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?

I'm talking about people I know IRL.

And you've posted that you're annoyed about loads of things people bring up on these threads.

I can only speak for myself but I'm not sure. I don't have anywhere near enough medical knowledge to decide whether Shoo Lee's research is accurate.

When I know I don't have the expertise to decide whether side A is correct and side B is incorrect, I look at who is speaking and what they have to gain.

On the one side, you have DE, a retired paediatrician with a history of controversy and 0 published papers, who was being paid by the prosecution. On the other side, you have Shoo Lee, who is widely thought to be a leading neonatal expert and who has authored and co-authored over 300 published papers and has nothing to gain from speaking about bar scrutiny.

Well then you should blame Shoo Lee for not paying the slightest bit of attention to the trial when it actually mattered and he could've supposedly made a difference.

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.

He gave a summary! She was messing with that baby's tube at least three times, he said she called him over ONE of the times. I highly doubt he's going to publish his private thoughts she's harming babies in an email and say he went in trying to catch her. What do you think happened? He made up the whole thing?

The question is not “would I be happy” but “can innocent people think like that”, and they can. E.g. many religious people might ascribe any setbacks I suffer to divine retribution I’ve earned for my sins. I wouldn’t be happy about that, but wouldn’t infer that they caused the setbacks.

@Dolphin37when's the last time you heard a religious person say that in a healthcare setting when a child just died?

. (Forgot to quote)

But she said it in a private text message. She didn’t say it to the parents. So that’s a completely different context from what you’re asking about.

For argument’s sake, let’s say she did say it to me about a child of mine who had died. I would think she was very tactless. I have had other healthcare professionals say equally or more tactless things to me though, also in very upsetting circumstances.

It has never made me think they might be murderers. It has just made me think they are tactless.

Of course nobody would blame an expert based in Canada for not paying attention to a trial in Britain. International news coverage of Lucy Letby's case was very sparse during her trial. Lee mentioned having just seen a brief article on the verdict, which is more than I would know about any current court cases in Canada

That's inaccurate. Dr Jayaram gave the time of the relevant collapse in his email, saying that Lucy Letby has called him in.

It is on the third page of the email correspondence between the consultants reproduced at: https://nitter.net/LucyLetbyTrials/status/1911437616462864807#m

The whole email chain is worth a read ...

Lucy Letby was not charged with causing any other extubations. We know about another for this child because the doctor transferring the child saw it happen - and he didn't blame Lucy Letby for it.

I was strongly convinced of her guilt up until last year. Then I read various articles and information linked here and I’m not 100% sure she’s innocent but too many things have different meanings, are wrong, we have people like Shoo Lee involved and I do think her conviction is unsafe. I used to work with lawyers, not yet asked them about this case, but I’m sure they’d think she deserves a retrial. And yes she’s getting an easier time because she’s a pretty white woman but I hope if she wasn’t that in this day and age that people would be behind anyone from any background regardless.

Most people contributing to threads like this are not saying she’s innocent and that’s that at all. They are saying there is room for doubt.
You aren’t obliged to be here arguing about it every single evening. Or maybe you are…

You got angry at me, and I didn’t say any such thing about the jury.

And I’ve repeatedly said I’m not invested in LL’s innocence. I just do not believe that there is evidence beyond reasonable doubt that any murders were committed - by her or anyone else.

Apportioning blame, even in a way that was less silly than your attempt here, wouldn't make the jury any more well informed. We know that there was lots they didn't know, for varying reasons and through no fault of their own. Some due to the defence, some the judge, some the prosecution not disclosing. This is a fact.

Unlike what you've just said about Jayaram, which isn't. Thanks to @oftenaddled for the link. You should read it.

Juried sometimes get it wrong.

But they are orders of magnitude more likely to be right that people on the internet.

Of course. My position isn't that she is guilty of that juries are infallible.
My position is that people on the internet are less informed than the jury were. If the CCTV have a view, I'd be interested in it because they are experts with expert level knowledge of the process and situation. None of us are.

