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

LOL

alright love, at least I’m not the one who got my knowledge of the criminal justice process off TikTok, and is defending a baby killer.

This is the thing, nobody knows why LL called no expert defence witnesses.

I think you must be.
I certainly didn't get my knowledge from tiktok.
And I got my knowledge of the CCRC from this book.

https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-and-subject-groups/miscarriages-justice/reasons-doubt

And pahahah pot, kettle, black

I’ll take your opinion on my thinking and debating skills with the respect they deserve. I just don’t waste the energy of using my skills on people of inferior intellect.

Ooh, book!

Coffee, can you say what part you think is codswallop and why? It's not very clear.

Well that superior intellect of yours is certainly well hidden away.

So am I right in thinking that you disregard the pathologists who carried out the autopsies and the expert panel that claim there are no suspicious deaths?
That all of the evidence that has come to light after the trials is inaccurate?

Yep. It's all the circumstantial evidence. The science and statistics folks don't bother themselves with circumstantial evidence so they'll never get it. Shoo Lee's panel can't rule out deliberate harm and the prosecution side had multiple experts saying it WAS deliberate harm PLUS all the circumstantial evidence around her. Even Mike Hall said the panel would be problematic for her long-term and the errors would come to light (I can't remember his exact words) because most of what they claim was already ruled out in court.

They have to go to insane lengths to try and prove her innocence (like whatever Geoff Chase is trying to claim re the insulin) which tells me all I need to know really. It wouldn't need to be that hard if she really was innocent.

I am very happy to engage in a civil manner with those who can do the same, but I certainly won't be taking crap from people who simply cannot engage with the points made and instead just want to be aggressive and pretend that they're hiding some kind of superior intellect away. 😂

@Firefly1987
I think most people (at least the ones who tend to participate on these threads anyway) who think this is an unsafe conviction have looked at the circumstantial evidence in depth and just aren't convinced by it at all and find it to be extremely weak.

My mistake then @Firefly1987
I thought the panel had ruled out deliberate harm because they ascertained that " in summary...we did not find any murders"
And as his research had been used in the prosecution that his statement actually refuted the prosecutions case.
I have always stated that I am not sure of her innocence or guilt but I do have serious doubts about the way the trial was conducted

@kkloo that's fair enough (though I'd disagree!) but when you've got people (not specifically you) saying that none of this matters if there were no murders in the first place it really does make me wonder how much they've actually considered it.

Well that's the thing and many of us do think that, that the circumstantial evidence was weak, and also the evidence that murders even took place is weak.

I think you know the regulars who believe this are very well informed about the case and what evidence was put forward considering how much we've all discussed it.

However on social media there are definitely a lot of people commenting who make some wild claims, and that goes for people on both sides. I've seen people who think she's guilty making claims like she kept a whole diary writing down everything she did to harm the babies and likewise I've seen people who say they think she's innocent say stuff like she was set up by the women at work because they were jealous of her 🤔

Exactly so. The people who reckon they do are guessing, no more than that.

There's multiple possible explanations. It could be because Letby herself refused to allow it, either because she's guilty and thought they'd draw attention to that or because she's innocent and was being stupid. Or it could be tactics. This may already have been posted, but it's a good exploration of possibilities from David Allen Green, an eminent solicitor and legal commentator.

https://emptycity.substack.com/p/the-lucy-letby-case-some-thoughts

We do also know that at least one witness, Dr Michael Hall, wanted to take the stand and thought some of the prosecution evidence was misleading- obviously we now know that some was but not sure whether he means that or not iyswim. He's also written to Thirlwall.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/sep/11/lucy-letby-doctor-criticises-judges-opening-remarks-at-inquiry

Beyond all this, we just don't know.

Firefly you surely cannot want someone convicted of murder if no murders were committed?

Regardless of whether or not she's guilty I think there are some serious questions about the safety of the convictions purely based on the number of people who have come forward since saying that the jury were misled or that the evidence presented was flawed. It's important that juries get a full and fair picture of the evidence in order to make a determination of guilt or not. In particular, the way that expert witnesses are selected and whether the jury should hear only evidence where there is a consensus should be up for debate.

