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?

Also some of the experts didn't know about the case til afterwards, like Shoo Lee.

And it's necessary to involve the media because we don't have reliable systems to promptly remedy MOJs. The CCRC isn't a very big organisation and has it own institutional problems. I expect we all know how long it took Andrew Malkinson to get his conviction overturned, for example. The head being forced to step down last year can't have helped either, not that I'd have wanted her to remain.

So unfortunately making sure your case stays as high as possible in the news agenda is what a person who thinks they were subject to an MOJ has to do. That's not good but it's how things are.

What the case has done is make me realise that once you’re convicted of a crime it’s nigh on impossible to get it overturned.

It wasn't quite as simple as that. One of the issues is supposedly that the judge wouldn't allow each case to be presented so that prosecution arguments were immediately followed by defence rebuttals in each case. I think the jury would have had a better grasp of both sides if that had been the case. I agree the lack of defence expert witnesses was an issue.

A judge in the family courts took the unprecedented step of writing to Judge Goss questioning Dewi Evans ability to present evidence in an unbiased manner, and was ignored.

There are so many questions around this case it's extremely disturbing overall.

Legal commentators have suggested that this is because Mike Hall would not have been able to say anything with 100% certainty (things are rarely 100% certain) which would have played badly against Dewi Evans’s declared certainty.

For example, Evans insisted that venous AE was a cause of death; Hall would have introduced doubt but would not have said it was 100% impossible. So there was a risk that this would add to Evans’s credibility.

With hindsight, not calling him seems to have been a poor tactic.

Ironically I wondered during the trial what Shoo Lee thought about his evidence being misused the way it was. And I wondered if the defence had contacted him but he didn’t want to get involved. Turns out they hadn’t at that point. The rest is history…

Rubbish. Those babies were stable-even Lucy herself said so. And all the rest of the staff. The vast majority weren't expected to die at all, stop spreading misinformation.

Some of her text messages-

'But then sometimes I think, how do such sick babies get through & others just die so suddenly & unexpectedly? Guess it's how it's meant to be

I think there is an element of fate involved. There is a reason for everything'

The morning after murdering Baby D, Letby sends a message to a colleague:
Letby: We lost Baby D
Colleague: What!!!! But she was improving. What happened.
Colleague: Wanna chat? I can't believe you were on again. You having such a tough time

I know one of the parents who lost a baby they are devastated at what is coming out about this. It’s hugely traumatic for them. The swing between trying to come to terms with an apparent death of natural causes , to then be told your baby was murdered, enduring a court case and now feeling totally lost and terrified that actually this was down to nhs negligence is tearing them apart. For the parents this needs to be dealt with asap they are hanging in the unknown and it’s desperately upsetting for them and for us to see them so utterly confused. They are starting to feel that it’s awful to believe your child was murdered but to think the possibility exists that you’re led to believe that when it wasn’t true is horrifying.

Yes, sadly.

Several witnesses who are medical staff who knew Letby knew their jobs were at risk if they gave evidence in her defence.

Are you saying they had evidence that would go towards exonerating her and didn’t give it?

So you don't think two consultant rounds a week, the plumbing issues, and the many other issues around the NICU at the time had any bearing on the potential for babies to become unstable, or that admitting they were higher risk as evidenced by being on NICU in the first place had any bearing whatsoever on the matter?

They had direct evidence that didn't paint her in a bad light. They wanted to give character references at the very least and were strongly discouraged from doing so with the implication of it having a detrimental effect on their ongoing employment.

Yes that’s what I heard.

I didn't say that. I disagreed with PP that they weren't at the edge of life before they got to NICU and that "they died because they were just too poorly to be healed"-clearly that was not the case.

And her talking about fate is not someone who cares about these babies, "oh well it's fate" jesus. Utter psychopath. Is anyone actually taking in what she said in her own words or just going to endlessly parrot about the unit having plumbing issues?

Baby D was not stable. She lived for 36 hours, and was unwell requiring respiratory support, phototherapy and antibiotics from the start. She made some improved respiratory effort, but that’s hardly “well”, and CPAP resumed before LL’s shift started.

You’ve cherrypicked Letby’s texts there, but the full exchange included reference to possible delays in treatment, about which the parents were concerned.

You must know all this…

@SnakesAndArrows so improving isn't at deaths door and never had a chance is it? As a PP was making out. Obviously they needed some help, they were on a NICU after all. But the colleague was clearly v shocked. And why didn't it happen on her shift? Why always Lucy's?

But what evidence could they give beyond a character reference, they couldn’t give her an alibi for example and no one witnessed her directly harming babies so they wouldn’t be able to counter that.

Sorry - quotefail earlier.

I was replying to this.

The only case I know where someone has spoken to the press, it seems to have been a character reference she wanted to give. At least one nurse changed her account of things to place Lucy Letby cotside between earlier police statements and her final statement (for baby C). We don't know what she did that.

Most of the nurses' evidence was either reading through their notes from the time and confirming what they meant, or explaining that they didn't have perfect recall of who had been where when several years ago. But at least three did give evidence which undermined the case against Lucy Letby, in the cases of baby G, baby C and baby K. In each of these three cases, either two nurses gave different accounts, or nurses and doctors gave different accounts as to what they saw or heard. But nobody saw Lucy Letby harm any babies anyway, as you say, so all of this evidence was fairly secondary.

Making a bit of respiratory effort before needing CPAP again - all while LL was off shift - is temporary improvement at best.

Yes. Dr McPartland pointed out with regard to baby D at the Thirlwall Inquiry that a fluctuating course isn't uncommon in neonates, and that the child's lungs were in worse condition than anyone could have known without post-mortem. So it's not surprising that Lucy Letby and her fellow nurses weren't expecting the death.

Agree. The concept of a jury of one's peers should really extend to this kind of technical expertise as required - Letby should have been tried by a jury of medical professionals.

Earlier this week my husband was listening to podcast about the trial of some email scammers in which the evidence was very technical from an IT perspective, and it said the prosecution was concerned because the jury was mostly retired l, thus possibly likely to have less IT knowledge than even the average layperson (I know that's not true for every retired person, but on average). I felt the same about that case. The jury really needed to be very IT literate in order to understand the evidence properly.

That's very tough for the poor parents. I don't think having an inquest where the coroner is legally obliged to give a verdict of unlawful killing whatever evidence is presented to the contrary is going to help at all. And the inquests have been delayed until the Thirlwall Inquiry reports, and that keeps being delayed. They are in a truly dreadful situation

I could not agree more with this.

It’s so hard for them, unbearable. People say this needs to stop, LL was found guilty and that the parents need closure, of course they do - but it has to be the truth for it to be closure. They are going through hell held up in such a state of acute stress they can’t grieve properly. There seems to be no urgency from anyone to act and I know people say LL is potentially wrongly imprisoned which yes is awful but these parents are imprisoned in another way by this uncertainty.