Lucy Letby thread

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

Only to people who are committed to thinking that everything shows that she's guilty, so it doesn't really matter.

It's not going to make any who think she's innocent, or anyone who thinks the verdict was unsafe or even those who are very open-minded about it think oh wow she looks even more guilty now even though the police are saying there's no concerns she harmed the baby, the hospital are saying there's no concerns she harmed the baby, AND the parents are confident that she didn't either.

What you're saying, is that from your perspective, your personal thoughts, opinions and gut feelings trump science, and you are ridiculing anyone who is interested in scientific evidence before they cement their view.

You seem to think that it's perfectly acceptable for that to be the standard in such weighty matters as putting someone in prison for 15 whole life orders. You, personally, despite no contact with, nor prior long term knowledge of Lucy Letby, or the COCH, or medical expertise, or, it seems, the substance of the case, despite engaging over multiple threads where the medical and legal issues have been debated and explained countless times, just parrot "post it notes" and "handover sheets" and refuse to accept that countless professionals and even MPs have raised the alarm in an unprecedented manner.

I suppose we should be grateful you've moved on from the "pretty young white nurse" narrative.

The saddest thing about this case is that the absolute truth may well be lost under the systemic failures highlighted so brutally by it, and that the families of these babies have been run roughshod over multiple times. If Lucy Letby is innocent, which looks more likely every day, this is the most embarrassing and chilling debacle to come out of our justice system in recent years, alongside such other gems as Andrew Malkinson, Sally Clark, Angela Cannings, and the post office scandal. All these could have been avoided if due process had been followed and arses hadn't been covered by ego and bluster.

The thing is, real people suffer, and die, when the system screws up. They are not just acceptable collateral damage because it doesn't happen that often (allegedly - I think plenty of people are wondering just how often it does happen given repeated high profile fuck ups).

This case is so high profile because it bungled every opportunity to avoid repeating mistakes made in other cases. I believed Lucy Letby must be guilty, despite my own experiences within the system, because surely, surely, we don't live in Groundhog day. And then, as I've said, ad nauseum, the details coming out set off klaxons, and it didn't take much to realise how bizarre the medical evidence was. That's where it begins and ends for me - not the obsessions with shredders or pyjamas or Facebook searches or anything else which only became relevant after the facts - which is that a shoddily run NICU was followed by a shoddily handled police investigation and a frankly shoddy trial, mostly by media.

What you're saying, is that from your perspective, your personal thoughts, opinions and gut feelings trump science, and you are ridiculing anyone who is interested in scientific evidence before they cement their view.

No I'm not saying that at all, not sure what you're not getting. It's my own personal opinion-it holds no weight at all. I'm not telling anyone else to believe it or that it trumps science, it's my OWN theory. Weird how you're allowed to declare her innocent and that the trial doesn't matter because you know best but I'm not allowed to give my own theories which are based on the fact she's already a convicted serial killer and how these healthcare cases often go.

But that isn’t what you’re doing, is it? You’re sneering and jeering at other posters and misrepresenting their positions and known facts. No-one has “declared her innocent” - we’re is seriously concerned that there has been a miscarriage of justice. And this is not an armchair expert position.

Your position of, basically “she’s a convicted killer so there can’t have been a miscarriage of justice” is illogical, and you seem unable or unwilling to see that. Was Andrew Malkinson a rapist because he was a convicted rapist?

You want a lower bar for “reasonable doubt” for medical murders because… I honestly don’t understand what your reasoning is here; every time you say something like “so nurses should be allowed to get away with murder just because there’s no scientific evidence of murder” you slide off and won’t explain yourself.

You hate the police, except these police, even though these police have ignored NCA recommendations and conducted their own media circus with public money.

Make it make sense.

You are allowed to give your own theories. But people can point to the problems with them, just as you can give your opinion on other people's.

