Lucy Letby thread

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

Hardly. It is the conclusion of a panel of experts.

You think there shouldn't be focus on a woman who is most likely the victim of one of the biggest miscarriages of justice the country has ever seen?

That could be Jeremy Bamber.

@AnonymityAnonymity, no point. Apparently this little cohort know far better than all those who found her guilty based evidence, as they have internet stuff. Their need to prove her innocence totally trumps any respect for the families of the victims involved.

If there has been a miscarriage of justice, I would suspect her legal team would would be working on this. I hope none of those who lost children are on mumsnet. They have lost a child in these circumstances and then loads of random decide it is appropriate to turn it into an amateur investigation thread? Even it is proved there is any doubt surrounding her conviction, these threads are just salacious.

As long as you're content with a system that can sentence you to 15 whole life orders because essentially "you were there" ( mostly, although some cases will be twisted to fit "expert" opinion) some "professionals" were suspicious and there is only circumstantial "evidence" / opinion against you and there is, in fact, plenty of reasonable doubt (as opposed to the lesser standard of balance if probability which doesn't usually meet threshild fir criminal proceedings) as evidenced by the opinion of a whole panel of reputable experts, in all relevant fields working pro bono, who worked from the evidence disclosed by her legal team, provided by the prosecution, as opposed to "stuff off the internet".... I mean, if you're truly confident that the conviction is safe despite all that, I hope to God you never find yourself accused of something you didn't do. It's really not a fun experience.

The worst miscarriage of justice in decades; imprisoned for “crimes” when no evidence exists to prove that any of the crimes of which she was accused actually took place at all, let alone evidence proving beyond reasonable doubt that she perpetrated any of these alleged “crimes”.

Misrepresentation to the jury throughout the trial. Bizarre antiquities of our legal system preventing the case being re-examined even when it is now perfectly clear that the case should never have reached court.

Even if this miscarriage of justice is eventually rectified the damage done to her life and the trauma will be irreperable and the harm done to the families by telling them that their babies were murdered without evidence to support such an assertion is unimaginable.

Catastrophic for all involved and it should be terrifying for any UK resident that our legal system allows this to occur.

I think your energies are needed for a new terrible miscarriage of justice.

A man has been convicted of murdering a baby but no-one saw him do it. Only circumstantial evidence - baby's dead, it must have been him because he was in the room at the time etc but none of his DNA found on the baby at the postmortem and only pathologists' evidence after the fact that the baby's injuries weren't natural. The baby had been in and out of hospital beforehand, so clearly already had health issues. Plus doctors and social workers were all happy with how this man was dealing with the baby.

Now he's got a whole life order, despite no-one seeing him kill this baby. He did say something about how he was going to hell but that was probably just stress and misplaced guilt. I worry he won't get the same kind of innocence campaign as Lucy because he's no looker to be honest, bit of a sweaty bully beef type, but if no-one starts a campaign, he and his boyfriend - also sadly banged up on the nonce wing - may run out of time to ever adopt another child. Your PR skills are needed.

The CCRC does not operate based on facts or any attempt to establish what actually happened.

Please educate yourself about the UK legal system and then you may develop some understanding of how miscarriages of justice occur and why, when they do, they are so very hard to rectify.

This is offensive and not remotely comparable, as you either know very well or, alternatively, you are trying to deliberately deceive people.

Jamie Varley abused and killed Preston. There is clear physical evidence of that; the injuries he inflicted on the baby which could not have occurred any other way and 999 calls that were recorded, spurious excuses and telling different people different stories about how injuries occurred, physical evidence from Preston’s post-mortem proving sexual abuse had taken place and photos and videos on Varley’s phone, taken and sometimes shared by Varley, showing him being abusive to Preston and laughing about it.

There is no evidence in the Lucy Letby case that any baby died from anything other than medical negligence by the hospital doctors and poor standards of medical care and unacceptable facilities and treatment by the NHS (hardly a shock to most people who have been unfortunate enough to be subjected to NHS “care”, and these were extremely vulnerable premature babies).

There is no evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that any of the crimes of which Letby was accused actually took place at all, let alone proof beyond reasonable doub that she perpetrated these alleged crimes.

If you have such evidence, please share it, because all of the “evidence” the prosecution put forward has been thoroughly debunked. Presumably, if they had some evidence that met the threshold, they’d have produced it by now.

