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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To think that Lucy Letby will get a new trial?

554 replies

NameChangeMay2026 · 28/05/2026 17:40

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

Special Report: The Lessons of the Lucy Letby Case

After Lucy Letby was convicted in August 2023 of murdering seven babies, a number of experts contacted Eye columnist MD because they

https://www.private-eye.co.uk/special-reports/lucy-letby

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NameChangeMay2026 · 29/05/2026 15:25

This username is not funny.

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BrickBiscuit · 29/05/2026 15:27

We don't have trials in the UK, we have pantomimes.
"Oh yes she did!";
"Oh no she didn't!";
"What do you think, boys and girls?"
The theatrical performance of the lawyers persuades juries. My own experience of courts is minor, but I was astonished at how inept was the search for truth. Any rigorous inquiry was buried by procedural pedantry, obsequiousness and showmanship.

NameChangeMay2026 · 29/05/2026 15:28

Oftenaddled · 29/05/2026 15:17

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

Excellent - thank you very much!

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NameChangeMay2026 · 29/05/2026 15:30

Zanatdy · 29/05/2026 15:24

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?

Hi, your statement is contradictory. Did you mean to say that the criminal proof ISN'T beyond all reasonable doubt?

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Zanatdy · 29/05/2026 15:35

NameChangeMay2026 · 29/05/2026 15:30

Hi, your statement is contradictory. Did you mean to say that the criminal proof ISN'T beyond all reasonable doubt?

I meant to say in criminal trials the jury has to be convinced of guilt beyond all reasonable doubt (opposed to balance of probabilities in civil).

Notabarbie · 29/05/2026 15:39

Notabarbie · 29/05/2026 12:00

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 mixed up celebrity doctors - my apologies. This post doesn't have any substance.

FrippEnos · 29/05/2026 15:42

NameChangeMay2026 · 29/05/2026 15:06

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.

The unit was upgraded then down graded again.

NameChangeMay2026 · 29/05/2026 16:19

Oftenaddled · 29/05/2026 15:17

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

@Oftenaddled The article is amazing. Thank you for the link.

It also makes me very cross, because the public should be able to rely on evidence presented in court as being accurate. Assuming the info. in the article is correct, what on earth was Evans thinking?

We are told one thing - that LL was on duty for X event - and then we are told that she was not. So who should we believe? 🤬

Edit: I also can't understand why her defence didn't push back against that chart. Why didn't they point out that LL had not been on duty for all the incidents? Why didn't they root out the shift and incident data that showed such? I know at least one barrister who is convinced that LL's defence threw the trial.

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CheeseNPickle3 · 29/05/2026 16:42

I think it's more that the events that were considered suspicious (or not) changed based on whether LL was on duty. They were somewhat... flexible. So the xray used as evidence that Baby C had air injected via NG turned out to have been taken before she'd met the baby. Rather than saying she couldn't possibly have done it and looking for someone else, they decided the baby must have been harmed by her the next day (but AFAIK the xray was still presented to the jury). In some cases there were multiple reports written.

CarbootJunction · 29/05/2026 16:53

I don't know how Dewi Evans cannot have a guilty conscience.

NameChangeMay2026 · 29/05/2026 16:54

CheeseNPickle3 · 29/05/2026 16:42

I think it's more that the events that were considered suspicious (or not) changed based on whether LL was on duty. They were somewhat... flexible. So the xray used as evidence that Baby C had air injected via NG turned out to have been taken before she'd met the baby. Rather than saying she couldn't possibly have done it and looking for someone else, they decided the baby must have been harmed by her the next day (but AFAIK the xray was still presented to the jury). In some cases there were multiple reports written.

Yes, it seems that that changed, absolutely. The article that @Oftenaddled posted touches on that.

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NameChangeMay2026 · 29/05/2026 16:59

CarbootJunction · 29/05/2026 16:53

I don't know how Dewi Evans cannot have a guilty conscience.

Assuming that these reports like the Unherd one linked by @Oftenaddled are accurate, I agree. I wonder if Evans didn't look at all the evidence properly before agreeing to act for the prosecution. I don't know the process for appointing an expert witness, but surely the expert needs to form an opinion before deciding if they are on the defence or prosecution's side.

I guess it's also possible that the hospital or the police did not give Evans accurate shift/incident data.

I hate this case. One side says one thing, the other side says something that directly contradicts it, so who are we meant to believe? An example being this shift/incident data. Evans says one thing, the author of the Unherd article says another, so who are we meant to believe?

I do wonder if she will simply have her conviction quashed and be given a new identity.

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CheeseNPickle3 · 29/05/2026 17:06

CarbootJunction · 29/05/2026 16:53

I don't know how Dewi Evans cannot have a guilty conscience.

