Lucy Letby - Specifically those who think she is guilty…

[BEAchDays2]

I’ve just been reading massive amounts of posts of Facebook following the new doc out about LL. (Blame a long train journey!) and it got me thinking, those who still think she is guilty what are your reasons?

It does feel like the tide has turned generally. I haven’t watched the new doc yet, likewise has anyone seen it, and is it worth it?

My daughter is a Midwife, and has discussed this extensively with colleagues.

They all think she's a scapegoat.

They all work under conditions where they know that any single of them could be thrown under the bus at any moment for poor management decisions that impact patients. I take my hat off to them, and don't know how they do it.

I dont think you’ve properly read what I wrote? I was talking specifically about cluster deaths which is what you commonly see on failing units, and a pattern of lack of timely intervention is one of the things you would commonly see cause a cluster due to poor medical practices at that specific time, which would then cease once either education work was carried out or medics rotated, whereas the deaths in question show a diffuse pattern over a number of years. I never said that lack of timely intervention couldn’t be a factor in any of the deaths?

I don't think that follows at all.

After years under investigation, on trial * 2 and in gaol there's no way she'd be mentally or physically fit to go back toany sort of nursing still less in the same field she was in before.

She wasn't technically found guilty by a jury of her peers, but by the general public in a trial that was based on highly technical knowledge.

I briefly worked on a neonatal ward as a physio, but I couldn't follow much of their reasoning for why she was responsible. It was clear to me that the wards were run poorly. For example, a linked review showed that consultants did ward rounds 3 times a week, whereas the ward I worked on had consultant ward rounds 3 times a day, or more for ventilated patients.

Therefore, I simply cannot understand how people could be so sure she is guilty based on the trial, especially if they do not work in, or have experience working in, a neonatal ward.

Even if this was the case... why murder, why not incompetence?

For what it's worth, I absolutely believe she's innocent, due to a little known podcast called We Need To Talk About Lucy Letby.

The people who did the podcast are two doctors who unfortunately know nothing about making podcasts so they never became part of the official narrative around this case, but they do know a huge amount about pediatric medicine and understand the details of the case to a spectacular degree.

Because they're not media people, the podcast isn't scripted, "fun" to listen to etc. It's mostly a very long, extremely elaborate discussion of this case and each of the babies. However, when you hear the full scientific / medical detail, it becomes shockingly clear how little of it was presented at the original trial, for various reasons, and the alternative explanations for how the babies died are overwhelmingly convincing, from a medical standpoint. And the whole story of exactly how and why she got accused also makes far more sense, when you hear all the details (such as of her falling out with the consultants), as her being a scapegoat. Someone had to pay and she did, unfortunately.

Anyone who's truly interested in this case should listen to this podcast.

Thank you for explaining this. That's the part that most convinced me of deliberate wrongdoing throughout this case.
I unfortunately have some experience of a young infant in high dependency, and the Drs and nurses invariably understand the trajectory, explain it to the parents, and the care given follows this path. They hold a great deal of credibility because they are so expert and experienced.
The sudden decline of babies who were doing relatively well (I believe some were even preparing for discharge) is what instantly made this 'deliberate' in my mind.
The fact that some really dubious evidence was needlessly presented to hammer it home (ie.handwritten notes of 'guilt') has really now muddied the waters.

I don’t believe, that if this was a south asian nurse or a black nurse, there would be the number of campaigners out there, trying to convince others that a convicted child killer is innocent.

I don’t believe there would be newspaper serialisations or channel 5 documentaries either.

The truth is, there are white women who take a strange interest in crime who dunnits, conspiracy theories etc….who are happy to revel in the disturbing details of this case and to justify this morbid interest, they claim evidence has been missed, that only those like them can see, that it’s a miscarriage of justice. Thus adding to the idea that they are special, that their interest in grisly murders, somehow makes them qualified to bang on to others that a convicted killer….isn't the killer after all.

You see that upthread with the claim that jury system cant understand complex evidence…but obviously the poster can!

It’s the refusal to believe that someone who looks like them or looks like their daughter, could ever do something like this.

It's all the evidence the jury didn't have that's the problem...

Because to just stand watching in an emergency situation seems beyond incompetent for a trained nurse. I can't say she's 100% guilty but the op asked why people think she is and that is the detail which has stuck with me personally.

What confuses me about the race stuff is that so much of the doubt is stemming from Dr Shoo Lee, who isn't white, and his actions. Do people really think someone in his position would be unbothered about their research being misattributed in a mass murder trial if Letby was, say, the same ethnicity as him?

It was one thing people thinking that in 2023, especially as it wasn't then known that Ravi Jayaram had given false information to the court. I can see how people's analysis of the racial dynamics might reasonably have differed then. Not so much now.

🤣🤣

I don’t know where to start with this.

I had a ventilated adult patient whose ventilator lost power as I was standing with the Ward Manager (top nurse) at the side of the bed.

The WM and I looked at the ventilator, the patient, then each other, then the patient again, then the ventilator again, both with our arms at our sides, before she spoke, and we bagged the patient.

If someone had walked in at that time, they would have seen both of us doing nothing because we were trying to determine whether the patient was breathing, which is difficult in an adult, let alone a neonate. Even though alarms were going off, we had to observe the patient, which is a plausible explanation for what could have happened.

Another plausible explanation is that she was a poor nurse who, due to the well-documented staff shortages, didn't get the training and support she needed. Which would have been a manslaughter charge maybe?

