AIBU to suggest the Letby trial shows madness of UK legal system

[Neversofaraway]

The babies had post mortem exams, death certificates written and say the cause of death was natural causes.
12 amateurs in the jury say the babies were murdered.
Then, inquests into deaths are started.
What will happen if the inquests decide it was natural causes after all? No wonder the inquests are delayed.
Shouldn't the inquests be done before a murder trial? If there is concern shouldn't the cause of death be established before a trial and not expect a jury to decide on such tricky matters when even the doctors are struggling?

What will happen if the inquests decide it was natural causes after all? No wonder the inquests are delayed.

It's a joke really, legally they have to make a finding that they were murdered, in line with the convictions. They can't say it was natural causes.

Of course then if the convictions are overturned then there could be more inquests again.....

Oh and most of the babies did have inquests long before the trial.
https://archive.ph/qLGgM

Agreed. I find the case quite disturbing that they all had PM’s which found natural courses and then someone is convicted of their deaths through circumstantial evidence . It is re-writing history. As you say, what happens if the conviction is squashed, more inquests. If I was the babies parents, i’d just want the truth of what happened to my baby, and the whole thing must be incredibly distressing for them. I know i’d be tortured not really knowing the truth (though appreciate they may believe she is 100% guilty).

I’m not sure about madness, I think it’s shown that the UK judicial system is corrupt, along with the NHS, the police and even the press.

No they did not have inquests. The article you refer to is after the Letby trial.

An inquest can’t be done beforehand as it could prejudice a trial. I’ve known inquests be halted due to this while there was a discussion if relatives wanted to pursue criminal charges against medical staff. The coroner said if they wanted to go down that route the inquest couldn’t take place until criminal proceedings had concluded.

I do think it’s bonkers a pathologist who actually examined the bodies was happy it was natural causes and now it’s been decided it wasn’t natural causes.

It's a ridiculous system where the inquests have to agree with the verdict, no matter what they actually uncover.

Corrupt?

I mean, not fit for purpose maybe. Inadequate possibly. But how does it show that it’s corrupt?

It’ll be one of the biggest miscarriages of justice of our time. It’s madness it’s gone this far and for so long.

I would argue that a trial not fit for purpose and inadequate is by its very nature corrupt.

Sorry I'm getting confused with the the findings of the death certificates. Baby A did have a full inquest though and that case will not be revisited.

I don't think so. Because as I recall data for studies is limited.

If I want to show cause and effect, then really I need to know for sure the cause, then see if the effects are 100% down to the cause. And sorry to be morbid in a way, but often the only way to be sure is by experiment. And there are many experiments that just can't be done. or should be done.

Well, I agree that a PM can be revisited in the light of new information, and that you can hardly experiment on live subjects, but exactly what are you referring to in this case?

Then you don't know the meaning of corrupt.

Corrupt? Who are you suggesting was bribed? The judge? The jury? And why exactly. What motive did they have?

I have read interesting papers on why our legal system was set up in an adversarial way where a prosecutor sells one version of events to a judge or jury and a defender sells another version of events to a judge or jury and the best story teller wins. How this means that the defence team may lie by omission or highlight inconsequential details (so and so was abused as a child, and the so called victim was wearing a very short skirt with no knickers and she went back with him to his flat..) in order to sway a judge or jury their way. The unaltered bare truth doesn’t seem to be the primary objective of the criminal system.

Maybe the poster is referring to the allegation that a failing Trust that was killing babies through substandard care under piss poor management went on a witch hunt to throw Lucy Letby under the bus as the UK’s worst serial killer ever in order to save their careers.

Corruption does include abuse of the justice system by those in power to cover up their crimes.

I've always believed that cases that involve a lot of complex technical or medical evidence should be tried by a panel of independent experts and/or appropriate professionals, e.g., fellow doctors/nurses/pharmacists, etc.

It's unfair and unrealistic to expect the average layperson to understand complex issues that professionals spend literal decades studying.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/corrupt

The definition of corrupt goes further than the idea of bribery.

The adversarial judicial system invites the description because trials are not entirely based on establishing truth, they are grounded in which side can present the most persuasive argument.

Quite often this revelation is a shock to both defendant and victim.

This case is incredibly complex and multi factorial. It does raise the question whether such cases should be thrown out to a standard jury.

The involvement of Dewi Evans is highly suspect and goes against the standards and protocols of such a case, which would usually see a panel of registered experts being approached by the police, not the other way round. His conduct is incredibly unproffessional and he certainly didn't help matters by crowing about how lucrative expert witness work is, nor how he had "never lost a case". Expert witnesses are supposed to be unbuased, which doesn't tally with that attitude.

I think corrupt is as good a word as any.

If you have ever worked in the NHS you would understand how ridiculous that idea is.

Executives resign from failing trusts and get a better paying job elsewhere.

There were several independent reviews into the unit before and during the period in which the babies died, which found the unit to have numerous serious failings.

Are you suggesting all of these reviews were wrong?

No. It's perfectly likely the department had failings.

I'm suggesting that the idea of executives falsifying records or similar is laughable.

The allegation is making the rounds. In this post truth era, many ridiculous allegations seem to acquire the status of fact.

Oh, is that what you meant? Because it was already discovered that the records submitted to the police by the executives did have rather convenient errors in them that had Lucy working when a baby died when she wasn’t actually in that part of the hospital or wasn’t at work at all and certain key code entry/exit records were also erroneous too. Then we have the consultant neonatologist that submitted testimony of catching Lucy Letby ´virtually redhanded’ which turned out to be false.