Lucy Letby

[kkloo]

New thread as the last one has filled up.

The legal reality is that a jury found Lucy Letby guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and the Court of Appeal has twice rejected her applications to overturn those verdicts

I am new here, but I have been following this case ever since the guilty verdicts were delivered. I am a retired AHP with 25 years experience in the NHS. I have 4 children, one was born with IUGR and was hypoglycaemic at birth and one was born at 31 weeks gestation and spent 4 weeks on a NICU. My other two children were normal full term, although the last was born at home by accident after a very rapid labour. I have decided to join this discussion because I believe Lucy Letby is the victim of the most horrendous miscarriage of justice. The medical evidence presented in court by the prosecution is an embarrassment to not only them but to the UK justice system as a whole.

Totally agree with @Glowingup that she is guilty as sin and fully deserving of her sentence. In addition to the overwhelming evidence, it was her behaviour after the babies’ deaths and her demeanour during the court case that convinced me.

This is the first time that I have looked at legal realities and it’s actually quite scary. I don’t think I will ever trust “ legal realities “ again.

How exactly did she behave after the babies ' desths ?

Searching for parents on FB on Christmas Day is imo ghoulish and voyeuristic..Why on earth would you do that on Christmaa Day. You' re with family, you've got Christmas lunch on the go, ...and then you go and look up a parent of a baby who died. Really ? Why would you need to do that ? I cant think of one normal or healthy reason..It doesnt make sense.

I believe she was working that Christmas day, the search was made sometime before midnight, not sure if she was still working then.

This was for the parents of Babies E and F, maybe she wanted to see how baby F was doing.

As a nurse you are often working. Also might she not have felt sympathy for the family and looked them up to see how they were doing?

Why would you write “You' re with family, you've got Christmas lunch on the go”
when she was single and at work on Christmas Day?
See I think it takes a ghoulish way of thinking to make something of it, and an astonishing lack of insight and empathy to not be able to think of one normal reason why.

How did you think she should react/behave?

What did you think her demeanour should be?

With respect, attacking me, who is posing a perfectly reasonable question, rather than addressing the question itself, speaks volumes. I'm not going to bother any more. When I started on this thread, I didnt know much about the case and was ssking perfectly reasonable questions and was open minded about the answers. But it's become clear to me that some people on here will challenge even the most obvious and basic and reasonable points that others make. LL is , in their opinion, as white as the driven snow and absolutely everything anyone could ever pose as a challenge is twisted into the most ridiculous arguments to defend her. I cant be bothered with it. She could be innocent; she could be guilty. Who really knows. Funnily enough, for me at least, the more information I have found out, the more guilty she looks. The medical evidence seems extremely complicated and open to all kinds of interpretations, and if you add so much obsessive and strange behaviour into the mix then I think you are dealing with a very complex personality and a very complex situation and I certainly dont think it's remotely clear cut that she innocent . Anyway. It's descended into a slanging match and I cant be bothered any more.

It just seems so amateur and it's hard to believe that this case was put forward in 2022/2023.

What overwhelming evidence have you seen that confirms these babies were murdered

The medical evidence (i.e the new research, Lee's panel, the issues with the stats) is not open to interpretation. The only people who believe so don't understand it. The experts who put the evidence forward are 100% clear; there is no medical evidence of murder. Those of us who have read around the topics enough to have more than a basic grasp of what the studies mean don't believe there are multiple interpretations.

What parts of it do you think have multiple interpretations?

I wasn’t attacking you. I admit to being somewhat surprised that a newcomer to the case has got on so quickly to focusing on irrelevant implied personality quirks and hasn’t come back with any comments or questions about the medical evidence, or commented on the private eye reports or anything else that was linked or shared.

I did comment on the Private Eye reports . I said I was going to read them and I have started reading them.

