If you were previously on the fence about Lucy Letby’s guilt, have the Thirlwall findings swayed you either way?

[KwellsBells]

I personally have always thought she is guilty, and even more so since the report findings were published.

YABU - still on the fence/ still believe she is innocent

YANBU - she’s guilty

I don't think we can know what is lying and what is misremembering, but there is no doubt that Dr Jayaram's testimony in court contradicted his earlier statements.

It is also an established fact, via coroner's documents published by Thirlwall that Dr Brearey undertook a medical procedure and that the pathologist was not informed of it in the form supplied by the hospital.

While other claims depend on police or hospital leaks or defence team claims, these points seem well established whether you find the other sources reliable or not.

The whole trial transcript is online. Unfortunately, it confirms how unscientific the prosecution expert witnesses were. Without a proper scientific analysis of causes of death, the convictions are unsafe.

@Oftenaddled A lot of people on the LL subreddit think Dr Brearey should sue The Sun and documentary makers. Funny how there's never enough proof Lucy Letby killed babies but conspiracy theorists will jump on the idea one of the doctors caused an injury quick enough (with zero proof)

I think it's shameful that these consultants along with the others are going along with the serial killer narrative despite now knowing that the theories have major flaws and instead they are all continuing to ignore the elephant in the room and act like substandard care couldn't have caused this.

And there really are no words to describe how awful it is that they held an inquiry apparently to ensure that this doesn't ever happen again, with the thing that must not happen again being not letting a serial killer run riot in the hospital, when that's almost certainly not what happened, and instead by going down this route and ignoring the elephant in the room and having this performative nonsense what they're actually doing is going to mean that more babies are harmed due to substandard care

I can understand why initially they said after the convictions that they were going to have an inquiry, but to carry on even when significant medical disagreement about what happened continued to emerge (and emerge, and emerge....) is appalling.

The consultants are continuing to carry on with the serial killer narrative so of course they can be criticised for how they chose to handle what they said happened at the time.

If they want to insist on a particular narrative and voluntarily put forward that position then people can of course judge and criticise them for what they said they did and how they handled the situation.

No, we cannot know what is lying and what is misremembering (or perhaps even just a quickly worded email that doesn’t accurately articulate the true position - we’ve all written them). There’s a big difference between the former and the latter though.

And I don’t think it’s fair to say that the information about the medical procedure was deliberately withheld - it was all submitted to the coroner for the inquest bundle, but it didn’t form part of the initial rapid high-level instruction to the pathologist as the doctors didn’t consider the resuscitation attempts were related to cause of death.

I really hope he is taking legal advice and at some point comes out all guns blazing. It is absolutely appalling what he has had to put up with.

These things are backed up by their trestimony in the court transcripts.

Feel free to go and read them.

I’m amazed at the “she’s innocent” brigade still wanging on when the report is clear that she was very far from set up and scapegoated, she was actually protected and facilitated to keep murdering. What does it take for some people to accept the truth in front of their noses?

We knew the gist of what the report was going to say since the convictions, the inquiry was held from the perspective that she was guilty.

What does it take for some people to accept the truth in front of their noses?

Exactly, what does it take for people to see the blindingly obvious truth about the substandard care at this hospital?

Why didn't the the defence bring in some of those experts who have recently crawled out of the woodwork. It just all seems a bit odd. Those experts at the trial were all wrong apparently so where were all the other experts defending her. I think it was obvious she was guilty and they didn't call any defence witnesses except a plumber because shd'd look even worse under scrutiny.

There have been several options put forward as to why the defence didn't put their experts on the stand. (The defence expert was willing to take the stand)

Some of the posibilities that I remember are

The judge wouldn't allow the defence to defend each theory separately.

The expert couldn't refute all of the theories put forward in that they would have to say that some were feasible.

The defence didn't have any experts suitable.

LL wouldn't agree to the defence putting any experts forward.

These are all rumours and no-one other than the defence and LL really know what went on.

@Viviennemary
Why do you think experts are speaking out now and going to all the time and effort of doing reports etc?

Just to be clear, the allegations you have made about the two consultants are really not backed up by anything that’s in the court transcripts (or anywhere else).

The report had to presuppose guilt. It doesn’t make it useful on the question of the safety of the conviction.

And some of what has been posted about it, ie focusing on her character seems off.

Just to clear one consultant clamed to have a draw of evidence against letby which he did nothing with for a year, and the other one was proved by his own emails to have lied that letby didn't call him.

