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/

Honestly, so do I usually. I would usually believe the medical experts.

The trouble is, in this case, which experts do I trust?

I don’t think that’s a hard one in this case tbh.
On one hand we have the 2 doctors who already had beef with Lucy, who had a clear motivation for wanting it to be her fault rather than theirs that babies were dying and a track record of contradictory statements, together with the professional expert witness who made hundreds of thousands pounds from the case and a history of going beyond his area of expertise.
On the other we have the crack team of 14 more senior, more eminent doctors from around the world, qualified in exactly the right field and with up to date knowledge, with no financial or personal interest in the answer being one thing or the other.
I’m going with the more objective and more qualified ones who also happen to vastly outnumber the ones who think she’s guilty.

I think this will end up as the biggest miscarriage of justice we’ve seen in this country. I think she was scapegoated because of the many failings. I’ve always thought this from the start.

I can’t remember the exact figures but not every baby died whilst she was on shift. Other babies at other times but they only used the babies that died during her shift as evidence. Here’s the 15 babies that died whilst letby was on shift, nobody else was in the hospital when all 15 died. However, they didn’t include on the table the other 15+ babies that died in the same time period which Letby wasn’t on shift. If they would have included the 30 or so babies on the same table it definitely doesn’t look like evidence.

This attitude astounds me.
I have no idea about this case but blind trust in doctors or any other profession is very odd.

They are just people, most average, some wonderful, some awful like everybody else

I think what worries me is the timescale as well. I guess I’m wondering why after the expert panel spoke out no one made addressing it an absolute urgent priority.

It’s as if the approach is one of ‘sure, she can stay in jail, no rush’. It’s someone’s life and liberty. Meanwhile this farcical enquiry looking at how non existent murders took place carries on. It isn’t filling me with confidence.

All I will say is the hierarchy of the NHS! And bullying culture is rife within the organisation.
I have always doubted, the claims of what “happened” .

I agree.
It’s particularly horrible in this case because she is obviously someone who loved babies and the delay is likely to cost her the chance to have children of her own.
She’s already had the career she loved snatched from her and the notoriety will have destroyed any chance of a normal life, but if they let her out now she is still young enough to build a relationship and have a family, but another 5 years could scotch that, let alone 10.

the management silenced the doctors, which was totally appalling.

Yep I did 26 years in the NHS, dh still works for them. The scale of bullying, the lengths bullies will go to, the despicable behaviour of some senior managers, and the many cover ups, would horrify the public

Sorry to say it but 💯 agree with this.

I have unfortunately witnessed first hand during my husband's care. Lies, bullying, junior staff refusing to question more senior consultant's errors.

I keep hearing this. Is it truly that bad? Unionised organisations tend to have strict anti-bullying rules in place. I'm really surprised to hear this is common in the NHS.

It is also perfectly possible that both are true. It can't be trial by media though. This is what the Thirlwall enquiry is for so just wait and see what it says.

I struggle to see how both statements can be true as they are directly contradictory. Either Letby called Jayaram as he said in this email, or she didn't as he said in court. How can she both have called him and not called him?

And no, this is not what the Thirlwall enquiry is for. That enquiry is proceeding on the assumption that Letby is guilty and will not consider any evidence to the contrary. The question they are looking at is how she managed to get away with it for so long. Other explanations for the deaths such as the babies all dying of natural causes, as many medical experts are saying, are not being considered at all. And the enquiry isn't looking at the evidence of her guilt at all. Conflicts between what Jayaram said in court and what he said in emails won't even be mentioned.

It seems to me (and has since very early on in this) that it has never even been proven beyond reasonable doubt that any crimes actually took place at all.

This email looks like further evidence of that. This could yet turn out to be one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British criminal history.

I now also think that the whole basis of the Thirlwall inquiry is flawed and it should be paused.

@GreenApplesRedApplesYellowApples there’s a man raising twin daughters whose wife died soon after childbirth. He does training in hospitals about standing up to senior staff who are wrong. The nurses looking after his wife knew there was a problem, but were ignored and his wife died.

It’s a systemic issue, huge organisations need discipline, people in life and death situations need to act fast, and to have confidence. Highly trained and educated people with life and death at their fingertips can get a bit arrogant.

Also easier to scapegoat a person who the doctors have decided they don’t like due to some form of relationship/infatuation with one of them who was married. Was that married doctor sick of her and wanted her out of his (work) life. Did the other doctors just not like her because of the situation?

Same. He’s always been very fond of the spotlight hasn’t he? Tv superstar dr. What better way to get a name for yourself than be a hero dr in the biggest murder trial in decades.

How did the rest of the staff line up - many/most people would feel someone was acting suspiciously or guiltily. Which would make them wary of that person. If everyone else thought she was a lovely girl /skilled and competent nurse she probably was. But if many different witnesses saw unusual things it points to guilt.

There are still investigations ongoing about her nursing in other hospitals/previous placements. No doubt the online forensic experts and social media sleuths will pick over the findings of that too; it seems to have become a hobby for some.

Better a hobby investigating unsafe evidence than a small industry manufacturing more.

I have great respect for the statisticians, medics, legal experts and campaigners who have put their time and expertise into this for free, less for those who have joined the lucrative gravy train which is sucking up more and more public money in an attempt to silence the growing doubts.

I agree and good point about the enquiry.

Are there any steps that can be taken now to look at the conviction?

My trust has made enormous efforts to tackle this.

Including regular surveys of staff which include questions about whether they've been physically or sexually assaulted by a colleague or manager because there were incidents of that happening.

Bullying and even violence are surprisingly common.

Here's just one area of medicine surveyed.

https://www.bma.org.uk/bma-media-centre/bma-responds-to-female-surgeons-sexual-assault-survey

some thoughts based on some of the comments here:

1. Do you think that all drs are 100% honest and wouldn’t bend, cover up or hide evidence if it pointed to their practice being at fault. Even colluding with fellow medics to ensure they were all on the same page.
2. Ditto management.
3. What percentage of the total baby deaths at the unit at the time span were included in the enquiry?
4. How did they choose which deaths to include and why? (Did they fit the evidence to suit the narrative?)
5. Why has the new evidence that has come to light not been considered urgently to ensure the conviction isn’t unsafe? This has happened in the past.
6. Why are the feelings of the babies parents paramount and why is this used to stifle debate around the case. Surely if there was uncertainty around the conviction they should also consider the feelings of LL and her family. Surely the parents of the babies want to know the truth too? Surely a natural causes death is preferable to murder by a nurse looking after them.

To me it has always screamed out as being systematic failure and incompetence of the medics and managers. Working in the nhs I can easily see how this could develop and how everyone involved would scrabble to cover their own backs.

I also had my 1st child at the hospital involved, and it was dire then (a few years before), to the point that I didn’t have my others there.

The nhs ime is like the army. Very hierarchical, loads of people on power trips, toxic environment with nothing done about bullying.