Ok. I'll give you just one example. The blood around.the baby's mouth. I've read that the cause was most likely a pathology in the baby. Fine. Could very well be true. BUT. Is it absolutely one hundred per cent impossible that it could have been caused by a tube being roughly shoved in or taken out of a child's mouth..Seriously. Can anyone honestly say that that action is a physical impossibility and that a person could never injure a child's throat or mouth by doing that - that the force of a a large adult hand couldn't injure something so fragile, especially if the person was sadistic, ill- tempered, frustrated or impatient in some way. That is the sort of thing I'm talking about. I'm not saying it's what happened, but I'm suspicious of people who will under no circumstances whatsoever admit that it is even a possibility......and then jump down my throat and insult me into the bargain.

@Daygloboo Baby E had 2 massive gastrointestinal haemorrhages, that is where the blood came from. This is undeniable; there are antenatal ultrasounds proving this.

Could the throat also have been injured? Possibly, but it is highly unlikely, and if the consultants had suspected that, they would have ordered an autopsy, but they didn't.

What are the chances that Letby managed to choose to harm the throat of a baby who had an undiagnosed gastrointestinal haemorrhage to cover her tracks and managed to do it on a small, busy and chaotic ward without anyone witnessing it?

It's not impossible that someone injured the child's throat deliberately, through it is hard to account for the doctor not seeing it when he examined the baby. It is also a shame the child didn't have an autopsy on the doctor's recommendation. The pathologist would certainly have seen any throat injury, but we are asked to believe Lucy Letby went ahead and killed the child (later that night, through an air embolism) without knowing there wouldn't be an autopsy.

Meanwhile, vomiting up blood is a common occurrence in babies admitted to neonatal ICUs. So should we suspect attempted murder whenever we see it? Clearly, nobody saw this as a suspicious event at the time. The doctor called to examine the child didn't suspect anything. So all we have is a guess that Lucy Letby might have been responsible for something that happens all the time in NICUs. I don't see how a conviction on these grounds can be beyond reasonable doubt, safe, or immune from critique. (I know you haven't said people shouldn't criticize the medical evidence given at the trial yourself)

Yes, that does sound like a reasonable argument.

Ok. I'll give you just one example. The blood around.the baby's mouth. I've read that the cause was most likely a pathology in the baby. Fine. Could very well be true. BUT. Is it absolutely one hundred per cent impossible that it could have been caused by a tube being roughly shoved in or taken out of a child's mouth..Seriously. Can anyone honestly say that that action is a physical impossibility and that a person could never injure a child's throat or mouth by doing that

So this is an excellent example of the back to front thinking that underpins the issues with the case.

I’ve read that the cause was most likely a pathology in the baby yes, there is evidence of this, so why go looking for something else?

BUT. Is it absolutely one hundred per cent impossible that it could have been caused by a tube being roughly shoved in or taken out of a child's mouth

It’s not for the defence to disprove a hypothesis which has no evidential basis. And yet this is what appears to have been demanded over and over again.

No. And @Frequency did give an interesting and plausible account of it. But something you said has struck me.....these babies had all sorts of pathologies ( sadly), and the ward was busy. and all of that could be a great cover for someone wishing to do harm. If the babies are already sick , with various symptoms, a killer could easily take advantage if that. If the baby died from.an air embolism later that night, the baby having been so sick earlier in the day would be the perfect cover.

This.

People are going around the houses to try to find nefarious reasons to explain common complications in neonates.

My white laminate flooring is always covered in black hair. I own a Rottweiler, but a jaguar may be coming into my house overnight and rolling around the living room, therefore, instead of brushing the dog, I will secure my house against rogue jaguars.

Of course. But there are limits to what would have been possible. I can give a few examples if you like.

And you can't lock people up for murder based on the idea it's not impossible that it happened, when they are much more obvious natural causes of death. Otherwise we would have to suspect all ICU doctors and nurses, all hospice nurses, lots of other staff at both, and many working in other parts of the health system, constantly.

Yes, but it's interesting that some people who ACTUALLY had contact with her thought she was guilty. Doctors , parents. Also , some things are more 'nefarious' than others. Just calling something nefarious doesn't make it so. Your big cat analogy is ridiculous. All thevstuff around Letby is by no means nefarious. It happened and could well be significant.