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 do think the information you have there is inaccurate. @kkloo has mentioned the first case. For your second:

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.

Lucy Letby noted mottling and distension at 5am, and again at 5.30, and Dr Matthew Neame noted mottling and distension at 5.55. Johnson tried to make the case that she had waited too long to call the doctor after 5; she pointed out that there was no record to say when she had called the doctor, and that the situation wasn't presenting as an emergency

(Certainly it wasn't treated as such in any of the other instances mentioned at the trial)

https://www.chesterstandard.co.uk/news/23563043.recap-lucy-letby-trial-june-2---cross-examination-continues/

I can't really make head nor tail of the text msgs tbh nor do I know which baby it's supposed to be referring to. I think it's very telling she's suddenly worried about the risk of air embolism though.

The reference was to child JA, a non indictment baby. (Misreported in some newspapers as child O, but it really can't have been child O since he was already dead at this point and the text messages and datix are about a child on the ward on 30th June, as the prosecution stated).

@Oftenaddled right I'll have to read up about it again to make sure I know which baby it is. It sounds like it's meant to be baby O-hence it being 7 days later. Agree it's confusing how it could be baby O from that transcript you copied.

And nor do you care because all you needed to hear was air embolism and then fixate on that.

On the final instance, Lucy Letby had overwritten a number (2 or 3) with a 4, correcting a time when she hung dextrose to another child to 24.00. (These on-the-hour times are approximate). Johnson started from the position that this must have been a "falsification" because she had documented a plan to do so shortly before 23.00. When she explained that documenting a plan didn't mean it happened immediately afterwards, he ploughed on and insisted she had had some nefarious reason for changing the time anyway.

Exactly what this would be is a mystery. Ashleigh Hudson was with child I, struggling to settle her, before calling Lucy Letby to help after her 23.57 collapse. Johnson suggested that Lucy Letby altered the time on the other record to 24.00 to pretend she hasn't been in the room with Baby I and to distance herself from events. But she was in the room helping, around 12, and that was documented, so what would have been the point?!

The newspapers tend to make Johnson's scattergun accusations look more sensible. They edit out the points where Lucy Letby corrects his bizarre assertions on procedure and on medicine, and they summarise his accusations without having to join the dots. It's instructive to read the actual cross-examination, linked at https://lucyletbyinnocence.com/transcripts.html to see how tenuous and illogical his accusations are.

I would say that whatever you have read on child I isn't an accurate representation of even the prosecution's case, never mind the problems with it raised by the defence. Lots of scraps from this trial have got garbled in internet accounts over time, unfortunately.

The Chester Standard got it wrong, to be fair, and lots of people including Judith Moritz and Jonathan Coffey in their book picked it up and ran with it. So if you have been reading about the case you have probably come across the inaccurate version.

It would have been strange for Lucy Letby to refer to baby O having an open UVC because he didn't have a UVC at all. So I can see why people remarked on it if they understood it that way, but this was another baby and it all happened after baby O's death

I don't trust a word LL says-the serial killer was trying to cover her tracks. Whatever she reported on in the datix-she also did herself. Someone who heartlessly kills tiny premature babies doesn't care if she leaves a bung off to give herself an alibi against "accidental" air embolism.

So are you saying she is implicated in yet another baby collapse/death not on the indictment? The more you try and defend her the worse she looks!

It would be a very weird alibi, documenting the issue right away and putting her own name to it. She can't have forced the hospital to magnify the risk by leaving the same line in for four days after that, can she? Do you think she threw boiling water over the nurse whose scald she reported in a datix too?

Nobody thinks the babies she was alleged to have murdered had open ports on long lines or catheters. It's hardly something you could suggest retrospectively. I think anyone approaching this at all objectively can see that it's a normal reporting incident, blown up out of all proportion.

No. What baby death / collapse are you talking about? Baby JA didn't die or collapse that we know of.

And of course you don't think it's telling at all that no one at the COCH changed it.

The more you try to defend the case and conviction the worse they look. I've learned so much more about the case from people strongly rebutting your claims and arguments.

@Barbie222 Baby I was held by the prosecution to have died after air was injected into the stomach via a nasogastric tube, leading to swelling of the abdomen, diaphragmatic “splinting” and respiratory arrest.

In a signed statement to Channel 5 in August 2024, Dr. Evans stated that none of the babies were killed as a direct result of air being deliberately injected into their stomachs.

Professor Shoo Lee’s team concluded that Baby 9 died of natural respiratory complications specifically RDS and chronic lung disease complicated by bacterial infection Stenotrophomonas maltophilia.

They further concluded that the baby’s death was preventable - as hospital doctors failed to act on surveillance warnings, missed accurate diagnosis, and failed to treat with appropriate antibiotics. They found no clinical evidence to support the rescinded air injection theory and noted that contrary to the prosecution’s claim, medical notes showed the apnoea alarm had not been turned off.

In the face of that, timings of LL’s notes and the tendency of the prosecution to accuser her of doctoring notes where her text doesn’t suit their narrative - is all by the by.

