Lucy Letby new evidence

[Gonnagetgoingreturnsagain]

https://www.thejusticegap.com/new-research-undermining-letbys-convictions-for-insulin-

https://www.healthcare-management.uk/police-arrest-lucy-letby-hospital

New evidence out re this case. Any views? Sorry but think first link won’t work so will reposts.

And you appear to be in neither of those camps! Or if you followed the trial, I don’t think you did more than skim the headlines.

Not guilty same as innocent no?

I hope something happens. The more I read the more I’m convinced she’s not guilty. And like I said here last year on posts on MN I was firmly convinced of her guilt 100%.

I’m not a lawyer but I think it’s because court doesn’t decide if you’re innocent, just whether the original conviction was unsafe.

Sort of... but also no.

Since you're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty and the burden of proof is on the prosecution, it's entirely possible that someone has committed a crime but can't be found guilty because there's not enough/good enough evidence. They're "not guilty" but I'd argue that they're not "innocent".

Also I believe the system for compensation is only paid if you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you didn't commit the crime.

The interesting part in this case is that those claiming a miscarriage of justice aren't arguing that someone else did the crime, but that there was no crime.

Re: Quitelikeit's post above:

you know absolutely zero on the file selections given by the police

That's the problem! It should be on the prosecution to affirm that file selection was done by people who don't know the suspect. Just as, when a pharma company claims their new drug works better than the old one, it's on them to certify that they did a double-blind study where neither patients nor their doctors knew who got which drug.

you are almost suggesting they acted with ill intent

No, just that they structured their "study" of cases in a way that failed to remove unconscious bias. Without blinding, their statistical claims about unlikelihood of Letby's association with incidents have no validity.

Can u link to the evidence where he changed his mind?

For example, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/b7d2ec911c78e12c

If you are so convinced of Letby's guilt, why are you bothered about their being a retrial?
If the evindence is so strong against her, as it must be for her to be found guilty, why be concerned about all the new evidence?

Also only a fool would be against questioning a judicial system, only by allowing itself to be questioned and proving proving itself against those that question can a judicial system be found to be correct.

I am just as convinced as ever she is guilty.

That's a position shared by a lot of people and I don't think it's unreasonable. It's absolutely possible that she harmed those babies and possible that she harmed even more. Staff in a hospital are in a position of trust and it's not really possible to track their every move or monitor their every action.

It's also possible that the babies weren't deliberately harmed at all as was thought at the time. From the other neonatal experts it seems that the standard of care was not good enough at the CoCH. From expert statisticians it also seems that although there was a spike in incidents, this was not outside the bounds of probability.

Personally I think there are some questions about the way that the evidence was presented to the jury - in particular what was left out - and I think there has been new evidence that has come to light since the trial about other similar cases and about the way the hospital was run. I also think that with so many methods of harm suggested that it was inappropriate for the judge to say the method didn't matter, only that they were sure it was deliberate. Having 18 cases would also make the jury think that she must have done something, even if none of the cases individually were particularly strong.

There is no direct evidence that Lucy Letby deliberately harmed any baby. If direct evidence did come to light I would absolutely change my position to definitely guilty. In fact, if there was some definite evidence of deliberate harm - clear differences between the incidents determined to be "suspicious" vs "not suspicious" then I'd say it's much more likely that she's guilty.

Thinking particularly of the xray of baby C that turned out to have been taken before Lucy Letby even met that baby, it's not good enough to present that as evidence of harm and then walk it back to "CPAP belly" when it's found that she couldn't possibly have caused it. If you're absolutely convinced that you have evidence of harm then you need to be looking for another culprit. If there's another possible cause then it's not evidence. You can't imply guilt by saying she was there for every suspicious incident if part of the criteria for determining whether an incident was suspicious is whether or not she was there.

The evidence is all circumstantial. Circumstantial evidence can be enough to convict someone if it's strong enough. What you shouldn't do is start with a culprit and cherry pick evidence to fit that.

