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?

She made an error.

She may have been careless: there’s a lot of evidence that people don’t self check if they think that someone else will pick up their errors, and there’s also a lot of evidence that second checking is done very poorly.

She behaved immaturely afterwards.

None of this makes the error a deliberate act, and it certainly isn’t evidence that she harmed or murdered babies years later.

Well yeah because no one thought she did it on purpose at the time. She lost drug privileges and had to undergo further training for being so shit at her job though.

No one has ever claimed that she did it on purpose, at the time or otherwise. I'm sure the hospital followed whatever procedures are normal in this unfortunately not uncommon event.

But if there is no evidence of murder why would you not see her as just one of many nurses who are shit at their jobs?

Do you really think she’s the only nurse who worked in the neonatal unit at COCH between 2015 and 2016 who had ever made a similar medicines error?

There is plenty of evidence of murder-and the experts who have claimed that have been rigorously cross-examined on it and she had no experts to call to contradict that.

She's the only one to end up accused of multiple murders. It's just one of those coincidences again.

And so we go round and round again.

The whole reason for these threads is because plenty of experts - some of whom have had access to all the information available to the defence, but who were not aware of the case at the time or who were concerned but were prevented from speaking out - say that there is no evidence of murder, and there is certainly reasonable doubt.

These threads are so annoying.

The 11 person jury sat through the entire trial. Heard all the evidence. The last half of the evidence they all heard was Letby's defence. They convicted her by a margin of 10-1 on all charges, having had it made clear to them that a conviction could only come if they were sure she did it.

The case only came to court after the independent CPS decided that there was enough evidence to secure a conviction in the first place.

But people on Mumsnet who've watched stuff on the tele and the internet know better.

Gimme a break.

Iirc correctly @Firefly1987 believes evidence only counts as evidence if it has been cross-examined in a courtroom because Dewi Evan's evidence held up perfectly once his fellow medical professionals were allowed to speak out publicly about it, didn't it?

It’s complete logic failures like this that have me completely convinced that jury trials are deeply flawed, especially in a case where a lay jury is not in a position to understand the evidence.

That about sums it up I’m afraid.

Do you believe juries ever get it wrong?

@SnakesAndArrows oh will people leave the jury out of it? You don't know better. You're wrong about LL, wrong about the trial, wrong about the doctors, wrong about everything! I was going to sit this one out but when people are just constantly saying shit about the jury because they didn't agree with their oh so superior opinion it's not on.

Well it's certainly better than experts coming out the woodwork to spout their uninformed opinions without having all the facts. I'm sure you'd be happy to get rid of jury trials and just pick the expert you like the look of. Obviously not a man of a certain age because MN hates them.

It is quite interesting how attached people get to the idea that the jury were given not only the evidence necessary to best determine guilt but that all of it was accurate. It must be true because things would be difficult if they weren't.

It's not even a criticism of a jury to suggest it's possible they drew an inaccurate conclusion based on what was presented to them. The structural flaws in our system, risks surrounding use of experts and statistical evidence, none of these things are the fault of a jury who I think we can reasonably assume did their best.

That's how all miscarriages of justice happen. Juries can end up with the wrong decision, for one reason or another. You can look at the details of 300 times that happened in the UK at https://evidencebasedjustice.exeter.ac.uk/miscarriages-of-justice-registry/the-cases/

The state acknowledges that these things happen. That's why the CCRC exists. It's not heresy or fantasy to question the safety of a verdict.

Concern about Lucy Letby's conviction isn't some Mumsnet niche thing. It's the editorial position of an unusually wide range of newspapers (Guardian, Telegraph, Observer, Independent, Mail on Sunday, Sun) that the case needs to be re-examined. Numerous experts believe that the evidence presented to the jury was flawed - unscientific and illogical. You can read a list at https://jollycontrarian.com/index.php/Lucy_Letby:_those_experts_in_full

If we said, a jury agreed it so case closed, an awful lot of innocent people would be condemned beyond relief.

Shoo Lee and his panel had access to all the same "facts," aka medical records, as DE did. This has been explained to you several times before.

And Shoo Lee is hardly just some random Dr who read about it online. He is the author of the paper on which DE based his testimony. He has every right to speak out if his research is misappropriated and misunderstood in this way.

But you don’t know anything about the jury. They could have been clever or complete fools or just average or a bit of a mix. We don’t know. It’s strange to give their opinion such weight.

What we do know is it’s extremely unlikely a significant proportion of the jury were qualified to understand the medical evidence in any meaningful way.

We also know that the medical evidence is the core of the case, because without medical evidence of murder there is no case.

And finally we know that many experts far more qualified than the jury have found no evidence of murders. I should add, too, that most of these experts have reputations vastly more impressive than the medical experts who spoke at the trial.

Given all of this, would you acknowledge there are real grounds for concern in this case? Even if you yourself would never change your opinion, can you at least see why others struggle to accept the verdict?

Anecdotal, but this level of anger at people raising obvious issues with the case is something I only see in this and certain online spaces. Most people I've spoken to IRL are open to the possibility of both guilt and innocence but can also see why the convictions might not all ultimately stand. We all have different circles of course.

Neither you nor I know anything about individual jurors. But lay jurors in general don’t have the knowledge to be able to understand and assimilate 10 months of medical evidence that is presented to them in an adversarial manner. Goodness knows, I understand it but I would struggle in such an environment and with evidence presented in such a manner.

You may have faith in the jury system but I certainly don’t. It’s deeply, deeply flawed.

And that’s quite separate to the problem with expert witnesses.

What facts did the jury have that the experts who have written reports for the CCRC didn't have? None.

What facts did these experts have that the jury didn't have? It's a long list.

It's not criticising the jury to say that they may not have been in a position to judge scientific claims - remember that they are forbidden to research such things. And it's certainly not criticising them to say that they weren't given full information

Why are you so sure what's come out since is accurate? The whole therapy thing was made up for a start.

I only get angry at comments such as "I don't know how the jury sleep at night"-that's not an ok thing to say.

I don't see anyone being open to both guilt and innocence on here-they've all decided she's innocent and that's that.

Didn't mention therapy and nor did I give a view on the accuracy of the new evidence. The fact that it exists is enough to mean the argument that the jury know better has a gaping hole.

Shoo Lee and his panel exist and drew conclusions, and we know the jury didn't have access to this. Obviously nobody other than them has any idea whether they'd have changed their views if they'd had this expert opinion, but then that's rather the point.

Same is also true of, say, information that's come out through Thirlwall. It's possible the jury wouldn't have cared that, say, Jayaram said Letby never called for help when he'd previously acknowledged that she did, but they were never given the opportunity to decide that for themselves.