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

Yes, this was in the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health's 2016 report. Obviously this had less impact on the more specialist hospitals Chester's babies were to be transferred to, and more on hospitals lower down the chain like Chester. It was a dreadful time for Chester to increase more risky admissions - a perfect storm

The grounds for application to the CCRC include plenty of new evidence, including non-disclosures by the prosecution and new scientific research and experiment. While the Shoo Lee press conference got a lot of the attention, it's not the limit of the defence case.

I read an interesting article about the coverage of the case in Proof Magazine (by the Justice Gap charity). They pointed out that it is immensely difficult to get the press interested in potential miscarriages of justice, and that normally, papers won't print a story if another paper is dealing with it. The Lucy Letby case is an exception.

Mark McDonald points out in a separate article that keeping the press attentive to Lucy Letby's case gives an opportunity to publicise the various problems with the CCRC, the Court of Appeal, and the expert witness system. That doesn't benefit Lucy Letby alone, but also all the other cases the press won't touch.

There are other very good reasons for the publicity around the case, but these considerations seem valid and important.

Inventing things like she confessed?

This is where it would be helpful to have someone on thread who is knowledgeable about false confessions because they are surprisingly easy to obtain and the psychological reasons for this are not intuitive.

I know from personal experience of being in an abusive relationship that being repeatedly accused of something you didn't do does begin to take on an internalised voice of its own inside your head and the cognitive dissonance is frightening. A double think occurs where you know in one part of your brain what your lived experience was but if the voice saying otherwise is powerful enough, you also start to think as if that were true too. People in this position often end up frozen, requiring constant reassurance and often the only thing they know for sure is that they hate themselves and feel a sense of hopelessness. It is like being evicted from your own brain. I'm surprised she survived it.

It would be entirely normal for psychological help to involve encouraging the person to articulate all the conflicting thoughts which would include the lines of causation that that mind has created to make sense of it all. That fact that the notes as a whole make no kind of sense and there is no coherent message of any kind coming through except confusion and self hatred is very telling. Contrast this with the slippery, deceptive and almost polished performances of psychopaths who have made controlling others a way of life. They don't come across as confused but they leave other people deeply confused about who they are. They don't experience this inner torment.

I know that if I were to write down some of the internalised accusations that have been on a loop in my head at some of the darkest periods of my life alongside what I knew to be true about what I had actually done, it would bear many similarities. And I was not a socially naive twenty something who had lived and breathed a career that had been taken away in the most devastating circumstances.

Under enough pressure, if it has repeatedly made clear to you that the truth is not enough and you are under the influence of medication and crippling self loathing as a result of depression, it is surprisingly possible to take the path of least resistance, even fleetingly, and say with some degree of congruence that whatever the powerful voices are saying must be true.

At the times the notes were written, It had been made clear to Lucy that she had lost her career because some people believed she had killed the patients in her care.

How would you know if yoiur unit had been experirncing an "incredibly high rate of deaths and collapses"?

It's interesting that one of the doctors directly involved in this case who has been found to have given evidence in the trial that directly conflicted with an email account of his own has hit the news today because his former wife was left unable to trust as a result of the depth of dishonesty she experienced during the marriage. This is a medical professional who had something to gain from the deaths of these babies being someone else's fault. I wonder why we aren't talking about how he could have got it so wrong in the evidence that he gave in court.

I think some nurses will realise but don't expect management to listen to a nurse wondering about this.

But the notes are not a confession, they have been put forward as a "confession" and this has been twisted to mean that she meant that she murdered the babies.

indeed, but according to @NameChangeMay2026 this must mean that the nurses are guilty of something.

Can you give a link to this please?

Not necessarily. Nurses have no influence on the number of the number of staff to a number of patient or the degree of specialization. Nurses have little influence on the level of care delivered by doctors (it can be very poor!).There is incredibly little in reality a nurse can do if a department is overloaded or poorly managed by management.

I agree, I am just pointing out the flaw in @NameChangeMay2026's post

It was common knowledge why she was removed from the ward at the end of June 2016 and who was refusing to allow her to return. This was before she'd lodged her grievance in September 2016. Of course people were saying things about her and she knew it.

Eh? The fact that lots of babies had collapsed and died in one year when they didn't in your previous years on the job??

That's a cluster of 4 though, not 25 or more!

If everything had remained the same you wouldhave a point

But you are ignoring that the unit had also changed in the last year by being re graded and talking on babies that were more unwell.

that LL wasn't the only nurse the could have complained and that LL had taken a greivence out against the consultants.

I am very sorry for your experiences. 😢💐

@Oftenaddled posted a mind-blowing link to a study where seventy percent of the subjects were persuaded that they had committed an assault on someone, when they had not. Food for thought.

I hope you are well away from that b***d now.

I thought the unit was downgraded, not upgraded?

Someone upthread said that of course the baby deaths stopped after LL left, because the unit was downgraded. But that doesn't explain how they stopped when she was on holiday and started back up with a vengeance the day she returned.

Anyway, I am not convinced of her guilt. I'm saying that there is a lot of smoke. On what I know at the moment, I would not convict her.

I hope very much that she gets a re-trial, because hers was obviously a circus.

But I didn't say that the rate means that nurses must be guilty. I'm pointing out all the smoke around LL. But I am not convinced of her guilt.

I can't find anything about this either, so a link would be great, @Notabarbie.

The deaths didn't stop when she went on holiday.

The last death before she went on holidays was in early April 2016. All the consultants and experts agreed this one was from natural causes.

The last death she was convicted of causing before she went on holiday was in October 2015.

She went on holiday for a week in mid June 2016. For the tenth week in a row, the unit had no deaths that week.

Can you see how the press and prosecution have exaggerated the story here?

You asked me for a source for the fact that baby O had a collapse before Lucy Letby came back to work after her Ibiza holiday, @NameChangeMay2026 . Here it is - apologies for the delay. We know that Lucy Letby came back to work the next day.

https://archive.is/PJmKM

Yes, I can see that.

Why oh why didn't her defence counsel stick up for her better and say what you said?? It's just 🙈

I don’t confess to know all the evidence but the criminal proof is beyond all reasonable doubt. Could anyone honestly say she is guilty beyond all reasonable doubt?