No offence but your opinion on the safety of her conviction is worthless. As is mine. It's just an opinion shouted from the sides based on extremely limited knowledge and evidence.

Could you tell us more about how the jury were more informed at the time than people who are aware of information that wasn't available at the time, such as Shoo Lee correcting Dewi Evans on what his research actually said, Dr Jayaram misleading the court, the various non-disclosures and so on?

I really wish people would stop commenting as if they’re experts because they’ve read some stuff from other people who shouldn’t be commenting either. You know very little, you weren’t there. Do you really think you know better than the people who heard months of evidence? What Mark McDonald is presenting now isn’t evidence, it’s nonsense designed to make people question things they don’t understand.

This is not a miscarriage of justice.

So, which of the things Lucy Letby's solicitors listed as part of her CCRC application isn't evidence, and why? What makes it not evidence? What does that mean?

thirlwall.public-inquiry.uk/wp-content/uploads/thirlwall-documents/Letter%20from%20Bhandal%20Law%20to%20Lady%20Justice%20Thirlwall%20dated%2017%20March%202025.pdf

I don't understand why people keep saying this. All of the evidence heard by the jury is a matter of public record. It is available online for anyone and everyone to read.

Shoo Lee et al had access to all the same medical records that DE based his opinion on.

And if suitably qualified experts are concerned about the safety of the evidence used to convict someone, they absolutely should speak out. Particularly when the evidence they are speaking out about is based on a research paper they authored.

Well quite.

Sitting through an entire trial is very different from reading information online, for a start.

And the defence only called two witnesses!

From what I can tell, it's a mixture of what look like good faith commenters who genuinely don't realise how much relevant information has come out since, including to the Thirlwall Enquiry. And people who know full well what's emerged, wish it hadn't therefore try and argue that being part of the jury is equivalent to a form of expertise in itself. There may be others but that's what I've observed.

Totally fair enough if people have views that X piece of information isn't relevant and/or feel it was right not to disclose it to the jury, and as someone who doesn't rule out Letby's guilt and has a professional interest in legal proceedings I'd be interested to hear people articulate why. But that does require some actual analysis.

Did the jury know that the Lee and Tanswell paper was being misunderstood and therefore mis-used?

Did the jury know that Ravi Jayaram’s contemporaneous email contradicted his sworn witness testimony?

Did the jury know that the Liverpool lab had failed a proficiency test sample, incorrectly giving similar insulin and c peptide ratios to the indictment cases?

Yes corrupt. Not in the sense of taking bribes but in the sense that decisions are not taken objectively and dispassionately but influenced by political considerations and virtue signalling.

I can't speak about Letby but it's obvious these days that some offences against some people are pursued more vigorously than others.

A large proportion of the trial transcripts have been put online , and there was daily court reporting. Journalists who covered the trial have continued to comment and to intervene in discussions - people like Liz Hull, Judith Moritz and Josh Halliday. It would be extraordinary if they had all, working independently, somehow managed to omit critical material which would reassure people in the hundreds of thousands of words they produced during and since the trial.

Anyway, it's hard to imagine what that reassurance could look like. There is more than enough material available on the expert witnesses' testimony, for example, for people to see the logical flaws, the unevidenced assertions, and the pseudoscience. (Transcripts at lucyletbyinnocence.com/transcripts.html). It's sobering reading. To the extent that these expert witnesses have commented since the trial, they've shown the same inability to stick to the facts and to approach problems scientifically.

The judge's summing up, the prosecution closing speech, the defence closing speech are all available on the same site. Worth reading.

The idea that, after all that, people don't have sufficient information to take a view on the soundness of the conviction, is simply not reasonable. There's a good article analysing that argument at https://jollycontrarian.com/index.php/Lucy_Letby:_you_had_to_be_there

It's absolutely your right not to take an interest in this discussion as in any other, but that doesn't make the conviction safe or the discussion unimportant. There is a great deal of information on this case in the public domain, and it casts a strong light on many problems with our justice system well beyond Lucy Letby's conviction. All worth talking about for those who are interested.