I'm probably a bit more concerned about this one than about others because, looking online, people seem to be trying to persuade a couple who have discussed their experiences on the ward that their baby was a victim of attempted murder. The have no medical information, limited information on who was where when etc, and the clear message that neither doctors nor police considered these collapses suspicious. We could say we have five tiers of events:

Lucy Letby was convicted
Lucy Letby was charged but not convicted
CPS refused charges
Police investigated but did not request charges
Police did not investigate

This is right down at the bottom, on tier five. But suddenly everyone who has been blindly trusting the words of the police and the consultants knows better than them, without having the information on which they based their decision. It's not just a case without enough evidence to meet the threshold. It was never even suspect enough to investigate.

And so randomers online decide they must persuade the parents their child was harmed because it fits their witch-hunting narrative. (I know that you aren't necessarily one of the people actually trying to persuade the parents of this directly)

These are real people, with medical histories others simply don't know about. They're not characters in some killer nurse fanfiction.

That's why, if this is your theory, it is just showing how little evidence you need to be persuaded of Lucy Letby's guilt. People peddling it seem to be enjoying the drama and the bloodlust, not applying a scrap of reflection.

This is not a movie following a set of genre-specific tropes, you know?

On all of these threads you've repeatedly criticized the science-y people or the maths people etc . You've also repeatedly said that they don't have common sense, not sure what you're getting at there, do you think that science or maths should change based off someones opinions? 🤔
Plus you also said something like it makes you feel really good that you have more common sense than those really smart people....

but I'm not allowed to give my own theories which are based on the fact she's already a convicted serial killer and how these healthcare cases often go.

Here's an extract from the Nottingham reports which shows how these issues in a hospital 'often go'.

"Neonatal Death
The Review concluded that most neonatal care at the Trust was good or excellent, but identified a small number of cases where care contributed, or was likely to have contributed, to neonatal death. The most significant overarching finding was that the neonatal service operated for many years under severe and sustained capacity pressure across two sites, with overcrowding, frequent transfers of critically ill babies, and insufficient consultant cover out of hours. Specific concerns linked to neonatal deaths included delays in emergency blood transfusion for babies with severe blood loss, failures in airway management with repeated intubation attempts and preventable extubations, delayed escalation to senior clinicians, and failures to follow agreed difficult airway plans. Several babies died following hospital-acquired infections, including Pseudomonas sepsis, within environments described as overcrowded and lacking adequate isolation facilities. The Review also identified avoidable failures in recognising and managing severe neonatal hypoglycaemia, some resulting in collapse, seizures, brain injury, or death. The Review concluded that chronic under-resourcing, delayed implementation of safety improvements, and inconsistent learning from incidents increased the risk of avoidable neonatal harm and mortality"

We know that in 2014 Noah Robinson died at the COCH following a catalogue of blunders.

"Melanie and Patrick Robinson’s baby, Noah, died after a series of blunders at the Countess of Chester Hospital in 2014.
Noah was born by Caesarean section 12 weeks early on March 20, weighing just 1lb 7oz, after Mrs Robinson developed potentially fatal pre-eclampsia.
Despite his size he was given a good chance of survival.
But an inquest heard he died less than four days later after doctors mistakenly put a breathing tube into his gullet, which connects to the stomach. It should have gone into his trachea.
They also ignored five warning signs – from X-rays and other equipment, which they wrongly assumed were faulty. Mrs Robinson said there was only one senior doctor on duty when Noah began to deteriorate on March 22.
Recording a verdict of misadventure, coroner Nicholas Rheinberg told the inquest in Chester in February 2015: ‘There were very considerable signs [the tube was incorrectly positioned] and I find it surprising these signs were not realised.’
He said an assumption that equipment was faulty was ‘extraordinary’.
‘Shouldn’t the first assumption be the tube is in the wrong place, or that’s a strong possibility?’ he asked.
‘It’s like flying an aeroplane and seeing the oil gauge come on and you assume the gauge must be wrong, rather than the oil pressure is low.’
Mrs Robinson, who now has a daughter, was dismayed by the hospital’s level of care.
‘We put our trust in the doctors to look after Noah, but they didn’t do what they were supposed to,’ she said. ‘We feel terribly let down by the NHS."

