Three members of Lucy Letby hospital senior leadership team arrested.

[MissJoGrant]

Story here:

I don't think any of that is relevant to the LL case unless you can demonstrate where they failed to adequately defend her? Somehow I don't think they were gonna risk screwing up one of the biggest trials of this decade and the possibility of her getting off. And no I don't have blind faith in the system and am no fan of the police either. But they worked tirelessly to see her face justice. Somehow all that's been forgotten. It's actually SO offensive to everyone involved in making sure she got put away.

Does anyone know anything about charges for the bosses? All the news stories I can see are about being arrested and held on suspicion but not confirming charges. Then the story about the investigations into LLs earlier placements seemed to take over.

I don't think they've been charged. I just said they were facing possible charges.

I don't believe it was proved beyond reasonable doubt that she did it. I have no idea if she did it or not. My stance is "I'm not sure one way or another."

I think there were massive failures at the hospital and that the SMT and anyone else responsible for the maternity department and the neonatal unit should be hauled over the coals for the appalling conditions there. They should never have been accepting the categories of babies that they were taking in. That is an institutional failure. I'm somewhat annoyed that the gross negligence charge is about failing to deal with Letby rather than not doing anything about their hospital's failings. Like many SMTs they'll probably never face justice for those.

I've no doubt babies died because of this that needn't have done. Did Letby also kill babies? I don't know. I think her conviction is unsafe. Someone said upthread that if she's charged with more deaths and convicted then it may help to solidify her guilt. I agree that would be a good thing if she's guilty because it would go some way (or all the way) to removing the uncertainty.

Whether Letby is guilty or not, at least one consultant has lied about his evidence. Why is that not seen as a red flag? Why isn't it seen as a red flag that Evans identified many more instances of suspicious deaths but they were all disregarded when it was discovered Letby wasn't on duty. Things like this is what introduce uncertainty for me. Evans wasn't even a neonatalist, and had been retired for many years.

The way our justice system is set up, the criteria for appeals is extraordinarily narrow. Someone mentioned Mallinson not being able to appeal, and look at his conviction now. Whether or not the CoA accept an appeal or not doesn't sway me either way. Many miscarriages of justice cases have been denied an appeal. It means nothing.

To be safe, Letby's conviction should have been cut and dried. Statisticians have criticised the way data was used. The author of a paper used to help prove a murder method criticised its use and said it didn't say what the prosecution said it did. And so on and so on. With a safe conviction no one, let alone the numbers of people coming forward, would be questioning anything.

But they worked tirelessly to see her face justice. Somehow all that's been forgotten. It's actually SO offensive to everyone involved in making sure she got put away.

I'm sure many people who were convinced of her guilt did work tirelessly. And she may well be guilty.

However, it's the people who did not use data properly, who lied, who identified suspicious deaths that had to be discarded, etc. etc. who have caused this. Not the people looking at all the flaws and speaking out. If the evidence wasn't flawed, she would be in prison busily being forgotten about and no one would be wondering if she is perhaps not guilty.

The thing I find most offensive is that the SLT has been arrested for manslaughter, but not because they were in charge when the neonatal unit was unfit for purpose and babies no doubt died because of it (whether or not Letby was also murdering some of them). No one is being made accountable for that. Instead, some rubbish about learning lessons will be churned out eventually.

"everyone involved in making sure she got put away".
What a curuous turn of phrase. It implies witnesses and everyone involved in the case hae already decided she was guilty

Oh, I believe some people worked very, very hard, for a nice fat fee of course, to put her away.

Well you have to have a certain amount of evidence and good enough reason to think she'll be found guilty to even take to the CPS. If nothing was pointing towards her guilt she wouldn't have been charged in the first place. I would've though that was obvious.

a lot of things pointed towards her guilt if the assumption is that there were murders. That has been since robustly called into question.

Can you explain a bit more about how the unit was unfit for purpose? Because that wasn’t the finding of the RCPCH review. They found a few minor issues, most of which they said were comparable to other units operating at that time. So definitely not perfect, but no worse than many others.

https://thirlwall.public-inquiry.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/The-Royal-College-of-Paediatrics-and-Child-Health-RCPCH-Opening-Statement.pdf

I was gobsmacked when I read that some expert witnesses are paid £500,000 for their testimony!!!

What a conflict of interest.

I think one change that really needs to be put in place in our justice system is that expert witnesses shouldn't be engaged by one side or the other, but that they are engaged by the court and truly there to provide non partisan information for the benefit of the jury alone - to help them understand a complex issue. Not to try and get a "win".

Evans had a winning mentality. It appeared to be what motivated him rather than anything else. He had been gutted that he once "lost" a case but that for every other case he'd been involved with he'd won.

That's a disturbing attitude for an expert witness to have.

And in this case he has said that he knew as soon as he investigated each death which ones had been murders. It was, apparently, obvious to him. In that case, why did a number of the deaths he flagged as suspicious have to be disregarded because Letby wasn't there so couldn't have killed those babies?

I'm sure you could find some "experts" who think Beverly Allitt was innocent as well. Remember there were a lot of people who refused to believe Harold Shipman was a killer too. The mushroom woman will probably get off. Some people just refuse to believe someone used a method of murder that didn't involve them standing over a body with a bloody knife I think.

