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

Yes. And that's despite the fact that Evans and Bohin refused to be tied down on how long their murder methods would take, so they had enormous flexibility in speculating about when "the nurse" might have done something. Air in stomach? Evans started by telling the police it would act immediately. Then he changed his mind. Based on what? Well, he told Myers you couldn't know because you couldn't experiment on babies. So, just whatever worked for plot purposes then.

If you read news summaries of the case, you might be forgiven for thinking that the experts had argued that a certain event at a certain time had precipitated each death, and that Lucy Letby was known to have been there with an opportunity to produce that event.

When you look at the testimony, it's nothing of the sort.

Baby A - supposed to have been killed by air embolism in a tiny room in front of several people, without any disruption to the flow of the line Lucy Letby allegedly used.

Baby C - none of the nurses on duty originally testified, in sworn police statements, that she was present at key moment. One of them changed her story later, another wasn't sure, another still testified in court that she wasn't

Baby D - Lucy Letby's opportunity to inject air was, according to Evans, hours before the child died and hours before the famous air embolism rash appeared. If you ignore his blustering and follow his claims to their logical conclusion ... the air embolism just went away and came back again

Baby E - yes, if the baby died of internal trauma, the opportunity was there. But there was scant evidence for this - no weapon, no post-mortem - so Evans preferred air embolism, since the child, hours later, had a rash. Assuming the air embolism preceded a collapse, Lucy Letby must have chosen to murder the child in front of the doctor treating him

Baby I - as with baby C, the prosecution experts had to swap their "suspicious events" around to match Lucy Letby's shifts.

Baby O - as with baby E, there was an opportunity for Lucy Letby to do something earlier in the day, if she really knew how to punch a liver without leaving a mark, but again, it's claimed he died of air embolism too. And again, a rash hours later when he was surrounded by panicked medics, who presumably didn't notice Lucy Letby reaching in randomly with a syringe.

Baby P. Who knows what happened to baby P? If you ask Dr Bohin, something must have, because the baby went from being well to ill with Lucy Letby in the room. The fact that a whole medical team was in the room with her doesn't seem to matter.

There is an awful lot of precision in the prosecution's records of course. It comes mostly from the swipe cards and the medical records. You get a lot of stuff like, at 23.12 nurse Bennion left the unit, at 23.15 nurse Letby signed for medication in room 2 ... but the timeline dissolves into bluster and guesswork when you try to pin down the vital questions of what happened to the children when and how.

The timeline is the most vaunted part of the case, and it can look quite plausible in snippets from newspaper summaries, but when you look at it more closely, it's one of the clearest signs that the case is a mess.

Great breakdown, it really is astounding how they were allowed to do this.

Wouldn't surprise me if in that situation, Cheshire Police attempt a bit of blush sparing and say they still believed Letby to be the murderer. They shouldn't, but then they issued that statement after the CPS declined to prosecute any Liverpool cases.

Thank you. I scrambled the case of baby D, by the way, and noticed to late to edit. The rash is supposed to have occurred hours before the final collapse, and yet to prove the final collapse was due to air embolism. The prosecution changed its story about the sequence of events during the trial, silently, and still had to patch it together by claiming notes were falsified, but changing which notes ...

I can certainly imagine them releasing another statement expressing surprise and disappointment, but I hope that the Court of Appeal will indicate both that the deaths were natural, and that the police investigation played its part in the miscarriage of justice. So with luck they won't be in a position to make too much noise

Honestly if they do then I hope that none of them who were involved are spared when it comes to any investigation and consequences for their amateur police work. They should feel consequences for it anyway but if she ends up exonerated and they still want to torment the families by saying well we still believe she did it then they shouldn't have their jobs.

They also tried to blame her for turning off Child Gs monitor when it was 2 doctors who had. A nurse heard that claim during the opening statements and came forward to say it was the doctors. What I don't understand is how they hadn't interviewed that nurse during the investigation, the first responder after LL raised the alarm for an event where LL was accused of harming the baby and yet they didn't interview her? That nurse also said she made a complaint. The cynic in me thinks that maybe the police were aware that that complaint was made but just chose to brush it aside like everything else because of their fixation on LL and didn't interview the nurse for that reason because they didn't want anything to get in the way of their narrative.

Unfortunately I believe it is likely there is no murderer at all, but simply (and unforgivably) the substandard care in a field which is widely acknowledged to be very poor in the UK. The review of maternity care has shown significant and tragic problems are endemic throughout the whole maternity and childbirth process, and I think CoC was a particularly egregious example of this. The people who use this facility deserve much better.

Agreed. I saw that the NHS actually spends more now on settlements than it does for the whole of the maternity care section.
And of course that doesn't account for all of the mistakes that are made or substandard care that is provided where they get lucky and the mistakes or lack of proper care don't result in injury or death.

And in a system with so many problems some hospitals are obviously going to end up being the worst.

Yes. People talk about falsified notes but all this means in most cases is that the prosecution decided to treat notes made by Lucy Letby as false to suit their narrative, not that there was any information contradicting her notes.

So something like, at 3.30 nurse A signed for a medication in room 1, which means Lucy Letby might have had an opportunity to be alone in room 2, which means her note made at 3.30 about a baby in room 3 was an invention ...

It's not reconstruction: it's just speculation

I know that Barbie222 has mentioned a case where the notes seem to contradict other medics' records, so hope to hear more about that since it isn't springing to mind for me.