It's true that things that have come to light since the case have not been cross examined, but in general there can be advances in medicine or forensic science which change the picture. In general if we're not going to allow these cases to be reexamined then we're going to have instances where the wrong person is in prison.

Yes, I think this is a very commonly held view. If we got lucky this time and despite all the obvious problems, we did still get the right person, great, but we might not next time. And lots of these risks were well known long before Letby got anywhere near a hospital. The RSS have been raising them since the Sally Clark case, for example.

It's only really in some online spaces that I've seen people who believe Letby to be guilty gloss over these issues so much. I know people IRL who think she did it, and are also pretty furious because the number of fuck ups at minimum mean there isn't widespread public trust in the conviction and may eventually mean she gets out of prison. This seems to me the most sensible response for someone who holds that belief.

Have you sat on a jury? I have, back in January.

Despite the judge giving detailed directions about all matters to do with the case (including standard and burden of proof), the vast majority of the jurors didn’t read or refer back to those. Things they said in the deliberation room evidenced a clear lack of forensic, analytical thought and misunderstood some of the directions given (just as you clearly misunderstand - or aren’t really bothered by - burden and standard of proof, as you’ve shown on this thread).

And that case involved a single count on the indictment with a single set of facts.

In her initial 2023 trial, LL was convicted of 14 counts (7 murder, 7 attempted murder), acquitted of two counts, and the jury was deadlocked on six further counts. In a 2024 retrial, she was convicted on one of those deadlocked counts (bringing her to 8 attempted murder convictions), leaving five remaining attempted murder charges un-retried.

The sheer number of charges on the indictment makes it a very complex trial. Add in statistical evidence (purely circumstantial) and it gets more complicated. The fact a first jury was deadlocked tells us they couldn’t reach the required either unanimous verdict or majority verdict (10 in favour of guilt and 2 not, usually).

Dewi Evans: not a neonatologist and it seems much of the expert testimony he gave for the prosecution was just plain wrong. The backdrop of a clearly poorly run neonatal unit at Countess of Chester. LL an unsympathetic witness (irrelevant to whether she committed the crimes but this kind of thing has a large degree of influence on juries as they’re human).

Her defence team seems to have botched it (I mean, why were none of the eminent neonatologists chaired by Dr Shoo Lee called at the time!?)

Her convictions are definitely unsafe.

That’s not true. We do now thanks to Phil Hammond.

https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/lucy-letby-28.pdf

https://x.com/drphilhammond/status/1963132632755056752?s=61&t=r2_R2aezWDfDdIttDPUAug

In today’s @PrivateEyeNews, I reveal what each expert signed up to at the pre-trial joint expert meeting for Lucy Letby at Chilworth Manor on 5-6 August 2022. The stakes were high, and each expert signed the 16 page document as follows “This statement each signed by us is true to the best of our knowledge and belief and we make it knowing that, if it is tendered in evidence, we shall be liable to prosecution if we have wilfully stated anything which I know to be false or do not believe to be true.”

The defence was outnumbered 4 to 2. There were strong disagreements about all of Dewi Evans’ theories but the prosecution only had to get the defence to come on board with one issue, and they did, with one defence expert deferring and the other one agreeing with the prosecution expert.

The trial was effectively over before it began. The defence simply didn’t have the experts to contest every case, as they have now, and couldn’t put the experts they had on the stand because they agreed with the prosecution in one key area. What was it?

According to Hammond, Hall agreed to defer to the expertise of Hindmarsh on insulin and the other defence expert, Shakeel Rahman, agreed with the prosecution that insulin must have been exogenous.

Rahman also agreed that air embolism couldn't be ruled out, while Hall emphasised that it if so, it could have been accidental.

A key issue, aside from the paucity of defence experts, is that not being able to “rule out” something medically is not the same as being able to rule it in legally. But that is in effect how it was taken.

