Lucy Letby

[kkloo]

New thread as the last one has filled up.

Think you're being a bit kind there, probably more like Year 6 SATS level?

@Iamateadrinker

There was evidence laid out in court that explained why these babies were murdered and the cause of death by multiple experts

but that wasn’t enough for you and interestingly you would not be interested in cctv evidence of catching her in the act if it was available!

Since we are to defer to professionals, I will take the opinions of David Wilson, a professor of criminology at Birmingham City University, who specialises in serial killers, and Richard Curen, the chair of the Forensic Psychotherapy Society, who has worked as an expert witness and with victims and offenders for 25 years, as to whether the post-its are confessions.

If you know of any qualified psychologists who support the post-its as confession notes, I am happy to reconsider my opinion.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/sep/03/i-am-evil-i-did-this-lucy-letbys-so-called-confessions-were-written-on-advice-of-counsellors

If you honestly think there’s no difference between discussing the rights and wrongs of our justice system and posters with zero medical qualifications opining on insulin poisoning symptoms in neonates and the major causes of hypoglycaemia then there’s not much I can say. Just don’t expect anyone with actual critical thinking skills to respect your other arguments though.

It would be relatively easy to build such a sheet. However it wouldn’t stop the circular arguments.

Every time something new comes up which casts doubt on the trial process or evidence and sparks a discussion, a group of pro verdict posters make their same arguments over again. Nothing will change their view and I’m certain that even if it is deemed to be MOJ they will still argue that she’s guilty. The position is deeply entrenched and cannot be shifted as it’s the product of an echo chamber based on tight narrative control and extraordinary personal investment, one might say a personal crusade. The arguments never engage with the material in good faith, but are based on straw men, they are repetitive and often contradictory and often resort to personal insults.

I’ve got no issue with LL getting help from the panel. But it is still only the CCRC process which could lead to anything about her situation changing, however vocal her defenders are or aren’t about it.

I'm sure you are correct Pink, but there may be newcomers who have only just realised there may be a problem.
I could be persuaded to a guilty point of view should new evidence be uncovered although twice this morning I've been accused of the opposite which rather backs up your point... some people only see what they want to and their minds are closed.
I'm more concerned that this case shows up very clearly the problem with achieving justice for the victims and the defendant and the appallingly long time it takes for a case to be reconsidered.
The victims do not achieve justice if the wrong person is blamed, whether another person is guilty or a failing institution led to the deaths.

This is the issue - all these experts coming out and making all sorts of claims

They didn’t attend the trial and none of them have had full access to the thousands of pages of notes/evidence to reach such a conclusion

A confessional note on its own should not be used to determine a conclusion without taking into account the wider facts and evidence presented at trial

However these experts seem to think it is ok to make assumptions without viewing all of the evidence - and this is why it is hard to take them seriously

@Iamateadrinker

The victims parents who actually attended the trial were convinced of her guilt

Is that not enough for you?

They feel that justice was served

What evidence do you think the expert panel didn't have access to? My understanding is that they were given all the medical evidence that the defence and therefore the prosecution did? They were working within their fields of expertise to come to their conclusions based on that evidence.

Please define what you mean by assumptions?

Your argument in the post I replied to was about a specific set of actions you objected to. It entirely fails to consider what a person who's been subject to an MOJ/an expert who thinks they've identified one is supposed to do, in a system that doesn't reliably deal with those and where public attention is a significant factor.

You don't have to like the system we find ourselves with, I don't either, in order to understand that it has a problem with sweeping things under the table. That means addressing this tendency has to form part of the strategy. The people who are doing the addressing are better qualified than you to assess what needs to be done, and thus applying the principle you've advocated for, unless you have a relevant GCSE it's not for you to question. Unless and until you can explain why the two are different, there indeed won't be much you can say. This is the corner into which you've backed yourself.

Of course no-one knows who anyone is on the internet, but there are several posters on here with relevant medical and scientific qualifications. Hypokalaemia being associated with hyperinsuliaemia is known, well documented, and easy to verify.

I didnt know she demanded to be put in with the sickest babìes. Bearing in mind she had had to take a test around competence, you cant help wondering what was going through her head. If that were me, and my competence had been questioned, for the sake of career survival I would be wanting to be placed in the least stressful and least potentially problematic situations. Not situations where babies could die.

I'd like to know this too - where is the claim that the international panel of experts, instructed by the defence, didn't have access to the full records?

Unless we mean, they didn't have access to the obstetrics records, which they have certainly requested. But the prosecution didn't use these either. And while the obstetric records could clear up some underlying causes or add some contributing causes, they aren't going to change an analysis to murder. Is that what you mean @Quitelikeit ? If so it is a basis for investigation by the CCRC, not a weakness in the defence case

The testing of competences was a year after the texts about asking to be put with more challenging babies. Nobody was checking issues with nursing competence based on a run of deaths at that point. Only one of the indictment babies had died.

I’m not sure I have ever said I’m certain LL’s conviction is safe? Once I know the new evidence from the expert panel has been properly tested as part of a formal process and still stands up then I will be happy to accept that. But until then I’m not going to just accept that what they are saying trumps all the medical evidence considered at trial.

But having said that, it would be fair to say that I don’t have the same concerns about the original investigation and trial as some other posters do, no.

We don't know what the parents concerned think, at this stage. They are very much to be pitied, of course. Victims of the crimes that lead to miscarriages of justice, and their relatives, often believe justice has been done. Even where they can give eyewitness descriptions of a criminal, as in the case of Andrew Malkinson when he was found guilty of rape, they can get these matters wrong.

This will turn out to be the biggest miscarriage of justice in our lifetime.

It will. I'm just sad that, by the time she's released, she'll probably be too old to have children and a normal life.

However these experts seem to think it is ok to make assumptions without viewing all of the evidence - and this is why it is hard to take them seriously

Medical experts opinions on the medical evidence shouldn't change based on the other evidence.

If the CCRC instructs experts to weigh up the medical evidence and see if the initial medical evidence can stand up to scrutiny they don't tell them to also consider things like handover sheets and post its, they will just be looking at the medical evidence.

If the CCRC then conclude that the medical evidence does not stand up to scrutiny then different people will assess the impact, whether they think the jury would have reached the same conclusions without the medical evidence, how important it was, and does removing it create a real possibility of a different outcome, but that's not the medical experts role.

She will need a new identity, probably move to a different country and then have to find work in a different field. It’s a tragedy.

So it's super rare to the point literal endocrinologists haven't heard of it? And it just so happened to be the babies connected to Letby? Come on, even you must know how that sounds!

How many times do they have to come out and say the speculation is deeply upsetting? Every few months? They already said they have the truth after the Shoo Lee press conference didn't they? That was last year.

But would I like to find myself in hospital one day and look up to see LL standing over me....no, I would not.

Now imagine you do see her, demand a transfer, and are offered one to CoCH circa 2015-2016. CoCH has just been downgraded and forbidden from taking patients as sick as you, but they'll take you anyway. World's top doctors warn that you're at serious risk of collapse and death, but Dewi Ewans stops by and declares you stable. He hasn't checked your medical history older than three days, but says he doesn't need to. He assures you that none of the many problems reported at CoCH can possibly kill you: don't worry about sewage in the sinks, often-absent senior staff, nurses working while sick, a litany of documented medical mistakes. Would you take the transfer?

Police have by now examined 4000 cases, and there are many possible rare conditions/testing anomalies/etc that might affect each one. Encountering some in such a broad open-ended trawl is not self-evidently unlikely.