37. The RCPCH made a number of findings which, the RCPCH submits, were, unfortunately, similar to what would be found in comparable units at the time in question.

Is this the part you mean? I think the word unfortunately implies that other units were also very far from optimal, not that any issues were minor, or just less than perfect.

Below is from the Private Eye Special Report Part 6, and quotes from the Thirlwall Inquiry what one set of parents submitted regarding the unit:

But the parents realised their babies were at risk as soon as they arrived. The father attended the caesarean section in June 2016 and told the
inquiry: “The state of the theatres looked like something out of a horror film. It was very cold and unhygienic.” His wife complained about the pain, to which the anaesthetist responded: “It’s not hurting.”

The mother said that when one of the babies later collapsed, “We were confronted by a scene of complete chaos.” When a second triplet collapsed, “I was confronted with the same chaos as the day before.” Her husband observed it was “absolute pandemonium”. “I saw a nurse Googling a procedure, a lung drain. There was an image of a person with an arrow where the incision should
be… I remember other staff coming over to the computer to have a look at it… It looked like they were following a tutorial rather than they actually knew what they were doing.”

Multiple parents have testified that the duty of candour was non-existent at the trust, and they were kept in the dark about safety issues and suspicions on the unit and the risks their babies were being exposed to. Oh, and the blood gas machine on the neonatal unit was broken, sewerage came up through the sink and there was persistent pseudomonas infection.

None of the findings were particularly significant and/or outliers compared to peer units, and there was literally no suggestion in the report that the unit was unfit for purpose. In fact the report also praised the unit for its team culture.

re your copy and paste from Private Eye:

The first paragraph relates to the maternity unit rather than the neonatal unit.

The second paragraph is two parents’ experience and obviously it sounds traumatic. But I don’t think we can infer from this alone that the whole unit was unfit for purpose.

Third paragraph - too bloody right there were issues with duty of candour. The execs refused to inform parents about suspicions their babies had been deliberately harmed!

To my knowledge there has been no suggestion that there was any pseudomonas on the unit at the time the murdered babies died. And whilst there were some issues with the water and drainage (that’s crumbling NHS estates for you..), LL’s own (and only) witness confirmed in court that these were always promptly reported and that there was never a time when there were no clean hand washing facilities in the unit.

A plumber at the trial said that he was called to the maternity and neonatal units on a weekly basis to deal with sewage issues with foul waste regularly contaminating sinks. Two of the taps in the ward were found to be harbouring pseudomonas infection. One was replaced but resources did not allow the other to be sorted.

Pseudomonas can cause catastrophic infections including pneumonia and sepsis in vulnerable neonates.

I do not know whether Letby is innocent or not but a well run neonatal unit would not have sewage in the places where clinicians wash their hands. It's frankly horrific and should have been closed down to sort out the issue, as even Dewi Evans admitted on the John Sweeney podcast.

This is still not answering the question. You've still not told us how we can acknowledge the environment this is happening without 'going on' and have spilled quite a lot of virtual ink doing so. Whether or not you find this offensive and your level of faith in the police are matters for you. Anyone would think you find the institutional environment this is taking place in to be inconvenient to your beliefs...

And that’s how you get robust trials and safe convictions.
If we only allow one side to present their interpretation of the evidence, we can’t secure that.

Nobody prevented LL presenting her experts’ interpretation of the evidence. She chose not to. As was her prerogative.

To be fair, she probably didn’t know it was an option.
In a far less critical case I arrived at court and was asked where my witnesses were and neither my Solicitor barrister or anybody else had suggested them thus far

She was represented by one of the top criminal defence KCs in the country. She definitely knew it was an option!

In fact the defence had instructed many expert witnesses, but LL made a decision not to call them.

Ah! So it was Letby who decided not to call them rather than her KC?

I've always wondered why her defence seemed odd at best.

Would he have advised her to call them do you think but the decision was ultimately hers and she could have overridden his advice?

The decision will ultimately have been hers but I have no doubt it will have been based on discussions with her defence team/their advice.

She wasn't in a fit condition to be rational I think, for those that assume her innocent especially she'd surely be in absolute pieces.

This is the part I find really odd about the whole thing. Guilty or innocent I find her defence bewildering.

Having said that I was a defendent in a civil case once, and was assigned a barrister. She was crap and I ended up pretty much defending myself against the excellent prosecution barrister. It was obvious mine thought I'd lose so put no effort in. (I won.)

But I mean this guy was a top barrister. It just doesn't make any sense to me. And the only explanation I've come up with till now is that he thought she'd done it and it was a similar scenario to mine.

I have read somewhere (sorry can't remember where) that it could have been they thought the charges were so outlandish a jury wouldn't convict. But that doesn't make much sense either as you can't take a chance like that!

But she was okay with the plumber giving evidence? And was up to taking the stand herself for 14 days of questioning?

If you’re in absolute pieces surely better to let some experts take some of the strain in defending you?

If that was the case would the defence encourage an appeal or hopefully retreat sheepishly, if they cocked up, to avoid scandal? I can't help thinking if LL were rich and powerful she'd have not been found guilty given the evidence.

You're right, If they thought the evidence flimsy and you'd get off maybe not thought needed, but I can't imagine that to be the case. I do feel if she'd been rich/powerful/Royal etc we'd not be looking at this verdict.