Lucy Letby bombshell as new memo from sole medical witness threatens to blow prosecution's case wide open.

[MissJoGrant]

This seems like a pretty major development.

www.lbc.co.uk/crime/lucy-letby-bombshell-new-memo-sole-medical-witness-nurse-conviction/

That’s what the doctors claimed but it’s not true. In fact the doctors themselves did not follow hospital protocol on reporting deaths and serious incident, and had closed shop meetings about the issue without hospital risk managers present.

The managers had the original pathology reports which found natural causes. They then called in the RCPCH to do a formal report, who performed a preliminary review with the recommendation of an urgent in depth review of all the cases. The RCPCH report found no evidence of intentional harm but did find suboptimal care and understaffing problems.

The cases were sent to Drs Hawdon (neonatologist) and McPartland (paediatric pathologist) who found no evidence of intentional harm, but found evidence of suboptimal care and in some cases babies may have survived with different treatment.

The doctors repeatedly claimed that the deaths were unusual and LL was responsible but there was never any evidence against LL, only dodgy stats. Jayaram admitted in an interview that there was no evidence against LL. Now it turns out that a key piece of evidence Jayaram claimed to have later on, which he never said anything about at the time, directly contradicts his own contemporaneous report.

At any point the doctors could have reported the matter to the CDOP - child death overview panel - indeed it was their obligation to do so if they felt there were serious concerns.

What I’m saying is if something has happened then it’s a hundred per cent certain that it happened.
On the evidence we now have, from Shoo Lee for a start, there were no murders. It is therefore close to a hundred per cent certain Lucy Letby’s presence on the ward was a coincidence.

It really isn't that straightforward.

I hate the phrase 'do your research' but you need to if you want to gain a better understanding.

There are huge issues with the shift chart, the trial and Dewey-Evans' conclusions.

Why?

It’s rather this attitude that has got us into this mess in the first place.

Has anyone explained why her defence team were so poor

Does this change things? Can anything be done, did the Dr perjure in court for example.

Still doesn't explain why you'd jump to murder though.

So I would wait for a more verified source to report whether I would see if some of this has been taken out of context. It is entirely possible that without CCTV footage that this has been misrememberd by this Dr to retrofit a theory about LL that was circulating. It is a very specific incident that he is recalling, that could have been destroyed in cross examination.

"Have you ever had medical equipment malfunction?"
"What is the standard protocol for when a patients state appears to be different from the reported machine?".. i.e. you observe the patient for a few seconds to see if they are breathing, independently.
"How big is a 23 week old infant"
"How close do you have to be to see if the infant that size was breathing?"
"How far away from you was the infant and Ms. Letby?"
"Could you see that they weren't breathing at that distance"
"Did she have a better postition of the action of the chest wall than you did"
Etc..

Even when there is evidence, actually written by one of them himself, that proves he was lying?

There were actually a lot more babies who died when she wasn't on shift.
We also know stillbirths increased in the maternity ward of the same hospital.
What it is looking more and more like is scapegoating of LL.
It's tempting to think 'well the babies stopped dying when she was suspended' but that's because ALL the sick babies were moved as the hospital wasn't deemed appropriate for the care these babies needed. Rather than face the music of mismanagement, poor resources and understaffing issues, evidence has been made to look like LL did all of this.
In terms of upsetting the parents by opening this up again, I've said this before and I'll say it again- I am a mum who's baby died, and let me tell you we are among the strongest people you could meet because we pick ourselves up and continue to live our lives after going through one of the unthinkable things of life. Those parents deserve the truth, the people who covered this up deserve to face the music and if LL is innocent she deserves her name being cleared.

Yeah, that statement doesn't say Letby called Dr Jayaram?! There's clearly a load of context missing?

The full text of Jayaram’s email is in the public domain
https://x.com/LucyLetbyTrials/status/1911097179957043223

It unambiguously states that Staff Nurse Letby called Dr Jayaram.

It was the Drs who kept going back to the bosses to say these babies deaths were unusual.

According to the doctors. Who had a vested interest all along, in not being held responsible for poor care. Who thought they were "unusual" but lacked the medical expertise to say why. Who have admittedly commucicated with each other to "get their stories straight". And at least one of whom it now seems may have committed perjury.

