To think that Lucy Letby will get a new trial?

[NameChangeMay2026]

The previous thread on Letby is almost full. Posting here for traffic.

If we have any lawyers here, what do you think the likelihood is of Letby getting a new trial? I'm a layperson, but I'm going to guess that she will get one. It seems that many, many rebuttals have appeared since her conviction.

YABU - she will not get a new trial. The case is settled.
YANBU - the new evidence/discussion is compelling and she will probably get a re-trial.

I've been mainly convinced of her guilt, but I have started reading the free Private Eye series on the case by Phil Hammond. Now I don't know what to think. Here's the series, if anyone wants to read it. https://www.private-eye.co.uk/special-reports/lucy-letby

That why I said it was a beige flag, I wasn't claiming it amounted to a piece of evidence that would hold up in court. But you do need to build a bit of profile of the defendant, to understand who and what you're dealing with. As I said, I'm not sure of her guilt or innocence, I'm merely pointing out a detail I found to be a bit odd frankly. And the comment during training about "looking forward to her first death, to get it out of the way". That was an odd one too.

And carrying a little first aid kit for your own children is wholly different and completely appropriate for that that context. Kids get knocks, cuts and scrapes all the time (mine do). But taking one on a night out, when the injuries and illnesses are usually going to be the result of an excess of booze and drugs is a an entirely different kettle of fish. Your little handbag first aid kit is going to be completely useless in those circumstances. Much better the first aid chests that clubs, bars and pubs have to carry.

The Italian police looked liked fools for all that satanic nonsense without any evidence.

Maybe they were just following all lines of enquiry as they were trying to get a handle on a very odd and disorientating case. But your revealing comment does take me back to that time and all the "Johnny Foreigner doesn't know what he's doing" rhetoric. It's easy to snipe to from the sidelines I guess...

Does anyone have a rational explanation for her sentence in her notes that goes:

"I killed them on purpose because I'm not good enough to care for them."

On purpose.

Would it not be vastly more logical for an innocent person to write "I killed them by accident. I'm not good enough to care for them."

No she gets excuse after excuse made for her that other people wouldn't. No one would even be entertaining the idea of her being innocent if she didn't come from a certain demographic.

Just imagine people trying to excuse that post it note if it was a guy or an ugly middle-aged woman. Wouldn't happen!

If you have ever been accused of something that you haven't done that has caused you extreme mental distress you would understand why the thoughts that people write down are often not very logical, or written in such a way that makes for easy reading,

But again you are ignoring the other noites that she wrote clkaiming that she was innocent.

Uou do realise that you are showing your own racism whne you are saying that no-one would give so much thought if she was from a "different demographic".

Surely you would be on here posting about her innocent if you believed that she was. Or would you not because of that "different demographic"?

She wrote "I did nothing wrong." If you are a complete psychopath (not saying she definitely is), you don't think that doing what you want is wrong, even if that's killing people.

Not saying that that's her.

It's the "on purpose" part that gives me pause.

I didn't mention race. She gets all her disturbing behaviour excused. I'd love to know why if it's not to do with the fact she reminds so many people of how they were in their 20s or their daughter/daughter's friends?

There are different theories on this one. I've seen someone point out that she may have scrawled - they went, ie they said before it.

But to me it is fairly straightforward. She was distressed and having intrusive thoughts and writing them down to expunge them. You're asking for a reasonable explanation, but nobody is reasonable all the time, especially when under pressure.

False confessions are common. Brainstorming and doodling are common. I scribble constantly, and they aren't all straightforward statements of fact. Why should they be?

Yep and we have very specific language when it's about her guilt. "I didn't do anything wrong" is pretty vague in comparison. There's no excusing it, there just isn't. She wrote it because it's true.

I mean, she literally wrote "I killed them on purpose."

She was encouraged to write her doubts and fears. We don't know what she was thinking.

I remember a baby that I was caring for being absolutely fine. Then the baby absolutely wasn't fine. They had NEC, which can creep up, but the signs are quite sudden. My first reaction when I got a large aspirate prior to feeding them and their OBS were bad was 'did I break the baby?' I was frantically looking over my notes to see what I'd missed. My nurse in charge had to reassure me that the baby just broke and that I didn't break them. You have no idea how awful it is to be in charge of a baby that breaks.