OK I'm not sure it's fair to talk about non-indictment babies because we don't know any evidence relating to them. She could've been laying the groundwork for a future attack on this baby. Was it her last day of work she made this datix? Therefore we have no idea what might've happened if she'd continued on the unit. Lucky escape for that baby.

It was probably a complete lie-did anyone else see these missing bungs? No!

As for baby O-they never lost peripheral access-do you know why she was so keen for people to think they had? Because you can't induce an air embolism if they've lost access.

Yes, Dr A/U saw the missing bung. Don't you think the prosecution would have mentioned it if nobody else had seen it?

We can't discuss the reference to air embolism you brought up without discussing a non-indictment child, because it applies to a non-indictment child. Lucy Letby's dealings with non-indictment children have been investigated, and the CPS has stated that there was not enough evidence to bring charges in the small proportion of cases where the police requested them.

The stage of the resuscitation when Lucy Letby wrote that baby O had lost access was after his final collapse, so this could never have made any difference to a case for her having injected air and caused that collapse. It is also a stage when two or three consultants and a registrar as well as a team of nurses were working directly on the child. The prosecution (naturally) has never tried to claim there was an attack at this point.

The datix and air embolism evidence has been completely mangled in media, helped along by illogical insinuations from Nick Johnson at the trial.

You need to remember that the prosecution can throw out all sorts of accusations, see what the defendent can't disprove, and present these points as an argument. (Only if the defendent agrees are they evidence). Johnson dropped many lines of attack for his closing speech - not all - but obviously some were already obviously indefensible by that point. This is clear when you read the cross-examination.

Assertions by the prosecution are not evidence, and when you look at the transcripts, you can see how speculative, flimsy and illogical they can be.

Oh yes sure, it's not fair to talk about them except to accuse LL of harming them or wanting to harm them like you've done about several non-indictment babies and every baby she's ever came into contact with.

But if anyone wants to discuss anything about them in order to try to rebut something you've said then you're not sure that's fair.

Yes, Dr A/U saw the missing bung. Don't you think the prosecution would have mentioned it if nobody else had seen it?

You've stopped giving any sources for anything. I never saw it corroborated anywhere so I'd be very interested in that.

We can't discuss the reference to air embolism you brought up without discussing a non-indictment child, because it applies to a non-indictment child. Lucy Letby's dealings with non-indictment children have been investigated, and the CPS has stated that there was not enough evidence to bring charges in the small proportion of cases where the police requested them.

I'd be happy to stick to just baby O where she claimed access was lost when she was later directly contradicted in this by a doctor. And don't you think it's a bit of a coincidence she's making these datixes right before she's removed from the unit and the minute she's about to be found out?

Assertions by the prosecution are not evidence, and when you look at the transcripts, you can see how speculative, flimsy and illogical they can be.

I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with-the datix report is not in question, neither is the doctor claiming they never lost access. Lucy clearly lied about it so you'll try and claim it was all the prosecutions fault naturally.

Don’t you think it’s more germane to the case that Evans changed the method of death from injection into the nasogastric tube deliberate injection of air into the boy’s bloodstream?

And that the expert panel found the baby had died from a subcapsular liver haematoma caused by traumatic delivery which resulted in haemorrhage into the abdomen and shock.

(And there is the additional possibility that Brearey accidentally lacerated the baby's liver with a needle during a resuscitation or abdominal aspiration procedure).

Don’t you think it’s a bit of a coincidence that one of the consultants who accused her of being a serial killer is one of the doctors involved in Baby O’s suboptimal care?

@Aluna

no I think those theories are utterly ridiculous. That baby never had a birth injury. As if they wouldn't have covered that in court and ruled it out. I mean sure they're convincing theories if you just make up imaginary birth injuries and imaginary needle lacerations I guess.

Totally agree - it's hugely difficult isn't it?

Yet you've no issue in believing that LL managed to inflict an injury equivalent to the impact of a car crash without anyone noticing anything and with no theory even put forward about what she could have done.

It's not going to be possible to say whether or not the baby had a birth injury without access to his obstetric records.

Lee's panel has said the likely cause of death is rupture of a liver hematoma, and that the likely cause of the hematoma is birth injury. They haven't stated that birth injury is the definitive cause. Other causes (prematurity, hypoxia, spontaneous development) would all be possible too.

But since both baby O and baby P had hematomas and the parents reported a painful and difficult caesarean delivery, unusually rapid, without the consultant they'd been seeing, it certainly seems sensible to consult the obstetric records.

Lucy Letby posted datixes throughout the indictment period in 2015-16, so it's not surprising or sinister that she did so in June 2016 and reported the three problems - specialist needle not on ward, resuscitation meds not on ward, bung left open - which needed attention. Which of these three should she not have reported?

Access may or may not have been lost. The point of the datix was that the doctors needed alternative access, which is verified, and that the needle they could have used to obtain this more easily wasn't on the ward. There was no point in trying to use lost access as an excuse after the point when the child had collapsed - any air embolism would have to have been inflicted earlier.