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

But they think she will get a re-trial, even with all the difficulties?

Don't feel bad about it, plenty of people believe things like that. I know of someone who's actually done jury service and claims to think no case would get to court if the system didn't already know the person was guilty. Head in hands! There are pros and cons to the jury system, and one of the definite downsides is that lots of people have very odd ideas.

She's a scapegoat. Maybe the names of all the others will come out if there is a new trial.

I am convinced she is guilty. Baby after baby dying on her watch. And all those gruesome notes and her weird behaviour round the deaths of the babies. She should have been suspended long before she was.

Now this I have a problem with. I think the notes aren’t proof other than she was mentally ill when she wrote them , she could have been innocent and pushed to that. But a group of people or authorities getting together and deciding to scape goat her . Nope I don’t believe it.

I think some people find it hard to accept that bad things can happen to people without a group of conspirators plotting out what will happen.
I think it’s completely possible and likely that everyone involved in her conviction thought she was guilty and that they were doing a good thing.

Well it can give a pretty good idea of the consensus. You keep believing all these "rare" events are perfectly plausible around one nurse. Maybe one time I could believe the insulin test was an anomaly, but not twice AND along with everything else "rare" happening around her. You could find an anomaly for absolutely anything if you looked hard enough but that's way less than a 1% chance rather than it 99% pointing towards her guilt. It's really not as complicated as people are desperate to make it. She poisoned them which is why the test showed that and why the babies had symptoms of exactly that, no need for obscure unbelievable theories.

That's nice. It was still a poisoning. I guess you're persisting in your ignorance that all the endocrinologists must be wrong. The vast majority agree with Hindmarsh. But you don't like to go with the obvious explanation or consensus do you.

@Namingbaba and @redcars The word scapegoating can be used whether it was intentional or not. It doesn't have to mean that it was a group of conspirators plotting. Sometimes people can be scapegoated unintentionally.

I think a lot of people believe scapegoating must always be intentional so when they hear that someone says that LL was scapegoated they assume that that person is implying a conscious conspiracy which is definitely not always the case.

Do they? Evidence please.

Most of the documentaries heavily favoured her innocence and left out lots of evidence.

I think the fact her defence team seems not to have adequately challenged that chart the prosecution relied on (showing her being on shift for every one of the baby death cases in respect of which she was being tried) is a facet of lawyers being shit at maths - so not immediately looking for the holes in the stats. The challenge for that was to ask for disclosure of the other baby deaths she wasn’t on shift for and wasn’t being blamed for. But nobody seems to have bothered doing that.

You don't see why they wouldn't want to bring up any other deaths? What if she was on for those too? That wouldn't look good...I never understand this argument anyway. The claim wasn't that she killed every single baby that was ever on the unit. The chart was simply to show she was there for all the ones they'd charged her with. Her defence team more than likely know she's guilty (even if she didn't tell them it's blatantly obvious) they're not going to risk introducing any other babies she might've harmed into the mix. If she didn't harm them then they're irrelevant anyway as they obviously collapsed from natural causes which means there was no crime. It's expected on a unit like that, occasionally. How does that somehow prove she's innocent of the suspicious ones they charged her with?

There's no "nobody bothered to do that"-she had the best defence she could have, one of the best barristers in the country.

I can't imagine anyone sensible thinks her defence barristers just couldn't be arsed that day!

I’d understood there were quite a few other deaths in respect of which she was NOT on shift.

The trouble with that line of thinking from an innocence perspective is if you agree they all thought they were doing a good thing and that she was guilty you have to ask if maybe they actually were right. Especially when, as evidenced from this thread it's very hard to believe a nurse could do that. It'd be exceptionally hard to convince 7 consultants (or for them to all come to that conclusion independently) of that being the case unless it really was.

I assure you, I am quite sensible. I just have a healthy degree of scepticism and don’t assume legal professionals representing defendants in high profile criminal cases are always wonderful. There’s something seriously off about Dewi Evans, too. He’s not even a neonatologist: he’s a retired consultant paediatrician and he volunteered his services rather than the prosecution casting its net far and wide to find a proper neonatal expert witness.

Dodgy AF.

Depends who you believe. I've heard she was there for I think 10, and had not long left her shift for two. One she never met as they died before they ever went on her unit. Collapses might be a different thing.

Obviously the innocence side have claimed she wasn't there for many many deaths.

They genuinely do. And think they could've done a better job! Easy to come to that conclusion when you're blinkered by her innocence I guess. I imagine the scales would fall pretty quickly from their eyes if they actually did have to defend her. Hardest job on the planet!

Endocrinology is a very different area of medicine from neonatology - neonatal physiology is very different from adult and even children’s physiology. Your standard paediatric endocrinologist would be out of their depth, if needing to comment on neonatal test results

Your standard endocrinologist would definitely not be able to comment on the accuracy of laboratory tests, they look at the results - and you are taught to always repeat any unusual/unexpected result, as lab results can be wrong for multiple reasons

Can you point me to some instances of people actually saying they don't think the defence bothered? Because that's a very different point to people who think they got the tactics wrong, or even that they made potentially justifiable decisions that didn't pan out, both of which I've seen argued.

@Firefly1987I definitely don’t think I could do a better job: I’m not a criminal lawyer. But I think the case has not been made out to the required standard of proof - which plenty of folk don’t understand. They don’t even understand with whom the burden of proof lies.

Well just the idea that she had an inadequate or incompetent defence and why didn't they do xyz instead of realising it was most likely done for strategic reasons to stop her coming off more guilty than she already did. You can't really read anything more into it than that when people say they didn't bother to call any medical experts.

I can't tell from this whether you think anyone's actually said the defence didn't bother or not. The first sentence sounds like you're surmising that people who said her defence were inadequate meant they couldn't be arsed, but the last mentions people specifically saying they didn't bother. Can you clarify?

If you don't agree with people who think the defence either fucked up or made a justifiable decision that didn't pan out that's fair enough, but there is quite a big difference between that and not being arsed.

Yes but an endocrinologist would look at the symptoms the babies were showing-Geoff Chase can't do that. He can't give you the whole picture. The babies symptoms are explained by those tests being right. If the tests are wrong then what caused it?

I agree. I think a lot of the desire to see her innocent comes from a deep seated need to see an ‘end of the story’. True crime docs and films are generally constructed like this, so if you’ve not had a lot to do with real life criminal justice, I can see how this case feels unfinished - it’s human nature to want to supply the end and strive for a resolution that feels balanced. Especially when a motive is difficult to establish. But if you take away the need to establish a motive and the human need to see a personality to match the horror of the crime, and just consider all the evidence presented, the most likely scenario is that she did intentionally interfere with the babies’ care. The jury weren’t sure every time, but having seen the transcripts I’d have been sure about the cases they were sure about, too.

Thanks to the PP who posted about the new insulin research. This is very interesting. I guess what we are being asked to believe there though, is that despite many newborns and preemies being hypoglycaemic and routinely tested for glucose / insulin levels, we are only just learning now that a key marker used on a straightforward and regularly used assay is likely to show very different results in neonates to other cohorts?

The blind faith in the competence of criminal defence teams is really breathtaking.