Key extract from Private Eye article:
^^
THE insulin babies (F and L) were the turning point in the meeting and, later, the trial. Hindmarsh, Evans and Bohin all agreed the cause of the abnormal test results and hypoglycaemia in both babies was "exogenous insulin administration, for which there was no clinical indication".

Hall decided to "defer to the expertise of Hindmarsh" in both cases and - even more damning for the defence - Rahman agreed with the prosecution statement. The prosecution had their big win. There was no clinical biochemist to argue that the immunoassay test for insulin in neonates is simply not reliable enough to use in a murder trial, that the machine used was not properly calibrated for C peptide, and that if the insulin levels had truly been that high, the blood sugars and potassium would have been much lower.

Experts on both sides agreed "the management of the hypoglycaemia was poor". But they failed to consider the obvious: that the hypoglycaemia occurred because the management was poor.

Sick or septic neonates with high glucose needs had misplaced IV lines and inadequate infusion rates. It did not need insulin injections to explain the clinical findings, but Hall and Rahman weren't able to.

For Baby L, Hall did at least ask how insulin could have plausibly been administered to cause hypoglycaemia for 53 hours covering times when Letby was absent. Hindmarsh theorised it was added into the drug port of multiple nutrition bags. So why did it only affect one baby at a time?
^^
LETBY'S barrister, Ben Myers KC, tried to call Hall to the stand at the same time as Evans, to debunk the air embolism and air in the stomach claims which account for all the murders.

The prosecution refused, and after the powerful expert descriptions of the liver injury and insulin poisonings, there presumably seemed little point in putting Hall on the stand to admit he had deferred to Hindmarsh. Indeed, the prosecution called for Hall's written evidence to be heard, as they knew what he'd signed up to.

At the meeting, Rahman said that "air embolus cannot be excluded", and Hall said: "If the collapse was due to air embolus, it could have been accidental." Imagine the field day the prosecution would have had.

Safer not to call your experts and hope others who are more court-savvy come forward for the appeal. Hall stuck to the legally binding statement and was never called. Evans was called and promptly diverted from the statement, changing his mind on multiple occasions with the judge's permission.

it would be far worse to let a serial baby killer go free than a petty thief

Fair point. Still, for reasons similar to "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer", IMHO the risk of major wrongful acquittals is more tolerable than the risk of major wrongful convictions.

In healthcare cases, a wrongful conviction wouldn't just ruin one innocent person's life, horrible as that would be. It could also prevent real healthcare defects from being fixed, and divert millions to an inquiry aimed at the wrong target.

But the simpler reason for needing stronger proof for worse allegations is that worse crimes are more rare, i.e. more facially unlikely, and the more unlikely something is as a baseline matter, the stronger proof you need to confirm that it happened.

@Dolphin37 I think in this case the proof didn't even reach the normal standard for murder. If it did then I think people would have been content with that.

Things they said in the deliberation room evidenced a clear lack of forensic, analytical thought and misunderstood some of the directions given (just as you clearly misunderstand - or aren’t really bothered by - burden and standard of proof, as you’ve shown on this thread).

Just because you don't think the burden of proof has been met doesn't mean I've "misunderstood". If anything I think you've misunderstood the sheer amount of evidence the jury heard. But seems like you're convinced you're right so...I think you'll continue to be disappointed by this case and her not getting out.

It wasn’t evidence that the court heard, it was expert opinion - and in this case, the opinions of the prosecution expert have now been widely criticised by far more qualified people. This should be concerning to any right minded person who cares about justice

The court mostly heard expert opinion, not evidence - and the expert opinion has now been widely criticised by several highly qualified neonatal and statistical experts. Why does this not concern you?

@Nyungnyung well that's just their opinions as well isn't it. How can you think their opinions long after the fact means more than what was tested in court. It's like people think lets not even bother with trials anymore we'll just go with what expert we like best. Experts that haven't even seen all the medical records.