Lucy Letby innocent?

[dubsie]

I posted a thread a while back saying that the conviction of Lucy Letby was questionable and I believe it might be a miscarriage of justice.

The more I read and the more evidence that comes to the public space the more I think this is going to be one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history.

Turns out there's no medical evidence at all

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/feb/04/no-medical-evidence-to-support-lucy-letby-conviction-expert-panel-finds

So the conviction has been based on circumstial evidence and a written note authored on the advice of a therapist.

I think a rapid look at this trial and the evidence is imperative.

No.

Lee said the Countess of Chester’s neonatal unit was overworked, had plumbing issues and was staffed by “inadequate numbers of appropriately trained” clinicians. “If this had happened at a hospital in Canada, it would be shut down,” he said.
In one example, the panel concluded that Child 1 – a one-day-old twin boy Letby was convicted of murdering by injecting him with air – had died as a result of thrombosis as a result of a failure to begin his infusion until four hours after he was intubated, risking the development of clots.
It concluded that another baby, a 10-week-old girl whom Letby was convicted of murdering on her fourth attempt, had died as a result of complications linked to respiratory distress syndrome and chronic lung disease.
Lee said doctors had failed to respond to routine warnings about her deterioration and did not treat her with appropriate antibiotics. “This was likely a preventable death,” he said.

It's the poor standards, under resourcing and cover ups of the NHS again. Really scary for anyone who has to use it.

I remember during her trial there was a graphic to show the shifts that the babies had had collapses/died on and which nurses were on shift, with an X to denote that the nurse was working that shift.

Each nurse had a few Xs next to their name in the list, but LL had an X at every single collapse/death.

I never did finish listening to the 2h press conf, but was this covered? I remember that graphic being one of the things that made me think she was guilty.

Yes the problem with the graphic was that it only included deaths/collapses which happened when she was on duty and ignored all the ones which happened when she wasn’t. There were at least 10 other deaths in the period but these were not determined to be suspicious when it was established that she wasn’t there. The graphic caused some eminent statisticians to go public with their concerns.

Thanks.

I wonder if the deaths deemed not to be suspicious were in any way comparable to the ones that were deemed to be murders. Presumably nobody knows as their info will be private.

There was a leak from a policewoman's record of meetings with Evans which showed that he identified another ten events as suspicious before he got the shift data.

Letby was not on duty for any of those events. Nobody has been charged with any of them. They weren't on the charts of course.

Well they were initially flagged as suspicious by Evans and then ruled out when he got the shift roster. So the suspiciousness or otherwise was down to whether she was present. Also all the cases she was convicted on were not thought suspicious by the coroner at the time and now the panel of experts all agree that there are other more plausible explanations than murder

That is not true - Evan’s did not get to decide on what cases the police charged her for

He was looking at all deaths and collapses spanning a year

As I said upthread, how could you think this was evidence? Of course she was on shift, as she could not have been charged with murder if she wasn’t even present! Look at it another way, she’s effectively been blamed for the death of every neonate death that she was on shift for, but all of the ones she was off shift were natural causes/not suspicious.

I've always had a niggling doubt that she was somehow 'scapegoated' for this, but it's not really based on anything firm so I might just be struggling to accept she did it. Something makes me think she knew she was set up so well that she had to just accept it though.

You are right that we cannot tell which of Evans or the police or some combination dropped the cases where Letby wasn't on shift.

I don't believe anyone except Evans has ever suggested that he examined all collapses, and it's clear this did not happen because the hospital does not keep a list of them and never examined them systematically for this period.

Evans examined 61 infants' notes.This included 20 that weren't collapses (deaths and insulin cases). So he examined at most 41. The hospital did a sampling exercise looking for collapses only among babies who were transferred out. They recognized this wouldn't cover all cases. This gave a total of 33 collapses, not necessarily suspicious. Letby was only charged with causing one of these collapses. She was charged with six others, bringing us to 39. So Evans examined just two more.

When asked why the hospital didn't report these collapses or keep data on them, their health and safety officer replied that they were too common to be treated as reportable incidents.

Evans may have asked for all collapses - may have - but he certainly didn't examine them all. I notice he doesn't actually say he did? He's often quite slippery like that.

I didn’t say he got to choose what the police charged her for, but they weren’t going to charge her for cases he deemed not suspicious. It is absolutely true that only the deaths that happened when she was on duty were on the graphic, that this was flawed from a statistical point of view and presented a misleading picture to the jury. She killed all the babies that died while she was on duty and all others that happened when she wasn’t on duty died of natural causes according to the prosecution.

I'm so confused as to why, if it's true that the other babies who died when she wasn't on shift died in a similar way, why her defence team wouldn't have picked up on this biased nature of the chart?

I don't think any two of the deaths were that similar, whether or not Letby was charged. The prosecution exaggerated similarities in the deaths she was charged with to suggest she was using the same murder methods.

Can anyone shed some light on the general process of choosing expert witnesses for court? I read a seemingly very well informed post on here around the time of Lucy Letby's trial but I can't find it.

I think the point was a high number of babies were dying and the consultants wanted to look at common factors -

You are correct that there was other deaths and it would be interesting to know when etc but

It was said that the deaths that aroused suspicion started with Baby A and continued through to Baby O it was not mentioned that there was any other deaths during that time period

If there was other deaths during that time period then where is that data? That data would be vital to any new trial

Have you got any data to show how many others died during that time frame?

Yes, the Thirlwall Inquiry printed this. 18 from January 2015 - June 2016; 17 if you start with baby A

This is the best description and discussion I've come across if you have time to watch it

www.bondsolon.com/news-and-insights/lucy-letby-update/

I think she’s guilty. Being a nurse doesn’t make her an angel

So reading the inquiry they are starting from June 2015- June 2016

prior to this date the inquiry states there was 2-3 deaths a year on the unit

Where abouts did you see 17 deaths on the report

What an unintelligent comment. Nothing about having read the credible responses to the prosecution evidence provided by 14 world renowned experts and still feeling that on balance she’s probably guilty. Just a vapid comment based on a premise that no one has put forward. I hope you’re never called for jury duty.

They might be the brightest and best, but haven’t they made a mistake in the report about the insulin?

And being a doctor doesn't make you a God. I've never understood how she could be found guilty of murder before murder was even proven, surely the exact causes of death should have been established first.

The inquiry report said there were ten deaths (5 of indicted babies) letby allocated nurse for three and present for death of 9 babies in total (6 babies she was not allocated nurse for)

Urgh a stupid comment.