I don't know whether she killed those babies or not, but I do believe that the convictions were based on dubious evidence and have subsequently bugun to look increasingly unsafe. And I can think of one reason why they wouldn't keep quiet - high infant mortality rates are investigated anyway. Anyone recall the Shrewsbury/Telford scandal?

Ok thank you. It's much clearer there.

This is broadly correct.

Letby can appeal against both sentence and verdict. Obviously, what she wants is to appeal the verdict. To do so, she either needs to show that the trial was legally faulty (the judge allowed evidence that should have been excluded, excluded evidence that should have been allowed or misdirected the jury) or show that there is new evidenced throwing doubt on the verdict. The rules on what counts as new evidence are somewhat flexible but, in general, it has to be evidence that was not reasonably available to the defence at the time of trial.

The first attempt at appeal failed on the basis that the defence could have called the expert whose research was used by Evans (the prosecution expert) to claim babies had died of air embolism in the original trial, and therefore the fact this expert says that Evans was wrong is not new evidence. They could say the same about the evidence from experts who say the babies were not murdered, but they may conclude that the weight of this evidence is so great that they have to accept it. This email is in some respects better as it clearly had not been disclosed to the defence. To uphold the verdict, the Court of Appeal would have to conclude either that this email does not throw doubt on Jayaram's evidence, or that his evidence was not important and that there was enough evidence to convict Letby without it.

The Court of Appeal is better than it was, but they are still resistant to overturning verdicts, particularly in high profile cases where they are concerned that a successful appeal may damage public confidence in the criminal justice system. You will occasionally find judgements that go through all kinds of logical gymnastics to justify maintaining a guilty verdict in circumstances where most people would conclude that the verdict is no longer sustainable.

yes but the babies who died when she wasn't on shift didn't form part of the trial....

This is interesting thanks. But I wonder if there comes a point where confidence is eroded due to perception of no appeal after evidence such as this.

Depending on whether it can meet criteria too.

It’s completely undermined my confidence, for whatever that’s worth.

Having worked in the NHS for decades, there are a lot of Dr's who will happily throw nurses under the bus and lie to cover for themselves.

And often get away with it. Nurses are often seen as far more dispensable than medics.

On the other thread, someone posted that justice goss ruled as they went along about the experts that the defence was allowed to call. If that is the case, then that’s highly problematic for the court of appeal to rule that shoo li was available to be called as an expert at the trial and just wasn’t. I do think a substantial part was that the defence team assumed she was guilty too and just didn’t look hard enough at the evidence as they just accepted it. The air embolism, the insulin. Even the swipe card data they just rolled over when that was discovered. The X-ray evidence from before Lucy was even on shift. One thing the appeal judge is right about is that the defence should have got experts and for whatever reason they didn’t.

One thing I’ve noticed is that the BBC have been very quiet about it compared to other news channels.

Well they threw their lot in with Judith Moritz…

They have actually posted an extract and explained the issue- basically Dr Jayram claimed in the email that the death was likely due to the baby being extremely premature but in his evidence he claims she was standing over the baby concerned and had pulled out the breathing tube.

in any event, the expert panel noted that the baby had not been correctly intubated (by the drs) and the baby died of natural causes/ medical negligence so this death was nothing to do with Lucy Letby anyway.

I do hope she finally gets a fair hearing. It’s very concerning that it’s so easy to convict people

Indeed and she’s had much to say, little of it being of any substance at all.

That is the worrying thing. Put aside whether she’s innocent or guilty for a moment.

She is a serial liar because she said she was arrested in pyjamas and it was a tracksuit.

She said she did it. So she did.

She appeared unemotional in court so clearly she did it.

She failed a nursing placement so she did it.

She had a diary with cartoon dogs on it and a pink bedroom so her development was arrested so she did it.

She didn’t cry for the poor parents, she only cried once when her colleague appeared.

If these things were just nonsense spouted then fair enough but a lot of them were put forward either as actual evidence or by new sources that are supposedly reputable. And that’s very, very worrying.