Murder is just too big a stretch given the evidence. There are some overly familar nurses that blur the boundaries. We had a nurse in ICU who was caring for a young male patient who tried to get the patient's wife removed from the hospital- people do go a bit doolally if they are overworked and haven't slept.

I think it's telling how weak the case is that when asked about her guilt people bring up things that don't point to guilt at all, such as her keeping notes, misremembering if she had a shredder, and her Facebook activity etc. In most other murder cases there's something other than this gives bad vibes or is odd. The point that we don't know everything said in the court is true but it's strange that the media and authorities would keep secret strong pieces of evidence.

When she was found guilty I didn't question it. I remember watching the BBC documentary where they showed that table with all the crosses showing she was the only one at every incident. Of course I later learnt there was no strict criteria to determine what was an incident and what wasn't, as if she wasn't on duty and something happened then it wouldn't be classed as such. It seems like a sharpshooter fallacy.

A lay jury couldn’t have possibly unravelled all that medical jargon. Most people wouldn’t be able to get their heads around NHS consultants using a young nurse as a scapegoat. No one wants to think that any departments in a hospital are unsafe whilst management turn a blind eye. We like to think that the premature babies would be especially carefully cared for. It’s so unfathomable that in fact 12 people off the street could easily be swayed into guilty verdicts by the disbelief of any other cause for the deaths

I see what you mean. But can we fairly assume that all avoidable deaths are clustered such that relevant learning, quickly applied, stops each cluster? If errors and systemic weaknesses aren't corrected, what prevents more deaths. And if admissions aren't steady - that's a key feature of the Chester unit - we have an external factor impacting on timing of deaths, not just internal practice and (possible) self-correction.

I think your post is a great argument for more sophisticated work in what happens in a unit that's not coping, but I don't think it shows that Chester was coping at all.

OP would you leave her in charge of the care for your own newborn?

Go look at the evidence reviewed, on Lucy letby analysis on YT. Experts give their opinion regarding the evidence presented.

This is an example of weak evidence.

The person walking in could have been misinformed, told she was dangerous, and then filled in the gaps herself.

Their memory of the exact events could have been poor

LL could have been observing the patient to see what the issue was

LL could be incompetent

The person may have misread the situation as an emergency when it wasn't

The alarms may have been faulty- this also does happen, especially in ventilators

The alarms may have gone off and LL was observing to see if they were meaningful. As a clinican you are trained to not just listen to technology.

She may have administered treatment and was observing for the effects before she escalated.

I grant you that, to an untrained person without hospital experience, this would seem like a big deal, but it happens often that an arriving member of the medical staff misreads a situation.

Dr Jayaram was the person who claimed this. One of the consultants Lucy had raised a grievance about. It came out after the trial that he told a different story in an email shortly after the incident but the jury weren't made aware of this. He told the court he had walked in on a baby declining and Lucy was stood by the incubator doing nothing and had switched that alarms off. He claimed he went in as he had a feeling he should check on the baby as 'he was aware of what had happened previously when Lucy was on duty'. Since then an email came to light showing that he says he was called into the room by Lucy herself as the baby was declining. Another nurse also testified that the alarms were sounding so why did Jayaram make this up? Could he have possibly had it in for Lucy? Along with Dr Breary?

I'm certain she is innocent. Those consultants need investigating. Dewi Evans should be in prison. He's an absolute fool and been proven wrong on all of his ludicrous theories. It's crazy to me that the post mortems showed no sign of air embolism and the pathologists were specifically looking for it. Why on earth they went with this theory when there was no evidence is beyond me. I hope she is freed soon but this thread alone shows she'll never be able to live a normal life again. It's so wrong.

Are you thinking of Ravi Jayaram and his famous ‘caught her almost red handed’ quote?
If this is the one, you need to know that it turned out his earlier emails painted a very different picture of this incident to the one he gave the court. Not least, it turned out the reason he walked into the room was because she had called him.’

This is just one of many things where if the jury had had access to information that has since come out, they might have come to very different conclusions about her guilt.

How would her own handover notes in a plastic bag under her bed be in chronological order rather putting them in there after taking out of her pocket.think their was a folder with 3 handover notes in, presuming to write statements from which you have to do in your own time, don’t think any related to the babies was in that file. Think you will find in her diary LD is not some secret code but means long day ( shift) the stars could indicate she was in charge of the unit that’s what her colleagues have said.

I dunno whether she's innocent or not, but I wouldnt want any loved one of mine in Jayaram or Brearey's care.

For those who don't know, Dr Jayaram told the court Letby had stood there and not called him when a baby who later died was in distress. Emails disclosed to the Thirlwall Enquiry (but not the defence in the trial...) showed him saying she had called him. I don't know if this was a fuck up or deliberate, but he may actually be a perjurer. And other expert doctors think Dr Brearey's negligence led to the death of another of the babies, as he performed a procedure wrongly.

The other explanation is what you see in Sussex, Oxford, Nottingham etc - a hospital not coping with complex cases but carrying on until the evidence that something is wrong is overwhelming*
And where there was no suspicion by consultants before investigation showed one person was present at each event, hence demonstrating that even when hospitals are facing concerning level of incompetence, it doesn't result in babies dying in suspicious circumstances.

I didn’t say all charges. I said the vast majority.

But I agree with you - it shows the level of consideration that the jury applied. Rather than just lumping each charge in as a whole.