Now if Lucy Letby had been there at that time you would ignore ALL of the above, and you'd put it down to Letby, that's the only way you can make your theory work, by ignoring everything else. It's clear to see that there was substandard care for many of the babies, but you ignore it all and act like it didn't happen or it's not relevant. Presumably you tell yourself that the hospital massively improved since the death of Noah Robinson despite it being clear that it didn't. This couple that have spoken out, they've been told by the hospital and the police that there's nothing to suggest that LL harmed their baby but you still decide she had something to do with it anyway, it's barely a theory at all, just a fixation, complete one track mind.

But that isn’t what you’re doing, is it? You’re sneering and jeering at other posters and misrepresenting their positions and known facts. No-one has “declared her innocent” - we’re is seriously concerned that there has been a miscarriage of justice. And this is not an armchair expert position.

Well you've made it pretty clear you think she's innocent. There are posters talking like it's a cert she'll be out with compensation.

Your position of, basically “she’s a convicted killer so there can’t have been a miscarriage of justice” is illogical, and you seem unable or unwilling to see that. Was Andrew Malkinson a rapist because he was a convicted rapist?

That's not what I'm saying. Believing she's guilty doesn't mean thinking MOJ's aren't perfectly possible. I don't know much about his case but yes I accept that was obviously a MOJ-one rape conviction is hardly the same as 15 whole life orders though. If he was convicted of 15 rapes it'd be comparable.

You want a lower bar for “reasonable doubt” for medical murders because… I honestly don’t understand what your reasoning is here; every time you say something like “so nurses should be allowed to get away with murder just because there’s no scientific evidence of murder” you slide off and won’t explain yourself.

No I don't want a lower bar, I've never said that. I just don't want a higher one.

You hate the police, except these police, even though these police have ignored NCA recommendations and conducted their own media circus with public money.

No I'll just criticise them if it's warranted which seems like a perfectly normal position to have. I disagree with the whole netflix footage and showing her parents. I think that was unnecessary.

They chose to speak out. I'm not sure why considering there are most likely hundreds of babies she didn't attack-it means nothing. If she didn't attack their child it's because she didn't get the opportunity or they weren't her chosen victims. They were lucky. And now they've jumped on the innocence bandwagon which is just awful for the victims families. It's like someone speaking out about how nice Peter Sutcliffe was to them. They invited all this speculation.

People peddling it seem to be enjoying the drama and the bloodlust, not applying a scrap of reflection.

You nailed it @Oftenaddled. A few posters, one in particular, have a pattern and the lack of internal logic in their statements is astonishing. At least we have moved on from being told if you have doubts about these processes it means you dont care about the parents of the poor babies who died. While filtering out certain posters, I am very grateful to the information other people add to the thread - the substack was a really interesting read.

I don't think their experience with her tells us much either way about whether Lucy Letby murdered other children. But that doesn't change the fact that there is no sensible reason to suspect that she harmed their child.

You're hearing overwhelmingly from one side, of course you're going to think their arguments are better. If the ones who know everything about this trial and know she's guilty suddenly descended on this thread you'd probably come to a completely different conclusion. This is why people believe Shoo Lee and Mark Mcdonald etc.-they're only ever hearing from one side right now.

We heard from the other side during the trial; the majority of people, especially medical professionals, were unconvinced.

I'd disagree. The majority of stuff I've seen co coming out is pro guilt. The problem is it tends to be along the lines of "Lucy probably kicked kittens although no one saw her and all the comments in the article are saying how wonderful with pets she is..." so not very convincing.

Who are these people? Not you, clearly, even though you have previously claimed superior knowledge because you followed the trial at the time.

The people on the LucyLetby subreddit aren’t putting forward anything of substance, and repeating long-discredited stuff about phone log timings and manifest misrepresentations of what Shoo Lee’s papers say or include as references.

So where can we see what these people say?

I would be interested too. When reading these threads, I sometimes remind myself that just because the quality of the pro-prosecution posts on here is very poor, doesn't mean there couldn't be better stuff elsewhere. But where?

There are a few Reddit threads in r/medical, I think it was, where a couple of Drs sometimes speak out for the prosecution, but it never takes long until more Drs come and tear their arguments down. They have some interesting, well-reasoned debates on there, though.