Also, in emergency situations, everything is distorted. Time goes really slowly as well as speeding up. That sounds stupid, but it's true. A different part of your brain kicks in to allow you to deal with the emergency, which can make you feel a bit cold and detached, but at the same time you're witnessing the incident you're dealing with and it's like watching a car crash in slow motion. You know what's happening, you know it's really bad, and you know that unless you do something there will be a catastrophe. In good teams you debrief, sometimes several times, looking at the situation from different angles.

I don't think it's any wonder that every member of staff told a different story about emergencies. I also think it makes it really unreliable as evidence. If anyone is a Grey's Anatomy fan, think back to the scene where April Kepner gets distracted by the guy rolling past with an axe in his chest and doesn't visually check her patient's airway, and all the different accounts of that incident.

When you cut out accusations made in hindsight after she was accused of murder, I'm not sure I see any disturbing behaviour.

But you have a bit of a point. I work supervising mostly young people, up to Lucy Letby's age. I've worked with hundreds of them. In that context, none of her behaviour strikes me as terribly unusual. Social media addiction? Hoarding notes and papers? The odd gauche comment, over years of work? I'm just not seeing anything sensational here. I am sure there are lots of nurses out there who are "odder" than Lucy Letby - I'm sure lots of them are great nurses.

As I said, intrusive thoughts

There are different theories on this one. I've seen someone point out that she may have scrawled - they went, ie they said before it.

It's not "they went" it's "they won't"-it's a continuation of the previous sentence "how will things ever be liked they used to be-they won't" you can even see the apostrophe.

Murderers are also distressed when they think they're about to get caught. We know she got distressed over things that affected her in court. She wouldn't have done the things she did in the first place if she was a robot. Why are you discounting the fact she could be guilty AND distressed and having intrusive thoughts? Surely it's far more likely in that case.

It's pretty damning, isn't it, when considered in the context of everything else.

Another thing: She was texting her work friend just before coming back to work from Ibiza, which is when she said "I'll probably be back in with a bang, lol." The unit had been experiencing a very high rate of deaths and collapses, which were apparently so disturbing to her that she wrote false confessions. So, if she was innocent, why did she not ask her friend in that exchange if there had been more deaths and collapses in her two weeks away? The obvious explanation would be that she knew there probably wouldn't be, since she wasn't there.

It seems there is no evidence pointing towards guilt that you won't explain away. Really beginning to think you might be her!

None of which explains why she wrote that she killed them ON PURPOSE if she didn't. It makes vastly more sense to write that you killed them by accident and therefore are not good enough to care for them, if you're innocent.

"I killed them on purpose" is not an expression of doubt or fear. It's an expression of a fact.

The logical precursor to "I'm not good enough to care for them" is "I killed them by accident", not "I killed them on purpose." An innocent person would have written "I killed them by accident" with the logical follow-up of that thought being "Therefore, I'm not good enough to care for them."

Yeah she comes back from Ibiza and within just a couple days two of the triplets have died on her watch. Then another baby collapsed after the last triplet was moved away from her. And she wrote a note addressed to all triplets by name saying "today is your birthday but you're not here" (even though one was alive) then despite all this "distress" apparently, she refuses to take any time off and is happy as larry to come in again after a big staff meeting where everyone else is distraught and Dr Breary says he expects she'll take some time off.

Fair enough - I'm not attached to the "I went" theory, because I've never been very interested in the notes. Because I'm always scribbling a mixture of fact, nonsense, and interesting phrases myself during meetings and phone calls, I've just never thought they proved anything. To the extent that experts in the field have commented, they seem to agree on that point

Totally agree

I’ve always thought those notes were obviously written by someone having a nervous breakdown . Imagine be accused of something so serious and suspended , isolated . Lots of people would loose their minds and start thinking they might have done it even though they know they didn’t. I don’t know if LL is guilty or not but those notes don’t seem hard evidence to me.

Did Dr Brearey tell anyone else to take time off?

Did he take time off himself? Did Dr Gibbs?

Does it not help some people to work through difficult times? I would certainly prefer to go to work for purpose and company in difficult times than to stew alone at home. This doesn't apply to everyone but it certainly falls within the range of normal human behaviours.

There's not much logic to that statement, I agree. I wouldn't expect someone using notes to try to deal with serious distress to be strictly logical