put forward.

This is exactly what happened at COCH-nothing to do with spikes or statistics but the nature of the deaths and collapses.

Deaths/collapses weren't in the "nature" of gunshot wounds, or police would've been called on the spot. Whatever the "nature" of individual deaths/collapses, it's something other than clear-cut inflicted harm. E.g. Jayaram said about Baby K: "in isolation, in that if nothing else had happened before or after, I would have probably thought nothing more of it". It's the statistics that changed the interpretation of individual events. How experts judge the "nature" of an event is affected by whether they suspect harm. Blind review can factor out that bias, but it wasn't done.

I don't think statisticians take that into account at all which is my problem with a lot of them.

They do, as you'll see if you read the RSS Report. But they stress the need to determine the "nature" of incidents in a suspect-blind way.

I think some people must be so deeply affected by the heinous nature of the crime if it had been committed, the very idea of it, that they can’t detach their feelings about that from LL whatever happens. There was someone on one of these threads a month or so ago when the discussion was going on about the retention of the handover sheets being a massive breach, even illegal, and they actually said ooh, if it turns out she’s not guilty of murder can they get her on that then! 🔥 🧙

It's hard to prove but that's no reason not to try when lives are at stake.

Lives are also at stake from wrongful convictions. From nursing shortages, worsened by scaring people from nursing, and by scaring nurses from taking extra shifts with sickest babies. From sowing dysfunction in hospitals by encouraging mutual distrust. From never fixing care problems that get wrongly blamed on malfeasance. These and other costs of lowering the bar to prosecution/conviction in healthcare cases have to be considered. Oddly, the Thirlwall inquiry didn't seem to take evidence on these issues. How can you make recommendations without weighing the tradeoffs?

Was she not? I didn't know that.

She said it on the podcast.

SB:
I, I was surprised at that and I can see that the police might be disappointed in that outcome.
I think that's probably all I should say on that, to be honest, because I did my reports and it was, it's up to other people to then decide if it meets the evidential threshold.
But I I think there's certainly some of them did.
CC:
If it had gone forward based on our previous conversation, would you have stood up again in court?
SB:
no.
CC:
You wouldn't have been the expert witness?
SB:
no.
CC:
So you did the reports, but you wouldn't have been an expert witness in those trials?
SB:
I think as I did the reports and they were a long time ago and it took a long time for the CPS to decide whether they were going to take them further.
And in that interim time the Juggernaut, as you refer to it took over.
And I just decided I didn't want to continue with that and so reluctantly bowed out.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/crime-desk/article-15682245/Child-killer-Lucy-Letbys-barrister-reported-regulator-alleged-misconduct.html

I'm not sure how this would in any way amount to misconduct, all he did was name the babies in a letter to the the coroner. Certainly sounds like the coroner doesn't like MM though and is accusing him of leaking the names, but there doesn't appear to be any proof of that and the media would have already known the babies names anyway.

The names of several are already on the internet.

Not that I condone the leaking.

All of the names are online in published news reports already. They've also been published by the prosecution (in handouts to journalists), the court of appeal (by accident, removed), Thirlwall (at least one, by accident, removed).

It's hard to see if the coroner is blaming Mark McDonald, from the way the story is edited, or if she is just expressing concern that the letter is "out there" and leaked by someone.

Since he has said he didn't leak it, and there are other people who could have leaked it at various stages, and the Sunday Times won't be revealing sources, it's hard to see this going anywhere.

Nurses have Lucy Letby to thank for ALL of that. The judge outlined the huge amount of damage to public trust that she's caused.

Secondly they can blame the innocence conspiracy. No nurse has anything to worry about as long as they're not harming and killing babies and it's awful that the Letby camp have gaslit them into thinking that they do.

@kkloo tough week for the Letby camp eh? About time something was done about that man.

ETA-I didn't even consider he'd leaked the names but I wouldn't put anything past him. Absolutely despicable he is.

What's this innocence conspiracy? Who's conspiring? To do what?

Desperate weak for Liz Hull more like.

Yea you’re right, it could be just an edited part of the email.

Surely the coroner already knew the names of the babies?
and we obviously don’t know who leaked the email to the Sunday times but the media already knew the babies names anyway.

My point was that stopping killer nurses is not the only relevant concern. You could stop most killer nurses by adopting the rule that a nurse gets fired and permanently struck off at first hint of suspicion expressed by anyone. But this would worsen nursing shortages, which kill/harm many more people than do killer nurses, so on balance, this would do more harm than good.

No nurse has anything to worry about as long as they're not harming and killing babies and it's awful that the Letby camp have gaslit them into thinking that they do

Nurses are as capable as anyone else of judging the points being raised. If they're left with doubts of Letby's guilt after hearing everything being said, that doesn't mean they were "gaslit".

Even before this case nurses etc were worried about being made scapegoats, of course they’re then going to be concerned when they see a case in the news of a nurse in a problematic ward being sentenced to 15 whole life orders without any concrete evidence proving she harmed anyone.

I think nurses are perfectly capable of forming their own opinions about the plausibility of the supposed methods of harm, and whether LL’s behaviour is within the bounds of normal. Weird that you think they aren’t.

@EyeLevelStick I'm concerned that any practicing nurses out there think her behaviour was within the bounds of normal.

Watching a neonate to see if they self-correct rather than risk over-handling them? Standard.

Failing a module? Unremarkable, if all the other modules passed and the failed module passed at the next attempt.

Taking handover notes home and not disposing of them? Inappropriate, but not unusual.

Volunteering to work extra shifts? Pretty normal.

Wanting to work with the high acuity babies? Ambitious and keen.

Making a medicines error while working under supervision? Not great, but not uncommon. Certainly not an indication of deliberate harm, as she was second checked by the supervisor and would have expected the error to be noticed.

Facebook searching everybody, including patients’ parents? A bit weird, but not particularly unusual and certainly not sinister.

Having a crush on a co-worker? Not appropriate, but incredibly common.

What else have you got?

What else have you got?

Give FF time, I'm sure they'll come up with something wild.