Lucy Letby thread

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Starting this as don’t think we have a new one.

@Oftenaddled right so just like the rest of the complaints against experts went nowhere then!

Of course you don't.
Of course you don't see the difference between you're committed to not seeing them.

Hindmarsh chose not to defend his so never cleared himself. Bohin's are still active. Evans's GMC registration has lapsed so complaints can't now be pursued against him either. So not really comparable

The difference is that with experts, their status is what they're offering. Everyone of course needs to be in good standing with any regulator if applicable (not all experts are in regulated professions) but their personal status in the field matters more than a barristers does. Hence you want an eminent consultant or professor rather than a junior doctor.

Because of the way our adversarial system works, legal professionals will make cases they don't actually believe or agree with all the time. That's their job, and their ability to do it is a different thing from their personal belief about a case.

It says there that alternative explanations were discounted at the pre-trial conference by both defence and prosecution experts, which just brings us back to - if the evidence was available, why wasn’t it used in court?

Myers didn’t have the recent report by Chase and Shannon (which I still think is unlikely to help Letby in any case, as the hoops you’d have to jump through to explain how their theory explains the course of events with babies F and L, would make for an explanation that just isn’t credible) and presenting an alternative scenario re insulin which defence experts couldn’t support at the pre trial hearing would have been quickly dismantled by the prosecution at trial.

I mean, it’s possible that someone was drinking insulin and spilled a bit on the baby, but if you presented this as a theory at trial your overall defence would end up being weaker for you having advanced this argument.

So we’re back to why nothing went up in defence, and although yes, it’s just speculation (as until Letby waives privilege, no one can possibly know why the experts were not called@FrippEnos) the most likely explanation is that Myers knew putting the experts on the stand would have made for a worse outcome for his client and advised her accordingly. She just didn’t have exculpatory evidence of her own that would stand up to cross.

It makes me wonder what a good defence would be for the insulin accusations. If the prosecution has come up with a possible (but not evidenced) scenario to explain the test results, how can you counter that, other than just saying you didn't do it?

You can't argue there was no insulin in the bags because there's no bags to test. You can't argue there's no insulin missing because it wasn't tracked to that degree. You can't argue that it was naturally produced insulin because the forensic test wasn't done. You can't even argue that you weren't there because for some of the time they're not even claiming you were.

@Barbie222
She's waived privilege as far as is necessary, still no one in the public may ever find out why because it may never make it into the public domain.

I think you have misread the article, but please point me to the relevant section if I am wrong.

It doesn't mention the pre-trial conference at all. It mentions the written reports which would have emerged from that conference. It doesn't say that Hindmarsh mentioned these additional possibilities in his own written reports, or at the pre-trial conference. It therefore also does not at any point convey that he disclosed the existence of these alternative causes to the defence.

When he admitted the existence of other causes, it was at another trial or hearing in 2022, not concerned with Lucy Letby. There's no reason Lucy Letby's expert team would have been aware of this.

Similarly, when he said that he had given consideration to other causes, this was in an email he sent after the trial to a fellow scientist.

There is nothing in the article that I can see suggesting that Hindmarsh made the defence aware that he knew of alternative causes.

Even if he had, he had a duty to tell the truth whether prompted by the defence or not. This would have involved not saying that the only possible explanation of the insulin test results was poisoning.

He would have been at liberty to say, there are a couple of other possible causes, and here is why I would exclude them. He's not supposed to filter the evidence he gives and leave out complications. That is misleading the court.

I don't know why you think Chase and Shannon's theory is convoluted or unlikely. From what we have heard, it's orders of magnitudes simpler and less convoluted than Hindmarsh's guesswork about how to keep poisoning a child off shift without evidence of tampering.

But the Sunday Times article may have given the impression there are only one or two possible, very rare, explanations, for these test results. The emerging evidence and what we know of the three reports puts in on insulin suggests that there are several possible explanations, some rare, some less so. This is just one report, focused on what Hindmarsh can be shown to have known and what he didn't tell the court. That failure allowed the judge to repeat false information in his summing up. The prosecution, which like the defence had a chance to discuss a draft of the summing up with the judge before it was finalized, did not seek to correct that false information in the transcripts we have of that discussion.

The article is not about the range of alternatives to the poisoning hypothesis. It speaks to (some of) Hindmarsh's defects as an expert witness, which should certainly be of interest to the CCRC and Court of Appeal. It is always useful to them to have objective evidence as to how a jury may have been misled.

It's worth noting that in the 2022 case where Hindmarsh did disclose the existence of other explanations for unexpected insulin results, and despite Hindmarsh arguing that an overdose of insulin had been given, the judge in the family court ruled that the defendent was not guilty.

You're right. A lot of the prosecution's claims were just unfalsifiable. Like baby N. The baby cried. An unnamed nurse was left in charge of him. We say the crying proved he was attacked. We say the nurse was Lucy Letby. How do you disprove that?

For the insulin, one of the arguments the defence has been working on is that the way the prosecution claimed the insulin was delivered doesn't work. The prosecution handwaved some issues around injecting insulin into the three types of bag involved (sometimes through cellophane).

Hindmarsh also admitted he was guessing about the rate of flow for insulin through the bags and giving set. That's one of the reasons the defence has got engineers involved, because how would an endocrinologist know about that?

