The investigation of Lucy Letby on Netflix

[TheRozzers]

Anyone watched it yet? It’s a really excellent documentary with loads of footage of her police interviews.

You see the police asking her questions about those ‘confession’ notes.

I won’t put spoilers in the OP but I’d love to hear what others made of her responses.

Mid way through I thought she’s 💯 guilty but by the end I’m really not sure. A lot points to her being innocent.

I feel for the parents of those babies so much, the uncertainty must be horrendous 😞

T

There is rather cumalitive evidence that is very compelling - the defence put forward your arguments to put the deaths in context - the jury heard both sides and found her guilty beyond reasonable doubt 10.1 11.0

They are getting on with their jobs - his testimony is already upheld so nothing for them to do - it’s the media creating this frenzy and preying on people’s tendency to find it hard to accept she is guilty with no smoking gun and that it can’t be her because she doesn’t look like a killer

you absolutely did say he’s been discredited - come on - your words here

I genuinely don’t understand how anyone could think DE has been anything other than discredited at this point, but each to their own.

and I’ve never said I’m his greatest fan

he has not been legally discredited in any way and the court of appeal considered the post trial critiques of him and still rejected the appeal because the Defense had critiqued him at trial in front of a jury for two weeks - nothing new here to see

we are talking here about a retrial so we are talking legal terms not personal opinions and fan clubs and who’s entitled to think what

The CCRC is designed to decide which cases we should reopen after a jury decides there is no reasonable doubt. Because things change. Science moves on. Flaws and irregularities in cases become clear. That is why the CCRC has referred almost 900 cases to the Court of Appeal. It doesn't refuse cases because the jury has decided.

If someone chooses a job working with very sick babies, they accept that some of them will die. They cant fall apart when that happens, its not about them. They have to be the professionals in the situation. It's not something that everyone can do. You need to be able to detach somewhat or you'd be no good at your job. So I wouldn't expect her to be wailing and crying over the babies. Sad yes but then, to be blunt, you have to "move on" quickly. So why would she be showing sadness over them years later?

It's precisely why I personally could never work with terminally ill people. I would find it too upsetting. Yet for years I was a probation officer and had to work with, and be polite and pleasant to, some of the worst people you could imagine. But I was able to detach in that scenario. If I discussed some of my cases you might wonder how I could talk about it all without showing any emotion. But that's what you have to do.

You cant really say how she acted was "wrong" just because you wouldn't act that way. And for the record, yes I would hug my cats in that scenario! They're super attached to me and I know they'd be upset and not understand why I was gone! You can explain to other humans, you cant explain to animals.

Re the shredder, I used to have one. I also had stuff I'd brought home from work that should have been shredded but it was a pain. The one I had could barely cope with more than one sheet at a time then would need empting after every 3 sheets. I still have stuff I should really dispose of that is just shoved in a cupboard. So under questioning I probably would have just said I dont have a shredder rather than go into what would sound like a feeble explanation.

Anyway, I dont feel the documentary gave me much that I hadn't seen/heard elsewhere. I still dont know if she's guilty or innocent. I think the conviction was unsafe. But I'm not going to sit here and judge either way because I just dont know.

It very much does think about over turning a jury decision versus experts

nothing has changed - Dewey and other 6 experts were cross examined at the time - they would need to see they had misled the jury which they didn’t

flaws or irregularities would not meet a threshold unless they would have resulted in the jury making a different decision - they would have to agree that the medical evidence at the time of trial was wrong not just debated - that a method put forward has been now shown to be invalid - all that matters is that the jury was told about limits of science and the evidence presented was right at the time and it was cross examined in front of them

evolving medical opinion is not grounds for overturning a conviction - new papers don’t make a verdict unsafe unless they do the above - and currently my understanding is that they don’t they are just differences of opinion medically

she won’t get her application accepted - no way

right I’m off to bed

see you tomorrow night 👋

Of course evolving medical (or statistical) evidence may result in the conviction being overturned or there being a retrial. Have you never heard of Sally Clark?

I watched this tonight and I feel so conflicted.

I’m a paediatric nurse and I can absolutely attest to how dangerous some working conditions are when the wards are understaffed.

On one ward I worked on, some of the sickest babies (almost HDU level) weren’t even being cared for by nurses, and instead were being assigned to nursery nurses. They were obviously terrified about that level of responsibility and they knew it shouldn’t be happening, but when they spoke up to Management they were just dismissed.

