Anyone else doubting Lucy Letby's guilt?

[Nickersnackersnockers]

Don't know if I am allowed to share a link so please Google 'Science on Trial Lucy Letby'.

It's written by a scientist with no association to LL who is asking questions that were not addressed in court.

I am very disturbed by the article. Don't start slinging mud at me, make a large coffee, go read it, come back, and tell me what you think!

@whatsitcalledwhen No, I stated that as my opinion.

She's guilty and no amount of talking this up into a miscarriage of justice will make it so.

That wasn't clear as you stated it as fact rather than saying 'I think' or 'I don't think'.

Regardless I think it's strange to be so dismissive of the evidence that was compelling enough for them to find her guilty on some counts after months of a trial.

Especially as they found her not guilty of other charges which suggests they didn't at all take evidence lightly and only delivered a guilty verdict if they felt the evidence absolutely met the threshold needed.

Not really. A lot of trouble was taken to explain it in terms that could be understood by non-scientists.

So glad that Lucy Letby has been allowed an appeal bid. I have read Science on Trial too and am extremely concerned about her conviction which is not based on accurate scientific evidence but is circumstantial. Hopefully, if an appeal is granted, accurate scientific data will be presented by appropriately experienced and qualified professionals and understood and correctly interpreted by those in judgement, leading to a just verdict.

Science on Trial is by a woman who faked her Oxbridge credentials and PhD and was taken to court for essentially being crazy..... You can even find the whole court ruling online.

alohaa I would be grateful for links to your claim.
However the Science on Trial document, if you have read it, contains many references to high quality relevant scientific research and case reports.
Surely the least we can expect is a rigorous critical appraisal of relevant scientific data together with meticulous statistical analysis of the adverse events and deaths, also considering the deaths that occurred when Lucy Letby was not on shift and after her suspension.
In addition, involvement of forensic paediatric pathologists and experts in the field of insulin metabolism are required.

Does anyone know how much all of this costs out of curiosity?

Lawyers for Letby will ask senior judges for permission to bring an appeal against all her convictions at the hearing in London, which is expected to finish this week.

https://www.itv.com/news/granada/2024-04-22/lucy-letby-attemps-to-appeal-convictions-in-final-process

She’s appealing her convictions on 4 grounds. I’m not sure what they would be or what it all means.

I can't answer the question on cost.

There is minimal information available about the appeal, but it appears it is around four applications made by the defence that were refused by the trial judge. I don't know exactly what these applications were. They may be arguing that the judge wrongly excluded evidence that throws doubt on her guilt, or that they wrongly admitted evidence that should not have been put before the jury, or it may be something else. Whatever these applications were, they are arguing that the judge was wrong to deny them and that this therefore renders the convictions unsafe.

It costs nothing to lodge an appeal with court of appeal , it's if they agree and it goes back to crown court that it can get expensive if it ends up as a re trail

I took it as asking how much this appeal will cost in terms of court time, lawyers fees, etc. As you say, Letby doesn't have to pay anything to appeal other than her lawyers fees.

My understanding is leave to appeal is already covered under legal aid for the original court case , if her appeal is granted then it will go back to Crown Court where they will determine the appeal and that's when costs start to be incurred again. Although an appeal against sentence/conviction costs between £200-£500 once its at CC

I think it’s reasonable to question this. Interesting article published in the New Yorker (May 2024), asses the legal evidence and how it was employed. Also, the incredible pressures on the ward. It’s not a simple opinion piece, it’s a lengthy look at various bits of evidence and some that was omitted.
I can’t say whether she’s guilty or not, having not been a juror, but I can say that it gave me to pause for thought.
There are cases of wrongful accusation and mistrials, and it would be so awful if this was such a case.

I read this article in the guardian (www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/02/lucy-letby-retrial-scrum-of-spectators-courtroom)which pointed me to the New Yorker article. The latter is not available in the UK for legal reasons but can be found online.

The NewYorker article is missing vital evidence.

What about the mother of child E? Do you think she lied through her teeth to jump on the bandwagon to convict an innocent nurse too? The evidence proves different. Maybe try looking at the evidence instead of depending on conspiracy theories.