I'm kind of undecided on that. I think as far as he's concerned (and this goes for the other prosecution experts too), the consultants identified cases to look at, they wrote reports (sometimes lots of reports) and then the prosecution/police decided which bits they were using and it was up to the jury to evaluate the evidence.

I think he definitely wanted to "win" and presented his evidence as more of a certainty than an expert witness should. If you've got the prosecution saying it's definitely deliberate harm but the defence can only go as far as probably natural but can't rule out foul play then it might be harmful to put the defence witness on the stand. Or that's one theory anyway.

CheeseNPickle3 · 29/05/2026 17:47

AFAIK Dr Evans only looked at the medical evidence to identify suspicious/not suspicious events i.e. was deliberate harm done. I don't think he had anything to do with the shift charts. I think if he has anything to feel guilty about it would be overstating the certainty of his conclusions. Whether the system should be changed to make sure that experts are neither prosecution/defence but unbiased (and paid either way) is up for debate.

The consultants were responsible for selecting the cases to look at in the first place (some from going back over notes like the insulin cases, which weren't considered suspicious at the time, hence the definitive tests for artificial insulin not being done). If we're definitely looking for a murderer, shouldn't we be considering that a doctor could also be responsible and have independent people picking?

The police had access to the shift data so they (obviously) only selected events where LL was on duty. AFAIK the chart includes shifts where she was either on duty when the suspicious event/death occurred or the shift before.

The prosecution put together a narrative which shows LL harming babies. That's how the legal system works so they did their job in that respect. It's up to them to present the case that shows she's guilty and up to the defence to cast doubt on that.

The thing is, the more cases the consultants could pick out and the more suspicious events that could be identified, the worse it looks. Rather than taking each case on its merits - I mean, a single baby being murdered is a terrible thing, right? But it's difficult to prove. If you've got not one but 18 suspicious events and there's one person who was there (or thereabouts) for all of them, then even if there's no direct evidence of harm in any one case, then that's a lot of "smoke". Especially if you don't mention the fact that some of these events were not initially thought to be suspicious and other events have been dropped and you're not allowed to mention as defence any incidents that weren't part of the trial.

The judge allowed the jury to find guilt even if they were convinced that deliberate harm had been done and that LL was the person who had done it, but they didn't need to know exactly how it had been done. I don't think that's entirely fair in this case because the methods of harm put forward by the prosecution were so diverse (overfeeding with milk, insulin poisoning, air down NG tube, injected with air, "force of a car crash" injury to the liver etc.) so it's not like you can point to a single culprit with a particular MO or a particular "type" of victim. Normally in a murder case you'd start with a victim and try to find the murderer. What they ended up with here seems to suggest to me that they started with a murderer and tried to find as many victims as possible.

PinkTonic · 29/05/2026 18:08

CheeseNPickle3 · 29/05/2026 17:47

AFAIK Dr Evans only looked at the medical evidence to identify suspicious/not suspicious events i.e. was deliberate harm done. I don't think he had anything to do with the shift charts. I think if he has anything to feel guilty about it would be overstating the certainty of his conclusions. Whether the system should be changed to make sure that experts are neither prosecution/defence but unbiased (and paid either way) is up for debate.

The consultants were responsible for selecting the cases to look at in the first place (some from going back over notes like the insulin cases, which weren't considered suspicious at the time, hence the definitive tests for artificial insulin not being done). If we're definitely looking for a murderer, shouldn't we be considering that a doctor could also be responsible and have independent people picking?

The police had access to the shift data so they (obviously) only selected events where LL was on duty. AFAIK the chart includes shifts where she was either on duty when the suspicious event/death occurred or the shift before.

The prosecution put together a narrative which shows LL harming babies. That's how the legal system works so they did their job in that respect. It's up to them to present the case that shows she's guilty and up to the defence to cast doubt on that.

The thing is, the more cases the consultants could pick out and the more suspicious events that could be identified, the worse it looks. Rather than taking each case on its merits - I mean, a single baby being murdered is a terrible thing, right? But it's difficult to prove. If you've got not one but 18 suspicious events and there's one person who was there (or thereabouts) for all of them, then even if there's no direct evidence of harm in any one case, then that's a lot of "smoke". Especially if you don't mention the fact that some of these events were not initially thought to be suspicious and other events have been dropped and you're not allowed to mention as defence any incidents that weren't part of the trial.

The judge allowed the jury to find guilt even if they were convinced that deliberate harm had been done and that LL was the person who had done it, but they didn't need to know exactly how it had been done. I don't think that's entirely fair in this case because the methods of harm put forward by the prosecution were so diverse (overfeeding with milk, insulin poisoning, air down NG tube, injected with air, "force of a car crash" injury to the liver etc.) so it's not like you can point to a single culprit with a particular MO or a particular "type" of victim. Normally in a murder case you'd start with a victim and try to find the murderer. What they ended up with here seems to suggest to me that they started with a murderer and tried to find as many victims as possible.