There are multiple serious problems in the way this case has been handled, which should concern us all. Maybe the failures to blind test evidence didn't result in an innocent person being imprisoned here, I don't know. But it could do the next time it happens.

I think for those who think she is guilty, the cost of a re-trial is an eye watering sum to pay by the tax payer. It will be several millions.

Tbf all permutations from here are expensive. Keeping her in prison for potentially 50+ years will cost millions too, and one of the possibilities here is that the convictions do eventually get overturned but not before she's racked up a few more costly years in prison.

I think the problem here in terms of a retrial is that at least some of the stuff that I’ve seen as being new or not included was actually included in the trial. Certainly standards of care were brought up by Letby’s barrister in cross examination of witnesses. IANAL but my understanding was that it would need to be something the jury hadn’t considered.

The new insulin paper might do that for two of the babies. But if what I’ve read about it is correct I think a decent prosecution barrister will manage to neutralise that at trial and might make Letby’s situation worse.

The CCRC don't actually need new evidence technically and can refer under the principle of 'lurking doubt'. In practice I believe they don't (or never have) referred under that ground before because they will find a way to justify calling the old evidence new.

I read that it was extremely rare with both CCRC and the Court of Appeal, and don't know of a case when it's happened myself. Others may know better of course.

In some ways it's the worst of both worlds. The lurking doubt principle means we have a system that theoretically allows for a lot of flexibility, so people think this level of institutional protection against MOJs exists. But there's a cultural disinclination to use it.

And there are obvious institutional problems with the CCRC too, which I hope are being resolved but it wouldn't be a great shock if they weren't, would it?

My source was this book, which is an empirical study of decision-making and the use of discretion within the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Expensive book, I didn't pay for it, I 'acquired' it online 😅

https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-and-subject-groups/miscarriages-justice/reasons-doubt

Yes, now obviously the new (interim?) chair said that the CCRC seemed incapable of learning from their mistakes and that she wanted to root out the culture causing them, but then there was a situation where the head of investigations had to be removed from the Lucy Letby case because he'd previously praised Paul Hughes for his work on Operation hummingbird
🙈 so no, it definitely would not be a shock if they're not resolved.

Dr Bohin did reports also for the second batch of cases that the CPS refused to proceed it, but she said that even if they had proceeded to trial that she would not have taken the stand.

If a retrial is ordered they will struggle to bring a case, Evans is retired, I can't see Bohin taking the stand if she wasn't even going to take the stand if there was another trial for new cases.

I've had the same thought. This is already a circus. Can well see why people with the relevant expertise would want to stay well out of it.

Dewi Evans suggested a renowned neonatologist, Eleri Adams, might be interested in reviewing the files and she just gave a flat out no. Don't blame her.

The stats were dodgy as hell, with deaths occurring when Letby wasn’t on shift being conveniently ignored.

Do you have a source for this? Not saying it didn’t happen, just that this is written often but I haven’t seen anything definitive to show this.

There were 13 deaths in total on the unit, and 4 deaths after transfer, so 17 in total. LL was charged with 7 deaths.

Thanks but would be good to see a source for detail around the exclusion of the other deaths.

Google is your friend.

Yep, it's all available online

This article talks about all the baby deaths at that time. Is that what you were looking for? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2y7kxw6yro?app-referrer=deep-link

Of course there were no charges relating to those additional two.

The new insulin paper might do that for two of the babies. But if what I’ve read about it is correct I think a decent prosecution barrister will manage to neutralise that at trial and might make Letby’s situation worse.

The bigger question is whether the cause of every hospital incident, every deterioration and test result, can always be convicingly established from retrospective records. On the face of it, that seems implausible. Clinical diagnoses turn out to be wrong all the time even when the doctor has the patient in front of them and can order any tests they want. Why is retrospective diagnosis expected to be better? And yet it's argued that unless a non-malicious cause can be firmly established, malfeasance can be inferred.