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

They were told that they could consider it more probable that she was guilty of other crimes if they decided she was guilty of any, and that they didn't have to know what she had done or how she had killed and injured to make that judgement

You mean things like the jury not being told that the Royal College for Paediatrics and Child Health agreed the unit needed changes to reopen, or that external reviewers had found failings in medical care, or that Lucy Letby had won a grievance against the hospital requiring the consultants to apologize? As far as I know these aren't among the grounds for review sent to the CCRC. They do show that the jury wasn't aware of the full facts, but I think that (legally) that ship may have sailed

Because of force and impact.

Im just a lay person , typical Joe Public , and I am leaning more and more to a b=new trial, no matter how difficult it is for those involved

Is she totally innocent, I dont know and I wouldn't like to guess, but more and more evidence against those who were expert witnesses ,about the stats used, there's just too much saying it was an unfair trial

I don’t know the details but up thread someone talked about procedural stuff - and I thought that could be appealed straight away

anyway thanks for post - you’ve given lots of details

With respect, I think your are making false assumptions here.

We can't possibly know that the child was screaming louder than he would have been screaming in another scenario. The mother had presumably never heard either a dying child or a murdered child cry, and how children cry depends on size, neurology, oxygen requirements etc. There is just no information offered to tell us this child was crying exactly as loudly as they would at a murder attempt (or external injury) but too loudly for a natural death (or internal injury). Almost painless acts can cause death, highly painful acts can cause little harm. If we could tie a particular cry to "being murdered" that would be an extraordinary scientific discovery - but it hasn't happened.

thank you, as ever the language is important

Unusual cries was another pattern in this case. Seasoned professionals who had never heard cries like that from premature babies in all their career. Nothing natural about what was going on on that unit.

Of course the scientific people will claim this means nothing because you can't "measure" it-but the mum of baby E and the other staff who heard cries from the other babies knew it was not right. I believe them.

Do you have a link to that?

You can analyse almost any fact out of existence, which is why it's important to stick to reason. The fact is that the mother said she heard her baby screaming in a way that babies should never scream. We can reasonably take that to mean the baby was screaming horrendously. If someone is dying, do they have the energy and consciousness to scream so badly?

What seasoned professionals?

And again, how does a cry, unusual or otherwise, help us to distinguish between natural and deliberately inflicted pain?

Premature babies cry a lot; and unusual cries are strongly associated with neurological issues. It is easy to be all sensationalist about babies crying, but if you are going to present something as evidence for murder, you need to offer some science or logic to support your case.

The baby died hours later. This was after a blood transfusion was delayed. If he had had this in good time, he might have survived.

Whether the bleeding was from natural or unnatural causes, he was not on the verge of dying at this point.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-64880004

The jury was told that in the early hours of 3 June, Child N experienced a "sudden deterioration" and was heard "screaming" and then crying for 30 minutes.
Medical expert Dr Dewi Evans, who was asked to review the case by Cheshire Police in 2017, said: "It's very unusual for babies to cry other than when [something is] causing them some sort of discomfort like inserting an intravenous line.
"Once you stop the procedure, they usually stop crying quickly."
"Something had been done to this baby to cause this episode of screaming," he added.

He told the court that while reviewing scientific papers he came across cases of "babies who had accidentally received an intravenous injection of air into the blood stream that screamed, collapsed and died."

This is so true. This is about a certain type of person wanting to use science to argue against absolutely all the evidence. You see it with the statisticians too. None of this harrowing testimony means anything to them.

No, the documents relating to the decision why she was refused leave of appeal explain why Shoo Lee’s opinion isn’t new evidence.

If there is a retrial and she’s found not guilty, I’m happy to stand corrected, but the prosecution case was very thorough and there’s a lot to overturn with little chance of having new evidence to do so. I disagree that her defence was poor. I think she was very well defended and Myers did right not to put his experts up considering her performance on the stand. The weight of evidence was overwhelming; circumstantial evidence is still evidence and in most murder cases that’s all you have.

There’s a lot on here about the notes and rota; they were only presented briefly in court. The vast majority of the time was spent establishing that Lucy had opportunity and means every time, it couldn’t reasonably have been anyone else, and it was unlikely to be natural causes, sadly, for most of the babies in the indictments. - the arguments we’ve heard since, that the deaths were natural, is weak and well refuted in the decision not to allow appeal. So to me, it looks like both juries did the best job they could.

the link to the transcript, who said it and in what context.

Your link also contains the contenious air injection theory taking away from the "thirty minutes"

When I read that, all I can think is how anyone allowed that man to stand as an ‘expert’?

Are you pretty convinced of her innocence, @Oftenaddled ? It's just that you seem to explain away everything.

I'm on the fence.

The fault of Cheshire police. They were advised by the National Crime Agency to appoint a prosecution panel of experts, but they did not.

The case of baby N is one of the most ridiculous presented by Drs Evans and Bohin. Unfortunately for those who believe that a doctor writing "screamed" instead of "cried" can support a diagnosis of air embolism, this was one of the cases complicated by swipe card data.

There was never any evidence Lucy Letby was left in charge of this child. There was never any evidence of a medical issue apart from a note saying he had screamed. The doctor who made the note didn't express concern and didn't recall the incident.

And - police got the swipe data wrong anyway.

It is worth reading this long explanation of the problems with the case. It shows how little it took to accuse a nurse of attempted murder once the witch-hunt started up

https://medium.com/@triedbystats/baby-n-transcripts-reveal-previously-unreported-swipe-data-error-in-lucy-letby-case-16ff22254561

Guilty or not guilty I'd rather not speculate. Let the justice system do it's thing, the truth always comes out in the end.

But did anyone else find this to be a bit of beige flag when it came to Lucy Lucy: I read that during college (or it could have been during university) she would carry a First Aid kit in her bag "in case anyone got hurt and needed medical attention". Of course lots of people have horrible accidents on nights out, but I found this detail kind of mind blowing. Who on earth carries a first aid kit on the off chance that someone might need it? I know lots of friends who went on to qualify to be doctors and nurses and who had a medical calling, no one I know ever did that. I don't know, that just screams Main Character Syndrome to me, with some megalomania thrown in too. Like she was possibly really wanting for there to be an accident so she could leap into action to be the hero of the story. It could be nothing, but it really got my Spidey senses triggered when I read that.

Also in relation to this, the fact that she really wanted to be put in the room with the sickest babies and when she didn't get her way became absolutely bitter and petulant about it. If anything else, it's highly unprofessional.

Also I agree with the others who think Amanda Knox was involved with the awful murder of poor Meredith Kercher. My husband is Italian and I'm an Italian speaker too (hence the user name) and I've spoken to a few residents of Perugia - they are convinced she's guilty as sin.What a mess and a circus that became. I feel so bad for Meredith and her family.

Shoo Lee's panel came out with the things they said after the appeal denial.

Strange. Two of my babies could cry for 30 minutes with nothing apparently wrong. Dd2 used to get so hysterical the only thing stopped her was sleep. Ds, who had chronic ear infections including bust ear drums regularly, cried far more when he had hand foot and mouth than any time when his ears were bad.

I've a friend who ran to the doctors with her baby because he hadn't stopped crying fir over an hour. As she fearfully told the receptionist he must be really ill, baby gave a large burp and settled down into a peaceful sleep.

Real babies cry for all sorts of reasons, and it's not as clear cut as crying equals pain,

Sure, but remember that this baby had blood all round his mouth and was in the room with the only nurse who was present at dozens of deaths and collapses.

I'm not saying that this means she did it. I'm saying that context matters.

But it was the same argument he made on both occasions.