This miscarriage of justice has wrecked her life beyond any prospect of repair and also those of the families whose babies died. Losing a child is trauma enough without falsely being told the child was murdered and later discovering that this was not the case. I understand the motivation to protect them from that last trauma, but continuing with the pretence that there was sufficient evidence to take Letby to court — let alone convict her — is absurd to anybody who has a basic understanding of science or statistics or the law, and eventually the families will have to be told the truth so protecting them from this additional, now sadly inevitable, damage is not a reason to keep someone in prison for the rest of their life when nobody has even been able to produce evidence that any murder took place at all, and there is plenty of evidence of other far more plausible explanations for the tragic deaths. Ever heard of Occam’s Razor? Do you understand the test of “beyond reasonable doubt”? In this case the doubt is not just “reasonable”, it’s the vastly higher likelihood by a huge proportion.

As for the CCRC, it’s a shameful disgrace to a country that holds itself up as having a high standard of justice. It is well-documented how dysfunctional and unjust it is. As someone who lives in the UK I find it terrifying that any one of us could find ourselves at the mercy of this “justice” system.

Wow. Talk about barrel scraping. This is utterly vile and not remotely comparable.

I've whistle blown in the NHS and was forced out of my role. Years later a separate investigation revealed the serious flaws that I'd flagged up years before.

It is much easier for everyone to believe that these babies died due to the actions of one awful evil person than to realise the uncomfortable truth, that our precious NHS and Police forces are incompetent and very possibly corrupt.

No. You’ve misunderstood. The CCRC will be the ones who decide if she gets another trial. No one gets to say it was a miscarriage of justice before they do.

Like a lot of people I am sitting on the fence as to whether she is innocent or guilty. However there are obvious flaws, both statistical and scientific, with the trial and I believe the verdict is unsafe. I would like to see a retrial with all the new medical evidence presented by the international panel of experts. You cannot continue to keep a possibly innocent women in prison to assuage the feelings of the families. That's not what justice is about.

No, you’ve misunderstood.

I understand the CCRC’s role very well, and how it fails to serve its intended purpose because of a) arbitrary limitations on what it will/ won’t consider, meaning that in some cases even when there is clear evidence that somebody is innocent or there is far in excess of reasonable doubt of their guilt, its current remit means it will still refuse to take action; and b) such enormous underfunding of it (like most of our legal system now, and becoming worse by the year) that justice for many people is a pipe dream.

Whatever the CCRC decides in this case or any other does not change the objective facts as to whether a miscarriage of justice has actually taken place or not. Or are you so ill informed that you think the CCRC is infallible and the criteria upon which it bases its decisions genuinely reflect objective reality? If so, you should learn about the reality of this and what is happening in other parts of our legal system. I think the reality would shock most people.

The truth doesn’t care about our flawed “justice” systems and arbitrary rules. Objective reality exists.

Yes. It’s quite terrifying and any of us could be subjected to this at any point. I think a significant proportion of the public haven’t the faintest idea how bad it is

Thank you for being brave and speaking up for all of us at detriment to yourself.

Exactly! Totally agree with this.
All letby threads are in poor taste.

Personally I think all MOJs are in poor taste, but there we are.

This is nonsense.

Someone should not be in prison when there is no evidence which meets the legal threshold of “beyond reasonable doubt” that the crimes they are accused of actually took place at all, let alone that this person committed these supposed crimes.

It’s very poor taste to tell families of babies who died that their children were murdered when there’s not anywhere close to sufficient evidence to support such an assertion; the police and court system piled that trauma onto these families on top of them having lost a child and made them go through a court trial which should never even have been taken to court at all by the CPS if they and the police were doing their job remotely competently. Then we have the prosecution and judge both misleading the jury during that trial.

It’s abhorrent and manipulative to pretend that those who object to what is quite clearly a huge miscarriage of justice don’t care about the babies who died and their families. Neither those poor grieving families or Lucy Letby should have been subjected to this, and neither should the babies who died have received such appallingly substandard care: it’s very clear from the medical reports from actual specialists in neonatal care that there were clear signs many of them were severely unwell and needed treatment they did not receive, so some of them may well have been alive now still if the NHS had not failed them so appallingly.

