Lucy Letby thread

[Words]

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

It would have been better for another edit but it's not too bad. I did see that slip with child A but in most cases he gets his sex right.

I know he posts a lot on reddit so I guess there will be some overlap, but I thought he drew fairly heavily on his interviews. And while there's no one view on reddit, I thought he was still emphasising some theories that are a bit outdated there. I think he's very obviously deferential to "his" experts, but I suppose that's what he is offering ultimately - a range of expert views.

He did try to get Paul Clarke to talk to him! But I think that's where we are unfortunately - people have drawn up fairly strict party lines.

If I ever wrote a book (highly unlikely) I'll hold you to that, thanks!

I wouldn't have expected the book to be perfect anyway, this is all so fast moving and I think he probably rushed to get it out before the CCRC decision, it would be different if it was a historic case and there's a lot of time and space to get it perfect and and to have the whole case against the official narrative laid out perfectly and finalised, yet in this case we know that Mark McDonald submitted new material to the CCRC just last month. It's still evolving.

Probably not. The cap wouldn’t be missing - it would be over the port. From the nurses’ point of view some bags have dangling replacement caps with the tamper evident snap off cap in place and some have the replacement cap over the port. The pharmacy-made bags and the bought in ones look extremely similar once outside their over-wrap. The nurses (including LL…) may not understand the significance of the port and its cover. Additions are never made on the wards so I expect they think the port is pharmacy’s business and provided there’s a cap (original or replacement) that’s fine.

The replacement cap is a bit fiddly to get on, if I recall, requiring pressure and dexterity. It seems… unlikely that someone’s first go at doing it, and doing it through a wrap, after covertly faffing about with vials and needles and syringes and their wrappers, would be a success.

(This is, of course, assuming that the bags were the ones I think they were.)

All of this could and should have been explored - by the defence if not the prosecution. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know the extent of what either side did and if information wasn’t put before the jury, why it wasn’t.

It seems extraordinary to be discussing the merits of a book that, of you and Oftenaddled, only one of you has read for herself.

It feels like everyone who thinks Lucy has a fair trial would also have voted for Brexit.

David Davis wants a word.

@Notabarbie That’s a bit of a stretch

Well, I didn’t vote Leave, however some of the louder voices on the MoJ “side” did. So that’s not a reasonable inference.

Well that sub is an echo chamber where anyone who expresses even a tiny chink of doubt is banned, so unsurprisingly they are busy slagging off the book. The approach is identical your own 🤔 and very much relies on immediately attacking any perfectly reasonable questions about the evidence along with the questioner. Always playing the man not the ball. The ongoing dogged and fierce defence of the indefensible has to raise the question who are these people and what are they afraid of. Any rational person who could be affected by the UK judicial system or uses the NHS would surely be on the side of truth, but no, saying we already have the truth thanks and making specious arguments is the name of the game.

I agree that the book is not well-written. I would not recommend it as a starting point on the case. The author has done a lot of useful work in doing interviews with relevant people, and in drawing attention to this important case. But he's not great at organizing and selecting information. He intersperses important bits with unimportant ones. E.g. in the chapter on Baby K, he goes for many pages before mentioning Jayaram's email saying Letby called him for help, and then only gives it a few lines, instead of putting it front and center. He doesn't cite his sources in the book; there is an online spreadsheet with sources ( https://www.cintopress.co.uk/reasonable-doubt-lucy-letby-case.html ), but I wouldn't have found it if I wasn't on Reddit, and it still doesn't cite all sources. Many quotes are from anonymous people with unclear credentials; some quotes are from people with irrelevant credentials (e.g. citing a microbiologist about the post-it notes). There are inaccuracies, e.g. citing "an analysis of a 2020-23 dataset from the CoCH" that was not just from CoCH but from the larger trust, and not referencing the source (which was Reddit post rather than a peer-reviewed analysis).

I think these issues reflect the author's limitations, rather than an inherent weakness of the case for reasonable doubt. There have been many well-written pieces, starting with Rachel Aviv's New Yorker article.

*@Oftenaddled you should give writing a book on her a go you might have more luck

I very much second that. I've found posts from Oftenaddled here, or SofiaTerleska on Reddit or Jabe on Twitter/X, to be much better reasoned than the book by Morris.

Normally I'd agree but people I trust the opinions of have read it and reviewed it-and pointed out all the errors. You can't trust the Letbyists making reviews on amazon or wherever as they'll sing it's praises no matter what.

I'm not going to read something so biased in her favour-especially when I know she's guilty so I know for a fact it can't be in any way accurate.

She's still in prison and doesn't seem to be much sign of her being free. If she's innocent then wouldnt she be getting a retrial. Its all a hype. She's guilty.

Morris has published a fair bit. Mainly ghost writing though. I follow his YouTube channel and one cannot doubt his sincerity, but I did wonder how polished or otherwise the final product would be. Mainly from many errors of pronunciation which although relatively trivial, one would expect a professional writer not to make. It was clearly rushed out. I will reserve my judgment until I have read my own copy.

The CCRC process takes time, and it hasn't been unusually slow in this case.

she's guilty so I know for a fact it can't be in any way accurate

These things aren't contradictory: it's possible for her to be guilty but convicted with unreliable methods that will snare an innocent nurse next time.

I couldn't get over how confident delusional him and that John Sweeney were that she'd be out within 2 years. If I was at that book launch (although I'm sure they vetted people to make sure they were on the right side) I'd have asked "has it ever crossed your mind she might actually be guilty"? Now I know it seems like an obvious question but it's as if he's never even considered it. And then cheering for Letby and sending her a special message about how she has their support, it's all just in such poor taste.

And he keeps talking about all these implausible methods of murder and bringing up milk-she never killed any baby by overfeeding! Maybe attempted murder was the technical charge for it but I can't tell with him if that's what he means or he just genuinely doesn't know she didn't kill a baby with milk.

If you read the book, you might be able to figure that out.

She was convicted of attempt to murder by over feeding with milk, and injecting air down a NG tube. Is over-feeding with milk a plausible method of murder? Is injecting air down a NG tube?

The quality of this piece of work is irrelevant to those questions.

@EyeLevelStick yes so it was in combination with another method not overfeeding alone. Letby being too dumb to know this wouldn't kill a baby doesn't mean she didn't intend to. The jury didn't even have to be sure of the method.

Still, implausible methods make allegations less plausible. Most murder attempts use plausible methods. If something wasn't known as a murder method, the chance that a would-be murderer reached for it out-of-the-blue is small. If many nurses, when told of it, think it wouldn't work, the chance that one thought it would is smaller still.

Separately, if you don't restrict allegations to known/plausible murder methods, your chance of making a false allegation shoots up, because so many more things can fit a potential allegation. She was seen whispering to herself? Maybe she was praying for the baby's demise, and "Letby being too dumb to know this wouldn't kill a baby doesn't mean she didn't intend to".

@Dolphin37 baby G was in an outside nursery by that point. She was limited in what method she could use. Attacking her 3 times does rather point towards her wanting to kill her.

So, you think air via. NG tube is a plausible method of murder?