Those are the most coherent pro-guilt arguments I have come across lately, that actually look at the evidence rather than the "she's guilty coz she once looked at me funny, and my tummy says so" type stuff you get on here.

@Oftenaddled (Or anyone else)

The judge said to the jury something along the lines of "Even if you don't know exactly what she did, you can find her guilty".

A) do you have the exact quote? and

B) is this normal? Logically, it seems extraordinary.

Sure. The exact quote is:

What you do not have to do is resolve every conflict in the evidence and be sure about every point that has been raised or try to determine exactly what happened.

It would, you may think, be a remarkable and exceptional case in which a jury could say, "We know everything about what happened in any case and why". You are not detectives.

If you are sure that someone on the unit was deliberately harming a baby or babies you do not have to be sure of the precise harmful act or acts; in some instances there may have been more than one. To find the defendant guilty, however, you must be sure that she deliberately did some harmful act to the baby the subject of the count on the indictment and the act or acts were accompanied by the intent and, in the case of murder, was causative of death

You can see this at lucyletbyinnocence.com/jury-directions.html

It's not a unique directive. You would see something similar in cases where there is no body to examine, as in the case of poor April Jones a few years ago.

But the problem with using it here is that the defence was arguing that there had been natural deaths. Two things were happening at once at the trial. The jury was asked whether the deaths and deteriorations were natural and whether Lucy Letby was the murderer. In these circumstances, the idea that they need not be sure what had happened was more of a problem, especially since the judge had invited the jury to infer one case from another:

If you are satisfied so that you are sure in the case of any baby that they were deliberately harmed by the defendant then you are entitled to consider how likely it is that other babies in the case who suffered unexpected collapses did so as a result of some unexplained or natural cause rather than as a consequence of some deliberate harmful act by someone.

Thank you.

The "logic" there is mind blowing.

she is convicted of crimes where the post-mortems say the child died of natural causes, how is she guilty if it’s natural causes?

I’ve followed https://www.reddit.com/r/lucyletby since the beginning and have been back to it a few times in the light of @Oftenaddled’s comments here (which I have appreciated reading and digesting, although personally I don’t agree there’s been a miscarriage of justice here.) The group started off fairly neutral but became pro guilt as the trial progressed - like me. The chief mod there is very clued up on the case.

The chief mod there often feigns ignorance about things that don't suit her argument and repeatedly tries to make out that those who have doubts are just conspiracy theorists or have psychological issues etc etc. and that she couldn't possibly believe that anyone with any intelligence or understanding of the case would believe this could have been a miscarriage of justice, so she instantly loses credibility.

There's a reason she is so ban happy and has kept the sub as an echo chamber.

I do find that sub very unpleasant. They are very quick to accuse people of lying, conspiracy, psychological weaknesses; but they don't have the moral courage to allow and actually respond to dissent. So they get to build their own reality and bask in it and sneer at everyone else together.

Expressing doubt about the convictions is against the regulations and people who do it are banned.

I do check it out when there is a significant development, to sense check my own reactions. But they are the blind leading the blind mostly - the main moderator doesn't know enough of science and statistics to understand that people like Susan Oliver and Christopher Snowdon are, at best, misguided amateurs. Since s/he is reasonably articulate, s/he's good at working their arguments and scraps of the prosecution case up into a fairly consistent flow of recaps and reactions to reassure followers.

But ultimately it is all based on the position that the subreddit should not challenge court findings. That's an interesting intellectual game, maybe, but meanwhile in the real world, things have moved on. And it's a very convenient corollary of that position that any dissenting voices must be banned. Quite an extraordinary thing, really, to be that determined to own and control the narrative.

Yes I'm the same and I check it out when there's significant developments but again there's just a complete refusal to accept that there's genuine issues with anything and instead they just focus on the people instead and decide that they all have an agenda etc etc

The main mod is treated like a God and I remember during the baby K re-trial some of them told her that they believed Nick Johnson was reading her arguments and used them in his closing speech 😂 Now that's delusion!