But at least you calim to hacve read all of transcripts in less than a day so well done.

And yes the email came out either between the trials or after the second one.

But at least you have started to do some research so there is hope for you yet.

The ‘drawer’ was full of incident reports, data reviews etc that the consultants had been submitting and escalating to the trust’s leadership over the course of the year. So the contents had already been shared, albeit fruitlessly, by the time Brearey had that conversation with Karen Rees. I don’t think it’s hard to see why he might have been a bit frustrated when she asked to see the contents in the middle of a corridor, while he was on his way to an emergency.

And there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Jayaram wilfully lied in his testimony, as opposed to possibly misremembering, or possibly writing an email in haste which wasn’t forensically accurate.

Why do you keep making these allegations? And where have I claimed to have read all of the transcripts in less than a day? I’ve had an interest in these discussions for quite a while as there’s a close link with my work (although I have no direct connection to the case or anyone involved).

Accountants can be working at the equivalent level in the private sector, and have the conflict between who pays them, and their professional duty to act in the public interest. The accountants I know, report money laundering by clients, when they come across it.

Truth is a defence to accusations of libel. If their claims are untrue he could certainly consider it. When you listen to the Sun, though, they were very careful to say only things that could be fact-checked: this document says this, this says that.

They went out of their way to say they weren't accusing him of causing Baby O's death - spelt it out.

So you already know the answers to the questions that you are asking.

Why waste time pushing for a response when you could just post what you know?

Its very lawyer of you. (not a compliment)

As for why I keep
Its very simple, you keep asking.

And he still sat on the contents of the drawer for a year and Javi still misled the court, make of that what you will.

I don't think that one has to consider Dr Jayaram's inconsistencies lying to see them as casting doubt on his wider testimony. I don't see why it matters whether he was lying or not. One can be unreliable without dishonesty.

Dr Brearey is criticised not just for refusing to share the contents of his "drawer of doom" on that one occasion, but for refusing continuously to produce explicit evidence. The situation was either that he had no evidence but coincidence of presence, or that he had more, and it would certainly have been helpful if he had been explicit as to which was the case when asking to have a nurse removed from duty.

It would be very unlikely a judge would allow you to bring in new experts (after a delay for them to examine the evidence) during a trial. Before the trial, there was no opportunity for these experts to hear what would be claimed in court. So in practical terms, there was little chance of doing this.

If you insert a cannula and withdraw blood unintentionally, as Dr Brearey's fellow consultant reported to the coroner after the autopsy, you have caused an injury. Whether that injury was significant in the death in question remains to be considered, as the C5 documentary pointed out. But their pointing to two different times noted in medical notes for the injury seems like legitimate public interest investigative journalism.

If they have reported anything inaccurate to his detriment, Dr Brearey can certainly complain or sue. However, despite doing interviews for publication during the current police investigations, he declined to comment in this case because of that investigation.

Which is wise of him. Anyone he brought a case against would have the opportunity to argue both truth and honest opinion, in a case where another consultant has already said he did cause an injury, and there's no record of him reporting. And they'd only need to prove it on the balance of probabilities. So perhaps he won't heed the wise counsel of random anonymous people on reddit.

Re Jayaram, it matters because the OP I was responding to has consistently asserted that he lied. I just think it’s totally out of order to be doing that without any actual evidence to support. He’s a professional whose life has essentially been ruined by people online who think they can just say whatever they like about him and his clinical practice.

Re the drawer of doom was there anything that hadn’t already been escalated to the trust leadership via datixes, data reviews, emails from the consultants etc? Brearey’s evidence was all of that, plus his and the other consultants’ suspicions. Why wasn’t that enough? I cannot conceive of any of the CMOs I’ve worked with ever just dismissing concerns like that, whether or not there was any tangible evidence of deliberate harm at that point. It would be madness to do that, the stakes are way too high.

And I thought Brearey was pretty clear that it was Baby P who had died when he rang to ask that Letby be removed and got Karen Rees as on-call exec? Is that not right?

Yes, Karen Rees and Dr Brearey both agreed that call took place after Baby P's death. There is no claim that Karen Rees had previously been party to any of Dr Brearey's documentary or of his neonatal review with staffing at this point as far as I know. It was after this that the whole business was openly raised by the consultants so his "drawer of doom" may well have been the first she heard of it.

After that, if you look for example at the grievance documents, it's clear that he was only claiming the association was suspicious - or that's what he said. So the best you can say of the drawer of doom business is that it muddied the waters at a time of high emotion when clear communication would have been extremely important