There is an interesting new short video and comment on X demonstrating the practical problems injecting insulin into some of the bags, and how the prosecution ignored problems with these claims: https://xcancel.com/JabesAllowed/status/2070455208195293379

I wonder if it would be worth it/plausible to have a panel of experts a la Shoo Lee, within the CPS, who assess both the defence and the prosecution's cases before trial.

Not to decide guilt or innocence, purely just to verify the plausibility of evidence/theories each side wishes to present, and decide either;

Yes, you can present this to the jury because you have physical evidence to support your claim, and/or there is prior research/documented cases proving the plausibility of this.

or

No, you cannot present this to the jury as you have no physical evidence to support it, there is no published research supporting it, and there are other, more plausible explanations that do have prior research to support them.

or

You may present this to the jury without physical evidence or prior research because there are no other plausible explanations, but you must make sure the jury understands it is only a theory and there is no evidence or prior research to support your theory.

I feel like a system like this would have prevented all of the issues with the prosecution's case, as it appears to me as though the majority of their case rests on unsubstantiated theories.

Conjectures at best, not theories.

I think impartial experts and impartial oversight of them is vital.

The pronlem is that we already know how quickly these organisations fall.
Ofsted
Ofwat
Ofgem

At best useless
at worst, shills for the system

I’d really like to see some actual Babiven bags. They aren’t the same as the bags shown. The ports and their caps are similar, but not the same, and I don’t think the wraps are that rigid. Sadly, I’m now retired and can’t go and have a poke about in the cold store!

I still think it’s unfeasible, even with flimsier wraps.

Fair enough. I really think all of the mechanics of the insulin delivery the prosecution hypothesised should have been tested in lab conditions. (Obviously not the effect on the child, but the insertion of the insulin, the delivery rate, the stickiness.)

Yes! It seems insane that it wasn’t.

Surely if they thought that Letby had been tampering with the bags, they would have removed them all for the safety of the babies. Or they would have tested them for insulin.

Make it make sense.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/feb/07/strong-reasonable-doubt-over-lucy-letby-insulin-convictions-experts-say

Thing is, the anomalous insulin results weren't picked up until February 2018 according to Google, when Brearey was doing a forensic deep dive into the cases.The "insulin babies" recovered, so these concerns about insulin administration were very much retrospective and "twisted to fit".

So the entire basis for those charges is a complete hypothesis in terms of "how she did it". I don't believe there is any reliable research or precedence for a crime like this committed via TPN bag.

The original bags were long gone and not tested. I honestly don't understand why rigorous scientific tests weren't done on the feasibilty of the tampering, nor quantities needed to produce the observed results etc. The baby who had two bags over the course of its deterioration - the second bag was allegedly a random one from stock that Letby had pre poisoned before going off shift. Huge coincidence that that baby got the "poisoned" bag when it could have gone to another infant. If there had been any suspicion that the TPN bags had been contaminated at the time, they should have tested all of them.

But what you have here again is a backwards working theory, based on the fact that Lucy Letby had participated in the care of these two babies, and several months apart, and going from there.

The presentation of these cases as "smoking gun" are looking more "damp squib" by the day.....

Well you're basically asking how does a poisoner get away with attempted murder. Well they can't can they. If it was possible I'm sure all future healthcare serial killers would like to know.

No, it's more a hypothetical question. I'm asking what your defence would be if you hadn't done it but you'd been accused.

Unless you think that being accused automatically makes someone guilty?

Well, in this case, we know there were no poisonings, because there is no evidence to suggest there was. We know that the test results showing high C-Peptides are within the normal range for a neonate, and are unreliable in any case, especially when antibiotics are being used. And we know the babies suffered prolonged hypoglycemia because of poor medical care, not because of exogenous insulin being administered. We also know that the proposed method of poisoning is purely fiction and has no actual science supporting it.

@Firefly1987 knows this, too, but she refuses to believe it because this evidence was pointed out by actual experts within the area of insulin testing and neonatal care, and not a retired pediatrician who has a complicated relationship with facts.

@CheeseNPickle3 if someone hadn't done it they'd never be in her situation because either the tests wouldn't show exogenous insulin or the real poisoner would've been discovered at some point and an investigation into the first person dropped-as happened with the Stepping Hill case. It basically boils down to those two things-neither of which apply to Letby because she was the poisoner.

You likely have never fallen victim to the shortcomings of the police and courts and faith in the ‘system’ may come easier.

However, the legal threshold of proof beyond a reasonable doubt regarding a 'poisoner' was never met. When this conviction is inevitably overturned, resulting in substantial public compensation, the families will endure further suffering and be left without true closure.

Freedom of information requests indicate the costs to us so far are over £13 million (excluding the Thirlwall Public Inquiry and future civil law suits). Money which should have been spent improving standards at the hospital.

I think this all boils down to whether all cases of anomalous insulin immunoassay results mean that the patient was poisoned.

You think they do.

Experts in insulin analysis (and indeed the manufacturer of the test…) say they don’t.

The Stepping Hill case had nothing whatsoever to do with the Roche insulin immunoassay. The contaminated medicines were isolated and tested directly and found to contain medicinal insulin.