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

It was 2018 but if you read into it her boyfriend got her further work

You'd leave a nurse on a unit who doctors are saying is harming patients because you don't think suspicion is enough? So if this was your baby on that unit and a nurse who was going to be caring for them was suspected of harm you'd be perfectly happy with this? To just "see what happens" and not have her removed until you were sure she was definitely harming patients? Really?

the inclusion of this recommendation seems to acknowledge the lack of evidence of wrongdoing on Letby's part.

Not really because you need the police and court case to prove guilt unless the managers saw it with their own eyes or she confessed to them. Both of which are pretty unlikely.

I followed the trail extremely closely, I think she’s guilty and still do.
I also think the only reason people jump to defend her is because we are still very much a looks based society and she’s a pretty white woman. Nobody would think for a moment she was innocent if she were a black woman, or overweight

Not at Chester. Dr Deakin got her a placement observing operations at Alder Hey Children's Hospital. She wasn't working at Chester. She never worked on the maternity ward there, only in the neonatal unit in its separate block until 2016. So that wasn't her, though obviously we are all vulnerable and on the watch after giving birth and I think people already knew about the police investigation which must have been a worry. Hope it all went well for you.

These types of insulin results haven't always meant poisoning and haven't been judged to do so, either in the UK or the US. More and more causes of interference with the immunoassays have been found over recent years. The jury at Lucy Letby's trial was told what you have said here, which is incorrect

@Oftenaddled well it's a lot more likely than not, especially when you take into account they happened two separate times and she's connected to both. THEN you add in the fact that both these babies were twins and their sibling also unexpected collapsed (on her watch) it makes sense she doesn't want to be tied to two twin deaths/collapses so chooses one to poison whilst off shift.

Then you add in the fact both babies are suffering from the effects of insulin poisoning (which is the reason the test is done in the first place) and there really is no other conclusion. Even you have to admit it looks more like poisoning than not.

I thought that she was inept, rather than a killer

But the CEO of the hospital blocked the police from investigating for A WHOLE YEAR! How were they scapegoating her? Thirlwell said that if she had been investigated sooner that lives could have been saved.

He didn't block the police from investigating her. He didn't report her to them. The doctors didn't either. They just asked the hospital to.

As I said, you can read that as protecting her inappropriately or appropriately from the doctors' accusations. But people who knew about the case never argued the managers scapegoated her. Some claim the doctors did. Obviously that depends whether you believe she did it or not, among other things.

Sure, you can find a narrative to fit those facts.

It is more difficult to explain how Lucy Letby poisoned a tamper evident stock bag (baby F) or how insulin is supposed to have "stuck" at the rates the endocrinologist admitted he only guessed. There are lots more logistical problems around the insulin too.

But the main thing is that, while you can work backwards and assume Lucy Letby poisoned children and then explain why, since the forensic tests weren't done, there's doubt that they were poisoned at all. Rightly, her defence team is exploring this angle.

Followed the trial closely and still believe she's guilty.

So these "world's best experts" are so sure she's innocent yet can't agree what natural explanation there is for the results? And you're just fine with this? Because you'll double down rather than admit you got this case wrong.

It is more difficult to explain how Lucy Letby poisoned a tamper evident stock bag (baby F) or how insulin is supposed to have "stuck" at the rates the endocrinologist admitted he only guessed. There are lots more logistical problems around the insulin too.

It might seem difficult for you to believe, but the evidence proves she managed it. It's not like it hasn't happened before. How did Victorino Chua do it?

Chua had worked on two wards, A1 and A3, at the hospital, but it was a “lottery” as to which patients were harmed, because the saline bags and ampoules he contaminated with insulin were then used by other unsuspecting doctors and nurses on innocent patients, Wright said.
“In the vast majority of cases, the poisoner seem to have contaminated products or altered prescription dosages completely at random. It was therefore a lottery as to who was treated with contaminated products and who was not.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/20/stepping-hill-hospital-nurse-victorina-chua-poison-trial

Your claims might have more validity if other serial killers hadn't done the exact same thing.

The explanations given by Dr Shoo Lee's panel would show why babies expected to survive and even thrive didn't do so. Not all were in this category anyway

Briefly -

Baby A, a clotting event probably caused by failures in care
Baby C, confirmed pneumonia, extremely vulnerable, not considered a surprising death by the doctor who delivered him, direct cause of death delayed resuscitation after desaturation
Baby D, confirmed pneumonia, not considered a surprising death by the pathologist who did the autopsy, died after delayed antibiotics
Baby E, very vulnerable, not considered a surprising death by the doctors on the unit, as they told both the coroner and the police.
Baby I, ill for weeks before dying, inappropriate antibiotic treatment
Baby O, haemorrhage from difficult to detect condition, deterioration since preceding shift
Baby P, delay in treating lung puncture following wrong ventilation settings.

