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

I don’t know if she is guilty based on what I’ve read. That should mean she isn’t convicted - we have to be certain of guilt and I don’t see how we can be here. I watched the documentary a few months back (can’t remember if it was bbc or Netflix) but I came away from that thinking wow this is not conclusive evidence at all..
everyone deserves a fair and just trial. I really thought her diary notes were such controversial evidence because they prove absolutely nothing and are so speculative.

So come LL was on duty for so many?

The evidence for Lucy Letby being with or near babies she wasn't responsible, when they collapsed, is pretty shaky. Of course it would happen sometimes, because there was usually just one or two nurses per room at night, so they had to babysit for each other. But the evidence for some of these cases is based on swipe card data that turned out to be wrong, on nurses' witness statements that changed from their original accounts, or just from assuming that she must have been there because she couldn't prove she wasn't nearly a decade later. When you look at the case closely it falls apart

I can't find anything online about Baby O having a deterioration the night before LL came back from Ibiza. Do you remember how you know that?

Two parents caught her with the babies, I believe, interrupting her. At least, that's what it looks like.

From what I can tell the other nurses supported LL but were told not to take part in the case as it would refelect poorly on them.
And the consultant that said he saw her doing nothing was contradicted by his own email.

The thing is though, you probably thought the Guildford Four; the Birmingham Six, and Amanda Knox were guilty too. With the same supercilious tone.

What I have found is that there is always a certain rump of people who will never ever admit they were catastrophically and hopelessly wrong, that their judgement is off. They’d rather innocent people were in prison for decades or forever than look in the mirror.

I don’t know whether LL will ever get out of prison, but I do know that those really certain of her guilt are on shaky ground.

To borrow a phrase I think you’re probably an idiot and you’ll only change my mind if it’s legally warranted.

Bacause that is how dewi evans constructed his case.

Prisoners do have a voice. They have the right to appeal. LL did appeal, and her appeal was denied. Now her case is with her last avenue of appeal, the CCRC.

Yes, the rota sheet apparently doesn't show all the deaths and collapses that happened, which makes it worthless as evidence. But she was there for dozens of the deaths and collapses, far far more than any other nurse. She's either guilty or she's extremely unlucky.

Or she was the nurse with the training who was regularly called to cover other shifts for illness and shifts that others didn't want to do.
The evidence shows this, which would be why a higher percentages of deaths would fall on her shifts.

It is also worthh remembering that these babies were not well.

GF and BS nope wasnt sure of their guilt

Amanda Knox definitely involved in MK death to this day

I have posted about this before. It's a bit long but I will try to be short and I'm happy to give more details.

Chester was a very small intensive care unit. It had only three intensive care cots. The other babies needed less intensive nursing.

Because Chester was so small, on some nights no intensive care nurses were needed at all. You always needed two senior nurses and two more nurses, who could be junior.

The nights when babies were most likely to die were the nights when more of them were intensive care cases.

If you had two intensive care cases, you needed two senior nurses plus one other nurse (senior or junior) with a special intensive care qualification.

Only two junior nurses had intensive care qualifications. Lucy Letby was one, and worked night shifts. She was also very willing to be moved to shifts where her qualification was needed, and to work extra shifts.

So, you're Lucy Letby's manager. You are trying to staff a night shift. There are two or more children in intensive care. You get two of your senior nurses in, out of about sixteen. Those sixteen will see a lot of deaths between them, but it will be spread out between them. The next person you call is Lucy Letby. If she is available, that's cheaper than a third senior nurse. And she agrees again and again.

At night, the unit is consistently understaffed. The consultants at more specialist hospitals aren't available to give advice remotely. The transport service and its expert team takes hours to arrange. The unit's own consultants can take up to half an hour to attend - it's meant to be five minutes by day. At night, babies are more likely to die. Especially the most fragile intensive care babies. And that's when Lucy Letby is most likely to be working, and that's why she saw so many babies die on her shift. Because she was the cheapest qualified nurse available to work when babies were most likely to die.

She worked quite a lot of overtime/extra shifts as I remember it in a senior role. Which made her vulnerable as she spend many hours in the ward gaving responsibility for the sickest babies.

She worked quite a lot of overtime/extra shifts as I remember it in a senior role. Which made her vulnerable as she spend many hours in the ward gaving responsibility for the sickest babies.

No parents saw her do anything suspicious with their babies. Some saw her near their babies when their babies were upset and unwell. Sadly, babies in intensive care are often upset and unwell, and the nurses in charge of them are supposed to be nearby when this is happening

I have been convinced of her guilt, but am less sure as I am reading through the Private Eye reports in my link. So I agree with the shaky ground. It seems like a huge amount of information was withheld from the jury, such as:

• all the shifts where there was a baby death or unexpected collapse;
• the fact that Baby O had a deterioration the night before LL came back from holiday (if true);
• the fact that the babies were sicker to begin with than the prosecution made out (if true);
• alternative explanations for the medical evidence;
• and the total lack of defence experts.

Private Eye also says that the National Crime Agency told the police to put together a panel of experts, and told them what type of experts, but the police didn't get a panel. The NCA (or another body, I can't remember) also said there should be a panel of prosecution experts and that it should cover X fields, but they only had Evans.

All this is in the Private Eye papers.

So it's hard to see that she got a fair trial when SO much was withheld.

Here's a link to their reports again, for anyone wanting to look. They're free. Note that PE was also an early defender of the Post Office accuseds.

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

Obviously. They were saying there doesn’t seem to be another suspect because there wasn’t another nurse there at all of the deaths or collapses

That's not accurate. The Guardian reports that this mother interrupted an attack. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/11/lucy-letby-mother-walked-in-nurse-trying-kill-baby-court-told

At the beginning of this programme, a different mother caught LL with her hands in the cot, and LL had no explanation but walked away. That baby was OK, possibly because her mother arrived in time. s

These parents says that LL became angry when she couldn't kill their babies:s

But that takes us to the fact that not all deaths were investigated as the ones where LL wasn't there were discounted by dewi evans, a man who changed his theories in court and afterwards in the press.

I believe the conviction to be fundamentally unsound. I think Lucy will be exonerated and the CPS will not go for a retrial for two reasons: it will be impossible for her to have a fair trial now after all the piblicity, and equally impossible to find any credible expert medical witness to support the prosecution in place of the discredited, long-retired paedetrician ( not neotalogist) Dewi Evans.

How long this will take is another matter, sadly. As far as I am aware there is no ten year rule at the Court of Appeal, but the CCRC have a huge backlog, and its head, Vera Baird, is leaving in the autumn.

For anyone interested, the Youtube podcast Lucy Letby Analysis is highly informative. The interviews with former obs gynae consultant Martyn Pitman and retired senior neotalogy nurse Michelle Worden are especially compelling.

There is also a book due out in July by Christopher Morris, which highlights the failings in the case.

alternative explanations for the medical evidence;
and the total lack of defence experts

I don't understand why she didn't have a better defence. That makes me think straight away that there is no defence?

Biggest miscarriage of justice this decade.

She needs a new trial asap

The trial was so salacious. I remember weeks of ridiculous media reporting from the trial, suggesting she had an inappropriate relationship with a consultant, the Ibiza holiday and returning to murder a baby, the out of context therapy notes. There seemed to be very little evidence and lots of character assassination and conjecture.

The public were badly misled, the jury would have been reading that same press during the trial. No way she had a fair trial. I believe she was tried in the court of public opinion, and the public were just lapping up the story of a killer nurse.

As well as feeling sorry for LL I really feel sorry for the parents of the babies who were told their babies were murdered! Unbelievably cruel.

She deserves a retrial