He had something to do with the shift charts in that events were deemed suspicious or not depending on whether they could be linked to her being on duty. I agree with you that he spoke with a level of certainty that was unwarranted given the speculative nature of the diagnoses, but that certainly wasn’t his only crime as far as I’m concerned. She was convicted and given a whole life sentence on the basis of a diagnosis he retracted after the fact.

TroppoCaldoPerLondra · 29/05/2026 18:17

Also the problem is that of course Lucy was going to be there a lot because she worked there.

One of the things that strikes me as being crazy about the whole thing is that there were people in and out of the ward the whole time. Lucy was apparently killing and harming babies in a variety of different ways in front of everyone and yet nobody noticed her doing anything.

montysmaw · 29/05/2026 18:50

Firefly1987 · 29/05/2026 00:17

@montysmaw ok so how are we seeing things so differently re the evidence then?

Because I prefer to listen to a panel of international experts rather than a discredited gob for hire.

Firefly1987 · 29/05/2026 18:59

followtheswallow · 29/05/2026 09:13

Derek Bentley’s ‘let him have it.’

I a worried I’ll sound incredibly condescending here but people under huge amounts of stress say all sorts they don’t mean. Those notes should be completely disregarded. They are contradictory, disturbed and disturbing and panicked. They do not tally with a cold, cruel and calculated approach.

The flip side to the MN ‘if someone tells you who they are’ is that if someone tells you who you are, you believe it.

So people shouldn't read into the note as meaning exactly what it says yet you can apparently ascertain they don't tally with a cold cruel calculated approach? How? Of course she's freaking panicked by that point, she was about to be found out!

followtheswallow · 29/05/2026 19:24

Firefly1987 · 29/05/2026 18:59

So people shouldn't read into the note as meaning exactly what it says yet you can apparently ascertain they don't tally with a cold cruel calculated approach? How? Of course she's freaking panicked by that point, she was about to be found out!

No, people shouldn’t read anything into the note because it was contradictory and made little sense.

Irrespective of her guilt or otherwise it isn’t any sort of evidence for the prosecution or defence and should never have been treated as such, IMO.

FrippEnos · 29/05/2026 19:43

Firefly1987 · 29/05/2026 18:59

So people shouldn't read into the note as meaning exactly what it says yet you can apparently ascertain they don't tally with a cold cruel calculated approach? How? Of course she's freaking panicked by that point, she was about to be found out!

If you are going to take the note literally, Why are you ignoring the notes where she said that she didn't do it?

IonianNerveGrip · 29/05/2026 19:49

Oftenaddled · 29/05/2026 11:24

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.

Yep.

People don't have to like it, but it is an unpleasant fact that we don't have a system that speedily identifies MOJs and public interest can be an important factor. Seeking media involvement is a necessary evil for someone who feels/knows they've been a victim of an MOJ. And that's before we consider the various specific and structural problems that actually, we should all be aware of even if she's guilty as sin.

Firefly1987 · 29/05/2026 20:17

followtheswallow · 29/05/2026 19:24

No, people shouldn’t read anything into the note because it was contradictory and made little sense.

Irrespective of her guilt or otherwise it isn’t any sort of evidence for the prosecution or defence and should never have been treated as such, IMO.

And what about the "I'll never know what it's like to have a family"-perhaps because she knew she was going to get life in prison? Doesn't speak to much confidence in her own innocence does it. Or were people putting that in her head too...

NameChangeMay2026 · 29/05/2026 20:29

PinkTonic · 29/05/2026 18:08

He had something to do with the shift charts in that events were deemed suspicious or not depending on whether they could be linked to her being on duty. I agree with you that he spoke with a level of certainty that was unwarranted given the speculative nature of the diagnoses, but that certainly wasn’t his only crime as far as I’m concerned. She was convicted and given a whole life sentence on the basis of a diagnosis he retracted after the fact.

What diagnosis did Evans retract?

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NameChangeMay2026 · 29/05/2026 20:34

montysmaw · 29/05/2026 18:50

Because I prefer to listen to a panel of international experts rather than a discredited gob for hire.

To be fair, the defence could have brought in its own gob for hire, in fact a whole panel of hired gobs, but they didn't.

There should have been a PANEL of prosecution experts and a PANEL of defence experts, and the National Crime Agency even advised the prosecution on the various fields from which such experts should be drawn.

But instead of two teams of experts, there was....just one expert. (Evans.)

How did this happen???! 🙈 Makes me think that experts should be chosen by the courts and compelled to testify, same as juries are compelled to do their duty.

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CheeseNPickle3 · 29/05/2026 20:38

NameChangeMay2026 · 29/05/2026 20:29

What diagnosis did Evans retract?

Air via NG tube for babies C, I and P (Private Eye part 30 covers it). He later told Channel 5 that it's not a direct cause of death. Everybody else's fault for misinterpreting somehow though...