This is all covered in more detail in the press conference and reports posted at: https://lucyletbyinnocence.com/#shoolee

It's worth being aware that the Thirlwall report didn't consider this material: it has been sent to the Criminal Cases Review Commission but the Inquiry assumes Lucy Letby is guilty under its terms of reference.

When a result comes back like this, there is usually more than one possible explanation. For example, it is picking up the wrong substance, it is picking up on a natural surge in the right substance, the sample has been contaminated, the sample has not been stored properly, there is a clerical error, samples have been mixed up, the substance was administered by accident, the substance was administered deliberately.

If you still have the sample, you can test to see what happened or to exclude some of these possibilities.

If you don't still have the sample, all you can do is say, one of these things may have gone wrong. For each of them, here's how it could have happened, how likely it is etc. So you don't choose just one possibility for the CCRC. You explain that all of them exist and that they combine to make it less likely than that the substance was administered deliberately.

Chua was accused of poisoning saline bags, not TPN bags in a cellophane wrap with a tamper evident cap.

The poll results really do reflect the strong divided opinions on this!

I’m not certain either way, the report has to assume guilt and writes from that perspective. The CCRC outcome is key.

I think this is a bit unlikely given that so much of the criticism stems from Shoo Lee's actions tbh. Is he meant to have just not been arsed if he finds out his report has been misinterpreted in a murder trial where the person convicted was a couple of stone heavier than Lucy Letby?

You can only speak for yourself and it’s patronising to suggest the rest of us are so superficial.

It seems to us that the British establishment regularly fits up innocent saps for heinous crimes or events, because justice must be seen to be done - Timothy Evans, the Birmingham bombers, the Guildford Four, Hilsborough, Stefan Kisko, the man wrongly convicted of rape for 17 years, and Michael Stone (imo) to name but a few.

We think Lucy Letby to cover up the failings of the NHS, and in particular a poorly run neonatal unit, which shouldn’t have been taking such sick babies.

I have read the enquirey and followed the trial- TBH I found both extremely harrowing, I have worked in many neonatal units and can totally see how some of those poor babies died. No doubt that unit shouldn't have been taking such tiny infants- the pattern of them doing really well for 24-48 hours then crashing isn't all that unusual. However it is difficult to reconcile how some of the bigger, older babies died, it does happen sometimes but would be considered remarkable in most of units I have known. I think some of her reactions and responses were " a bit off" but she was very young and relatively inexperienced- she definately needed better mentorship. In summary I am not sure- I don't how anyone can be tbh, especially 12 jurors who had likely never stepped foot in a neonatal unit. I am not sure she should locked up, I am sure she should never work in a NICU ever again.

What a massive waste of money to say what is well known, the NHS is full of bullying, scapegoating and ass covering with more badly run departments than good (which do exist and can be brilliant).

What evidence has this added to the conviction of LL? Surely it just confirms that the deaths of the babies were more likely to be (as Shoo Lee et al. suggests) down to mismanagement of their care.

Interesting discussion. One point often made is that no-one saw Letby do anything, as though that means she must be innocent. Many criminal cases involve situations where the perpetrator was not actually seen doing the crime, and the evidence includes many different pieces of information that pieced together form a picture from which conclusions can be drawn.
There are doubts about the prosecution's choice of medical expert but that does not necessarily mean Letby is innocent. It perhaps points to the need for a specialist police unit that investigates significant cases where medical evidence is crucial, and where there is proper scrutiny of the expertise of medical experts.
I do find it shocking that so many people have decided Letby must be innocent without having seen/heard/read all the evidence - it was a very long trial and there was a vast amount of evidence. It is to be hoped that the CCRC will report soon.

But Lucy Letby’s case has brought enormous attention to the failings of the hospital, through trials and this enquiry process. She is one of only three women currently serving a whole life term AFAIK. The publicity and focus on the hospital’s failures could not possibly ever have approached this level of scrutiny if it had not been a murder case. The scapegoat argument simply does not make sense.

The scapegoat argument - which I don't support if meaning deliberate scapegoating - still makes perfect sense if the idea is that Lucy Letby ended up taking the blame for care failings rather than management failings. That is to say, managers have lost enormously by her convictions; clinicians have not, despite some experts blaming their failings in care

Just wondering who you think should be running hospitals? (Pretty much all the managers central to the findings of the Inquiry were clinicians btw)