I don't believe she was lying, but her evidence doesn't go anywhere near proving that Letby was a murderer.

Regarding the defence not calling any medical witnesses, you might be interested in The Lucy Letby case: some thoughts and observations: what should happen when a defence does not put in their own expert evidence (for good reason or bad)? – The Law and Policy Blog (davidallengreen.com).

(Note that, despite the image, this is NOT the inquiry website)

I am not offering any views on Letby's guilt or innocence. However, if she is innocent, she now faces an uphill battle. The Court of Appeal has improved, but it still prefers to find ways of upholding convictions if it can, particularly in high profile cases like this. Letby will need compelling new evidence to overturn the verdicts. And the Court of Appeal will take a strong line on what counts as new evidence. For example, in the appeal she has already had, her lawyers sought to introduce the evidence of Dr Lee. He was one of the authors of a paper which the prosecution expert had relied on in making his diagnosis that some of the babies died of air embolism. Dr Lee disagrees with the prosecution expert and says his work has been misrepresented. However, the Court of Appeal refused to accept his evidence, in large part because they say the defence could have sought his evidence before or during the trial and it is therefore not new evidence.

Did you see the DAG post today publishing the ruling of the judge on the defence submission at the end of the prosecution case of no case to answer on a number of the counts against Letby?

I’d be interested in your perspective.

https://emptycity.substack.com/p/new-the-lucy-letby-trial-ruling-on

I don’t quite follow all the details, but people are speculating that this might finally provide the best clues as to why the defence didn’t submit Dr Hall’s report into evidence.. it’s suggested that their strategy was to try and get Dr Evans testimony thrown out (they believed that this was a realistic objective) and they felt that submitting their own expert witness would undermine that case. If so, a very high risk strategy that went badly wrong, but makes some sense,

My thoughts are that I am a little surprised that the defence tried to get the case dismissed at this stage. Whatever the strength of their arguments, they were unlikely to succeed. Given the high profile of the case, I think the judge was always going to allow this to go to the jury. If this is why they failed to introduce their own expert evidence, it was a serious tactical error. It now means that, however strong the evidence they had that the prosecution experts were wrong, they cannot use it. I don't know how much input Letby's solicitors had into these decisions, but I note that they had minimal experience of criminal prosecutions. It is possible that they gave poor advice which Letby and her family trusted.

The defence arguments, of necessity, asked the judge to consider and make a decision on the strength of the medical evidence. This is something that happens all the time - it is for a judge who is not an expert in anything other than the law to rule on the admissibility of an expert's testimony. The legal teams are also not medical experts. I don't have an answer for this, but it is a concern. Note that I am not saying the judge got this wrong. I am not a medical expert, so I don't know.

Wait were they trying to get the whole case dismissed or just to disallow the expert evidence about air embolism?

A bit of both. They were trying to get all those cases where the prosecution alleged that the sole cause of death was air embolism dismissed. For those cases where air embolism was alleged alongside other causes, they were asking the judge to tell the jury to disregard the evidence of air embolism.

wow Ok, that does sound like they massively overestimated there

Thanks for your response. It seems hard to believe they omitted the entire defence expert witness testimony on that basis; but then it’s hard to believe they did it on any basis! If it was the solicitors’ idea you’d think Myers would have advised against it. In any case, it doesn’t explain the lack of experts in any other sphere - statisticians, epidemiologists re sewage leaks, and neonate insulin specialist.

The case may have benefited from some kind of pre-trial scientific evaluation the evidence, as the time to throw out the air embolism stuff was before it started surely? But that of itself could be fraught with problems.

Myers may have advised against it but, at the end of the day, the client is king. There is nothing in our system to protect the defendant who makes bad decisions that undermine their defence. I don't know if that is what happened here, of course, but it certainly seems a possibility.

I wish there was some way of sorting out the expert evidence that didn't rely on judges and juries. I don't know what such a system would look like. But there have been far too many cases where faulty expert evidence has led to innocent people being convicted of crimes that they didn't commit (and, in some cases, crimes that didn't happen). Of course, I don't know if that is what has happened here.