People can be desperately sad about what happened to those babies and the impact of all of this on the families involved and also not want a “justice” system where people are imprisoned for life with no evidence of them having committed a crime. People can simultaneously want a functioning justice system and also want proper medical care for themselves and others, and not want to be misled by doctors and police and public prosecutors if they were ever to be as unfortunate as these families have been and have a child die in hospital or be a juror in a court case.

Trying to present people caring about objective facts and reality and justice as those people not caring about the families involved is offensive and clearly not the case at all. It is in all of our interests to ensure that a functioning justice system is put in place and that systems are reformed to ensure that the objective facts in legal cases are established, unlike in the “trial” that took place, because any one of us could find ourselves in a similar situation in the future as a victim, the accused, or a juror, all of whom were enormously failed in this case.

If anything, trying to shout down anybody who questions what is one of the biggest miscarriages of justice you’re likely to see in your lifetime and emotionally blackmail people into keeping quiet about it is the most callous possible position one could take on the matter.

He's got a whole life order because he absolutely deserves one,he stole that poor babies life, physical and emotional and sexual abuse is the only thing that poor baby knew.

I'm so glad he's got a whole life order,he didn't give that poor baby any sort of decent life.so whole life is 100 percent justified.

I think NHS/police incompetence was everyone's first thought, not that an ordinary looking woman in her mid-20s was capable of such evil. A serial killing nurse is a far more uncomfortable truth which might have something to do with people's inability to accept it.

But lets remember this is a woman it would turn out early on in her career had said "I can't wait to get my first death out of the way" not in a hospice (though that would be bad enough) or a care home, but a premature baby unit. A unit that was supposed to care for these babies for a few weeks then wave them off home happy and healthy. Not have nurses saying "I can't wait to get my first death out of the way". This is not a well-adjusted woman by any means. If she was "scapegoated" (she wasn't) it's probably because she was inappropriate and disturbed as hell.

Just to give you some examples:

Suppose I am a man (I’m not, by the way! This is just an example), and I am accused of a rape. It goes to court, I am convicted on circumstantial evidence, say I was in the general area at the time and look a bit like the sketch of the suspect, or the victim picks me out in the line up.

There is DNA evidence on the victim’s clothes from semen and it doesn’t match mine. There is blood on the victim’s clothes belonging to the attacker resulting from a struggle and it doesn’t match mine.

The police/ CPS are required to disclose this evidence, but often they do not. Either they lose it from incompetence, or they don’t bother to test it, or they simply ignore the legal requirement to disclose the evidence to the defence. Let’s say in this case they do disclose this evidence to the defence but the defence for inexplicable reasons (incompetence, laziness, or whatever else) don’t present it at the trial.

This man might well go to prison for this alleged offence that he did not commit. This is a miscarriage of justice. Yet this person is imprisoned and labelled as a rapist and their life is ruined.

If an appeal is later raised to the CCRC showing that there is unequivocal evidence that the blood and semen do not belong to this man and belong to another man entirely, the CCRC will dismiss it because they say that this evidence existed at the time of the trial so even though we KNOW your client is innocent, he will have to remain in prison for the crime he did not commit because you COULD have presented this evidence at the trial and it’s not new. Sorry dude, your defence lawyer was incompetent so now you’re going to have to stay in prison even if we know you’re innocent.

That’s how the CCRC operates. These are the rules and remit that govern its decisions. It isn’t about the truth, or guilt or innocence or justice. It is an arbitrary set of rules mainly designed to prevent many valid appeals from taking place. The CCRC and our politicians (who set these rules) know that these arbitrary rules keep many people in prison who either haven’t had a case against them proved beyond reasonable doubt and even some who have been proved beyond any doubt to be innocent. They do not care about this or do anything to change it. That should terrify everyone.

In a case like Letby’s, the CCRC will only consider evidence which could not possibly have been presented or obtained at the time by the defence. So there is an argument here, given that more recent research on insulin in newborns and how this manifests was not available at the time.