Didn't one of the nurses also say something weird as well like how they would co-sign for medication in advance before they went off the shift and then take it off the system and text later on to make sure it was administered, she said something like then it couldn't be administered twice, sounds more like it was then at risk at not being administered at all rather than twice...made no sense...plus also would have been falsifying notes.

Yes I saw that too. It is so shocking that this word does not do it justice. And CoC seems to be a really poor example - they could not help the infrastructure problems, but the issues relating to clinical governance are beyond belief.

The Telegraph reported something like this

https://archive.is/wrzny

To be fair, I seem to remember one of the senior nurses at Chester denying it quite strenuously at Thirlwall. I think she said it was just the case that people could leave early when they weren't busy to get back time owed to them. I suspect the two scenarios could like quite similar from different perspectives, though.

It's here. https://www.chesterstandard.co.uk/news/23146323.recap-lucy-letby-trial-thursday-november-24/

3:01pm24/11/22
The court is shown a 15% dextrose dose, plus sodium chloride, is administered for 7pm on August 5. The nurse has signed for that medication administration.
The nurse is also a co-signer for medication at 2am on Thursday, August 6.
The nurse explains the practice was someone from the day shift (in this case, herself) would co-sign for the drug during the day, then she would in practice text the person who was administering it to confirm it had been administered, and that the scheduled dose could be taken 'off the system' and wasn't at risk of being administered twice.

Thanks. I don't think there was any discussion of that practice at Thirlwall - don't remember if so. It sounds bizarre. How could you be texting at 2am after working a 12 hour day shift (and often with another the next day)

Completely bizarre!! What kind of system is that?

I don't even see what anyone gains by it - it sounds more work than doing things normally

Exactly, do they stay up all night then to make sure they send the text?

And as I said it sounds like the risk is that the medication isn't administered at all then rather than administered twice, there would be no risk of it being administered twice if someone hadn't co-signed for it during the day shift.

So odd

Well said-great post! I don't think she'll ever get out because of the insulin-thankfully. Although the rest of the evidence is very compelling too. You can't argue with the insulin test because it's beyond reasonable doubt that a poisoning occurred.

There were some instances with Child I where it was part of the prosecution’s case that Letby had deliberately misrepresented ward events in her notes. The first, for the first attempted murder charge, was that Letby had noted that at 15.00 a doctor had examined Baby I in the presence of her mother and the baby had had mottled skin and a distended abdomen. No doctor could be found to testify to this examination; a doctor had seen baby earlier (11.40) and indicated no issues with feeding or stomach. Mum said this 15.00 examination did not happen, but instead, Letby had told her directly that the baby had had a swollen stomach and would need close monitoring. No other medics were present for this conversation, and Letby didn’t seem to have informed a doctor of her concerns. After the parents left I desaturated, with abdomen full of air.

There was an inconsistency in notes in the second attempted murder charge with I too (the one where Letby saw her looking pale in the dark) where Letby had added retrospective notes about Child I that suggested there had been abdominal distension and mottling at 5am, which was disputed by the doctor examining.

The final instance with Child I was on the final, murder charge where Letby had altered the time showing when she was giving cares to another baby from 23.00 to midnight. It was agreed evidence that the timing had been altered, but the suggestion in the prosecution case was that this new time placed Letby away from Child I at the time when the alarm was raised by a ‘loud cry’; Child I stopped breathing just after midnight, was resuscitated, but then collapsed again at 1 am with Letby the only nurse cotside, and did not recover.

so the prosecutions case was that the notes were used to plant a narrative suggesting that there were issues with the abdomen when this wasn’t flagged to, or picked up by, doctors. and place Letby away from the scene at key points. This is from the prosecutions summing up on day 4. I don’t think Letby had a solid answer for these discrepancies in cross and couldn’t remember the night when her note had been altered.

There were other instances of note times not being clear from other babies too, but these ones definitely don’t sit well with me.

Why are you acting like this would be outlandish for a serial killer to do? Of course she "somehow knew" the consultants were about to start thinking of air embolism-because she'd caused them!

And why do you think that mentioning a danger of air embolism in another child, in a private text message, would have helped her in this scenario?

Are you not in any way concerned about what she reported?

@Barbie222

. The first, for the first attempted murder charge, was that Letby had noted that at 15.00 a doctor had examined Baby I in the presence of her mother and the baby had had mottled skin and a distended abdomen. No doctor could be found to testify to this examination; a doctor had seen baby earlier (11.40) and indicated no issues with feeding or stomach. Mum said this 15.00 examination did not happen, but instead, Letby had told her directly that the baby had had a swollen stomach and would need close monitoring. No other medics were present for this conversation, and Letby didn’t seem to have informed a doctor of her concerns. After the parents left I desaturated, with abdomen full of air.

From the Chester Standard:
In a subsequent statement, the mother clarified a few points from her original statement.
It was at the time she met Letby as she was changing Child I's nappy, and Letby remarked on Child I's stomach.
She said she would normally attend hospital at 9am each day and do the same thing, checking on Child I, speaking to staff, and feed (if Child I was not on a feeding tube). She would also meet family in the canteen.
At around 3pm, Letby walked in and stood by the window, about 6ft away from mother and baby.
She said: "I've noticed her belly is extended today, I'll go and check with the doctor."
The mother agreed. A medical staff member checked the belly and noted it was soft, and it would be examined.

https://www.chesterstandard.co.uk/news/23274324.recap-lucy-letby-trial-wednesday-january-25/

Which child is this supposed to be?