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

@Oftenaddled but open your mind for just ONE second and ask yourself IF there was a serial killer, she is number one suspect yes? The person who can't stay out the room where the victims were. The person who always seemed to migrate there (far more than other staff members) even if not assigned to be in there. Absolutely prime suspect. And now tell me none of this is significant.

Maybe - not strongly convinced. (There are serious problems with the contortions needed to place her alone with babies C and D at least at the key moments. The fact that babies O and P had deteriorations the night before, when she wasn't on duty, is another problem. Baby I had lots of deteriorations. She was on duty for some and not others. So you need a lot of stretching and selecting to get her in place. The idea that she "migrated" in some sinister way unique to her doesn't stand up to scrutiny. When you read nurses' accounts of various incidents, they were all in and out of the rooms.

So I don't accept your premise. If I did - if she had actually been shown to be cotside at the key moments in all cases, I would still need evidence there had been murder. If there was plausible, scientifically backed evidence of murder, and she was the only one present at the specific time for each murder, sure, I'd agree. But huge amounts of fantasy, distortion and pseudoscience were used to suggest that these two things were true, and I simply cannot believe them based on the evidence we have seen.

Well not for me because we've only heard the circumstantial evidence against her, we haven't heard the circumstantial evidence against other people.

Like the other nurse who the mother of one of the babies thought had harmed her baby after the baby collapsed, and the husband also said she was cold and inappropriate, if the police had investigated her then for all we know there could be a whole dossier of evidence about her too.

Or any of the rest of them.

Being as scientifically minded as you obviously are has its limitations. You just use whatever experts agree with you and ignore everything else. There is nothing wrong with Evans, Bohin, Ward Platt, Hindmarsh, Marnerides etc. so presumably being so scientifically minded, you agreed she was guilty based on the science during the trial? Because Shoo Lee et al were nowhere to be seen then.

Like the other nurse who the mother of one of the babies thought had harmed her baby after the baby collapsed, and the husband also said she was cold and inappropriate, if the police had investigated her then for all we know there could be a whole dossier of evidence about her too.

Right so one of the parents was convinced her child had been harmed she just got the wrong person-not sure that example helps when your whole theory is "natural causes". I'm sure you'd love for it to be anyone but Letby though, you'd probably believe that no problem. Now for you to believe her guilty they'd have to have investigated every nurse on the unit first. Despite the fact they'd already narrowed it down to it only being possible it was Letby.

No - regardless of who else was around, Evans and Bohin were repeatedly sloppy, speculative or plain wrong, claiming an unknown murder method was clinically proven and misunderstanding the science on air embolism; we don't have any statements or testimony from Ward Platt so can't judge them; Hindmarsh overstated scientific certainty on insulin poisoning and just guessed at the mechanics of insulin adsorption and delivery; Marnerides by his own admission worked from Evans's notes.

I suppose one way of looking at it is that the science from the first trial falls down in two ways. First, it fails to stand on its own terms - both Bohin and Evans contradicted themselves on various points, were vague or imprecise on others, speculated with an obvious lack of rigour, and went against the existing science as published on air embolism, post mortem imaging etc. Then after the trial, it was challenged by numerous better qualified experts. But the problems were apparent before these experts emerged.

Oh stop it with this absolute crap again. It never ends. It must be at least 2 years of this from you now repeating the same crap over and over.

I feel like the nun dealing with Uncle Colm in Derry Girls.

I wouldn't love if it it was anyone else but Letby, because this isn't about Letby for me (or for the vast majority of people), it's about the evidence against the person being severely lacking along with the evidence that any murders even took place.

What I'm saying is you put forward a thought experiment asking would someone agree that she would be the number 1 suspect if there was a serial killer, but the case has only been put forward for her being the serial killer...so it's a terrible thought experiment.

It was after these parents were told some nurse had harmed their child that they assumed it was another nurse. They didn't suspect deliberate harm before that

No it wasn't, it was right when it happened. She said it at Thirlwall, the nurse came up to her and said something like the baby had been fine when she was looking after him overnight, and she said she turned to her husband and said that that nurse had harmed their baby or did something to their baby. The husband also said the nurse was inappropriate.

By contrast the husband said LL was lovely to them and hugged the wife when the baby was being transferred and wished them well or something like that.

Sorry - I'm thinking of a different case then: baby I, I think, but will check in the morning. Is yours baby N maybe?

Yes and that first nurse would be prime suspect too-but obviously she's been ruled out and presumably still works there, where there has been one death in seven years since a certain persons arrest.

Yes I think it was baby N!

Your thought experiment was "but open your mind for just ONE second and ask yourself IF there was a serial killer, she is number one suspect yes? The person who can't stay out the room where the victims were. The person who always seemed to migrate there (far more than other staff members) even if not assigned to be in there. Absolutely prime suspect. And now tell me none of this is significant."