It’s clear that the threshold of evidence required even to charge her, let alone the threshold of evidence that would need to be provided to convict her legitimately, was not available. For a variety of reasons her lawyers did not properly highlight this and have the case thrown out (maybe incompetence from her defence lawyers; or maybe them having assumed that because there was no evidence she did this it was not necessary to find scientific witnesses to debunk evidence because there was none to debunk to start with, and they had too much faith in the justice system actually doing its job, like many people here apparently, although one would hope experienced defence lawyers — as these were — would not be that naive; or perhaps the judge was reticent to throw out a clearly spurious “case” given its high profile. Regardless of the reasons, it’s clear that the case should never have gone to trial at all and certainly wouldn’t have resulted in a conviction with the evidence that the prosecution did put forward, in a competent legal system).

Now, the CCRC can state that because her defence should/ could have obtained reports showing the babies died from natural causes/ substandard medical care and presented this at the original trial, even though it is now very obvious from actual comptent experts in this field of medicine having reviewed the medical records and concluded that there’s no evidence of a crime taking place at all, CCRC will ignore this and say this evidence is “inadmissable” and keep her in prison anyway.

The CCRC is unfit for purpose. Everyone in the legal profession is well aware of this, as is the CCRC itself. It is bound by its dysfunctional remit which means people remain in prison when their convictions were clearly not in line with the law, and even in some cases when there is clear evidence which proves beyond any doubt that they are innocent: if your defence lawyer didn’t do a good job and didn’t present the evidence of your innocence at the time of your trial but could have presented it if they’d been competent, then tough: rot in prision for the rest of your life because your defence lawyer did a bad job. The CCRC can and will and does dismiss appeals with evidence that PROVE someone’s innocence beyond any doubt if that evidence was available at the time of their trial and their defence lawyer didn’t use it or didn’t find the right person to come to court to give that evidence at the time. Tough, sorry, stay in prison for life for a crime we KNOW that you didn’t commit.

That’s how the CCRC works. People really should read up about it, as well as the travesties of law that are going on at the other end of the system in Magistrates’ courts. It is quite shocking and is something we should all campaign to change because it’s too late to do so by the time you are the person who is unfortunate enough to end up on the receiving end of it.

This just shows a lack of comprehension about what working in such an environment involves. You can’t work with neonates or any premature babies or even as a midwife and expect never to have a patient die. It’s inevitable, sadly. Doctors and nurses have to become a bit detached from things in order to function. Saying this doesn’t mean that she was willing babies to die, it could very easily and normally be a simple acknowledgement of the fact that if she is going to work in this profession that this will inevitably happen and for many people the impending inevitability of something terrible is worse than just getting it over with. People express things in different ways and this could quite easily be someone trying to express that they know this will happen to them and they know the first time will be the most upsetting so just want it over with.

People process emotions in different ways. A large proportion of surgeons meet the criteria for psychopathy because they have to be detached to a certain extent to be able to cope with their jobs. This doesn’t mean they are murderers.

Again, these are assumptions and conjectures being made based on second hand reported comments out of context from people in a very high pressured job. If that’s all it takes to get locked up for life and everyone assume you are guilty of multiple murders, some of which it would have been physically impossible for you to commit because you weren’t present at the time, then we should all be very, very scared.

Because... it's very, very sadly too late for Meredith and the babies. But not too late for wrongly convitcted innocent people... if that's what they are.

So was Sally Clark, Angela Canning, Sam Hallam. There is a never ending list of wrongly convicted murderers .

@DrRylandGrace but it's not just that one comment it's a dozen other ones and all the evidence. Plus her colleague was shocked and said her mind had never wanted to go there even though it was a possibility. This was her first day. Would you be happy for a detective to say he can't wait to get his first murder out of the way? She had no idea she'd see any baby deaths anyway, or at least not for years-it's a very very concerning comment. Sorry you can't see that.

Again, these are assumptions and conjectures being made based on second hand reported comments out of context from people in a very high pressured job. If that’s all it takes to get locked up for life and everyone assume you are guilty of multiple murders, some of which it would have been physically impossible for you to commit because you weren’t present at the time, then we should all be very, very scared.

No because none of us would make comments like that I hope. Jamie Varley was reported to have said "you lot will think we're abusing him or something" on his second or third trip to the hospital with Preston. Just another innocent comment? Maybe people should start thinking "hang on a minute is something more going on here"? Not just jump to worst case scenario but not dismiss it as a nothing comment either. Did it mean nothing in that scenario? I mean it's crazy for a guilty person to put that thought in a doctors head but he did didn't he. What a terrible shame they didn't take it more seriously.