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

@Isitevensummer you mean a datix report where she was the ONLY person to bring up air embolism as a risk? The only person on the entire unit at that point to even be thinking about air embolisms as a possibility hmmm.

It's amazing you'd bring up her "professionalism" considering this is a woman hoarding 250+ confidential handover sheets. And the woman who had to be told multiple times to go look after her own designated baby because she was neglecting them as she'd rather watch a family in grief. Calling her professional in ANY possible capacity is just offensive. Like I said, the narrative is slowly being rewritten to place her as the victim here, the hero nurse calling out everyone else-and none of it's true.

Oh I almost forgot-texting whilst feeding babies too. Professional my ass.

Calling her professional in ANY possible capacity is just offensive.

Yet you never criticize the hospital or any of the other staff in relation to the babies care even when there was clear issues.
You just don't seem to care about any of that and think it's perfectly fine to make out they received perfect care overall, aside from Letby. That's offensive.

Are you saying air embolism wasn't a risk in the situation she reported?

If you look at the datixes uploaded to Thirlwall, they have a single reporter in all cases. The reporter isn't necessarily the only person concerned about a situation. You have reports, for example, that babies died. Single reporter. That's the system.

It's probable that, like everyone, she had her strengths and her failings. Reporting issues on the datix, though, was clearly a strong point, given that the reporting culture in the unit was generally weak, as the RCPCH report demonstrated

Maybe because the subject at hand is Lucy Letby and her being a serial baby murderer? Of course the unit was inadequate and the doctors made mistakes. No one's ever said the babies received perfect care.

There is no evidence that she texted while feeding babies - that is an accusation by the prosecution which she denied, based on timings in medical records and texts.

Since timings for routine tasks like feeding would be approximate, and records would not note any breaks in feeding, there is simply no evidence to be had on this, without eyewitnesses. And nobody ever claimed to have witnessed this.

I wonder how many nurses you could accuse of texting while feeding by misusing records this way.

Exactly, that's always been the subject at hand, since the police started the investigation, instead of looking at the other more likely explanation.

You have heavily implied on many of these threads that there was no issue with the care at the hospital.

And WHEN are people going to be accountable for the care at the hospital, why does no one care about that? Does it not matter what serious errors were made in the care because you think LL was the one who killed them in the end? Some of the parents definitely care, but that aspect still doesn't seem to be being looked at because instead all the focus is on the 'serial killer' and they're all hiding behind that.

@Firefly1987
Also the subject at hand now is the CCRC application and whether she'll get a retrial, all of the issues at the hospital are completely relevant to what's currently going on.

The RCPCH report was clear that the unit should remain downgraded until it had addressed staffing issues among consultants, other doctors at all levels, and nurses. It noted that twice weekly consultant wards weren't adequate.

Among the seven children who died, we know of problems due to doctors not being available to manage specific tasks for six. The consultants were very much part time in the unit, dedicating most of their time to the paediatric ward. The children's deaths followed frequent delays - in inserting Child A's long line, in intubating Child C for resuscitation, in prescribing Child D antibiotics, in giving Child E a blood transfusion, in attending Child O's resuscitation, in treating Child P's pneumothorax. Consultant rounds were the tip of the iceberg.

The more I read about her the more I'm convinced she's in the right place. Behind bars.

Yes - when you read the parents' Thirlwall statements, they express a lot of distress and disappointment about their experiences with the hospital quite apart from anything connected with Lucy Letby

I think you could find gaps in care at almost any hospital in the country.

Whatever you think I'm doing is no different than people trying to portray Lucy Letby as some sort of Florence Nightingale figure.

I'm sure you could, but there's gaps in care, and there's catastrophic failure.

Whatever you think I'm doing is no different than people trying to portray Lucy Letby as some sort of Florence Nightingale figure.

Which is the point I'm making, you're saying they're being offensive, but so are you.

The ward rounds had nothing to do with the collapses though.

And I don't think you'll find anything more offensive than someone trying to claim a serial killer, literal serial killer (it's like people have forgotten this) was professional.

Furthermore, she filed those datixes days after the incidents. The consultants were about to find out what was going on and she was covering herself. She was the only one that knew what had caused the collapses so she had to come up with something that would potentially cause air embolisms. She claimed one of the babies lost peripheral access. At trial the staff testified that he never lost peripheral access, and neither do his records show this.

They were all false datixes to cover her tracks, not her being "professional" 🙄

It's very simplistic and black and white to say they had nothing to do with the collapses.

No, we are all aware that she's in prison and has been convicted of being a serial killer, however many feel the conviction is unsafe, and you know this, why do you have to keep making these comments. No one who is convinced she is a serial killer is saying 'ah but she was professional though'.

You think she filed them to cover her tracks, and clearly others disagree.

@kkloo at the same time people should be aware she's convicted, and a lot of us believe she's guilty so seeing her described as "professional" is a bit er crass to say the least.

All the circumstantial evidence points towards that. Was she known for filing datixes before the net was closing in on her?

And why wait that long to file them-literally just after she's heard that doctors are starting to put two and two together!

Lucy Letby filed datixes throughout the indictment period (June 2015-July 2016), not just toward the end of it. You can find a few on the Thirlwall website, and some are are reproduced in Jane Tomkinson's statement to the Thirlwall Inquiry.

How would claiming a baby lost peripheral access protect her from accusations? (That was baby O. He may or may not have lost access altogether, but doctors certainly used an unusual alternative to extract blood, and by some accounts to inject insulin. So if he didn't lose access, it's still perfectly understandable that she presumed he had).

She knew the consultants present at the resuscitation would also be reviewing the datix, so there would not have been much point in her making this up.

Yes, she filed plenty of datixes before that point.

Everyone is aware that she's convicted, this is a thread based on whether people think she will get a retrial.

I understand that if you're convinced she's guilty then that will definitely come across as crass when people call her professional, but at this point knowing what we know about the hospital it's also crass to be trying to make out that issues with the hospital were completely irrelevant. Some of the families had major issues with the care, and yet no one has been accountable. You were the one who stated that it was clutching at straws and irrelevant to point out how they were only doing 2 rounds a week, it was that comment which led to the poster comparing professionalism.

Everyone who has ever been involved in IV administration knows of the risk of air embolus. Every time anyone primes a line and removes head space from a syringe they are preventing potential harm. It’s not some niche thing that Letby learned about a few weeks before the first death.

And in any case, evidence that any babies were harmed by injection of air into their veins is scant. None of them had Lee’s sign, babies don’t have a special “air embolism” cry, and no-one saw Letby do anything untoward.

Yes, it’s still possible that LL is a murderer, but there’s doubt in abundance, so the conviction is unsafe.

I know you think that the bar of evidence should be lower for medical murders because there is greater opportunity, but this is a bizarre idea, if you think about it properly for more than 5 seconds.

Yes, he's a paediatrician who retired in 2009. He should never, ever have been allowed to be the sole expert witness for the prosecution. The National Crime Agency told the police that they needed an expert panel, and they wrote to the police with a list of recommended disciplines from which the experts should be drawn - around six - and ways to help find people. And the police completely ignored the NCA and employed only this one person, Evans, who came out of the woodwork claiming that this was "my kind of case". It wasn't - he's not an expert in sick premature babies.

I suspect he wanted a payday and considers being an expert witness money for old rope.

@Firefly1987 is there anything that could make you question her guilt now?

If the verdict is eventually overturned, will that give you pause at all?

Yet you are happy with the "drawer of doom" not being used in any way for a year?