So for all we know there could be loads of weird interactions with that other nurse or she could have been going into rooms etc but we don't know...so you're asking people to choose from a selection of 1 person and asking wouldn't she be the prime suspect.
As I said it's a terrible thought experiment.

We know that at least one of her colleagues is a liar by his own emails.
Why would he be the only one?

Ah, thanks for that.

Do you have any more detail? I was thinking about this and wondering exactly what happened. Leaving the cap off IV access (which I infer was the case here) is pretty much unthinkably terrible practice. Slightly less dreadful for an ordinary IV than a PICC line, but still a significant risk.

Sounds like she was as cunning as a fox as well as totally wicked.

Yes, the claim that there's nothing wrong with Evans and Bohin is just plain incorrect. There aren't two valid opinions on this.

Which doesn't necessarily mean Letby couldn't have killed anyone, but it does mean that if you think there's nothing wrong with those two you are objectively wrong.

But not cunning enough to dispose of incriminating evidence.

This is where it was discussed in court, with Nick Johnson cross-examining Lucy Letby for the prosecution. He makes a bit of a meal of the timing and that seems to have caused some confusion in the press, with some suggesting this was about baby O.

NJ: Let's go to the Datix form now please. This is the Datix form for the child JA. There we see that you made this report at 20:55 on June 30th 2016.
LL: No I believe the date the open date when I started the form is July 1st.
NJ: I see, all right, so the incident is the 30th
LL: From reading that I would say yes.
NJ: So just to put that in context this is an incident being recorded four days after the text that we were just looking at when I was suggesting you had your thinking cap on relating to an incident that happened three days after that text.
Okay so if we can go back to the form in general please, Mr Murphy. A clinical incident was how you described it and equipment problem malfunction or unavailable is that right?
LL: Yes
NJ: Is this your selection from the drop down menu?
LL: Yes
NJ: No harm, low potential harm.
What you then record is that on the 30th as you said at 15:00 hours so let's just put that into context please this is five hours or so before the end of the day shift that you were on.
LL: If I was working that shift, yes.
NJ: Well, you're reporting an incident that's happened on a shift, aren't you?
LL: Yes.
NJ: Yes. So five hours before the end of the shift, about seven hours after the start of the shift.
LL: Yes.
NJ: Yes. Yes. So seven hours after you first met this child, JA.
LL: Yes, if I was looking after JA, yes.
NJ: What you say is, upon administering IV medication via UVC, the port on one of the lumens was noted not to have a bung on the end, and was therefore open.
LL: Yes

And this is the presentation of Lucy Letby's text messages about it later on:

Monday the 4th and Tuesday the 5th were annual leave days and we come next to a message sent at 14.16 on Tuesday the 5th by [Nurse E] to Lucy Letby:

"I only found out yest about the business with J[A]'s UVC."

A. Lucy Letby replied:

"Really? I thought they were going to take it straight out. Did he still have it in?"

Q. "Yes."

Then she says:

"Mark came in chatting to me at the start of last night's shift and said [redacted] needs LL. L as soon as UVC been in nearly 2 weeks and he said something about J[A]'s already being changed and I said it hadn't and he told me about the open port."

A. Lucy Letby replied to [Nurse E]:

"Jeez, well, that was on Thursday. [Dr A] didn't have time to look for access in the evening so had to label it and not use port overnight and they would sort it the next day. Abby new."

Q. From [Nurse E]:

"I handed over to Abby this morning and she said she knew nothing about it being changed and why would it be."

A. And Lucy Letby replied:

"Bloody hell. Thank goodness I did a Datix."

Q. "Did you? Good.

Well, when that gets looked into they'll see it never got changed."

A. Lucy Letby replied:

"I told her about it that night. Yes, because thought it's a massive infection risk and risk of air embolism. Don't know how long it had been like that."

So - she reported an open bung and discussed it with a friend after the friend brought it up. Nobody seems to dispute that any of this happened - the prosecution just decided to view her reporting it as some sort of attempt to smear the unit.

Well according to her supporters there isn't any.

You have to wonder what cunning plots drove all the other nurses to submit datixes.

But according to you, there is.

So it would appear you think she is simultaneously cunning as a fox and incredibly stupid, no?

That’s extraordinary. And this was being used against LL?

Apologies for not searching this out myself.

Yes - the "logic" was that she somehow knew that the consultants were about to start misapplying Shoo Lee's work on air embolism, so she mentioned air embolism in another context, in a private text to a friend, because this would somehow throw them off the scent. I think that is a genuinely fair summary, unfortunately.

We need a WTAF reaction button.