When I was a junior nurse I was being assigned to look after babies whose medical needs were well outside out of my abilities (babies with tracheostomies etc where nurses have to have extra training to look after them), and I had to really stand my ground and refuse to be their allocated nurse. In those instances I was treated with disdain for being “difficult”.

I was put in situations when I was pressured to sign off on giving drugs that I didn’t feel comfortable giving (insulin being one of them actually), and again, any sign of resistance or standing up against what is being asked of you and you get a black mark against your name. You’re seen as the trouble maker.

There is a reason why there is such a push to try and encourage whistle blowing in the NHS…. because they know how much bad practice goes on but also how scared nurses are to stand up against it.

I was once sent to a NICU as they were short staffed - and all NICU nurses should have extra training on top of their paediatric nursing qualification due to how specialist the knowledge and care is - which obviously I hadn’t done. I was left in charge of extremely sick babies, completely unsupervised and completely out of my depth. I was absolutely terrified that something was going to happen and I knew that if something had, I’d have had no back-up or support. After about 5 hours on the unit I told the manager that I didn't feel safe, that I didn’t feel the babies were being given the safest care they deserved and I requested that I go back to my own ward and that I be replaced with a much more senior and experienced nurse, or at least one with neonatal experience. You can imagine how poorly that went down.

People have this idea that nursing is a loving and caring and profession, and the huge, huge majority of the nurses are, but the actual structure of the NHS, the bullying, the lack of compassion amongst team members, the lack of support…. It’s a very bleak picture when you scratch below the surface. The safety of the babies and the protection of the staff is usually not at the top of the priority list and it’s frightening.

Nurses are often put in extremely vulnerable positions with absolutely nobody to support them, feeling completely out of their comfort zones and feeling too scared to ask for advice or for help.

And the part of the documentary when they spoke about how staff nurses treat students, and how some Consultants treat junior staff, well I remember those days too. Again, it’s all just part of the bullying culture that goes on.

I’m not saying Lucy is innocent, I don’t think anyone will ever know the truth, but I certainly don’t think it’s as cut and dry as Lucy being some evil serial killer. She probably did play a role of some sort, but I imagine there were also factors within the working environment that contributed as well - be it to the actual causes of the deaths, or damage caused to Lucy’s mental or emotional state that led to her making the decisions she did, or any errors she made.

In this case it isn’t evolving evidence - dr shoo Lee published his paper in 1989 - the defence could have called him or used what he is now saying at the time - that’s what the ccrc look at - whether the defence had the opportunity to put forward that evidence at the time - which it did so it’s not now considered “new evidence” in legal terms

what dr shop is doing is reinterpreting his paper and applying that to the cases - that isn’t grounds for appeal like I said because that was technically available at the time of trial and not put forward

sally clark is different to LL in that it was an unsafe conviction

Sally Clark was overturned because her trial was unfair - the jury was misled and didn’t see evidence that undermined prosecution case as it was with held - Lucy Letbys wasn’t

in sally clark evidence was hidden and there were failed disclosures - it rendered her conviction unsafe - LLs was a safe conviction

Dr Shoo Lee has published a new paper in 2025 to add new information to his old paper. Prof Geoff Chase has published new research into insulin and c peptide determination.

The point I am making is that you are wrong that new evidence is not grounds for the CCRC to overturn the conviction or order a retrial.

It doesn't think about overturning jury verdicts. That's not its job. That's the Court of Appeal's job. It considers whether the CoA would be likely to do this.

What it doesn't do is to say, two juries have found her guilty in two cases without reasonable doubt so we are saying no.

Because all of the CCRC's cases have been found guilty by juries without reasonable doubt. They exist because everyone acknowledges, and it's part of the law of the land, that this doesn't guarantee the verdict is correct.

Evolving medical opinion - obviously when relevant to the cases at hand - is certainly among the CCRC's grounds for referral, coming under the heading of advances in science. So are failures in disclosure (which have been seen and admitted). The application, remember, doesn't need to succeed on all grounds.

You may be right or wrong about how the CCRC will decide, but you are simply in denial about the existence of new evidence.

I think there will be a retrial and thus conviction will be overturned. The evidence wasnt strong enough for me. No motive whatsoever. No CCTV/witnesses. To take away someone's liberty without absolute certainty is horrendous. My heart goes out to the families and their beautiful babies. I think the deaths were due to medical negligence and a catalogue of failures in the hospital. Lucy is the fall guy.
I think a retrial is coming. Beyond all reasonable doubt is supposed to be the criteria to convict someone. I read a poll earlier 68% of people feel its an unsafe conviction with support for her growing by the day it seems...

Shoo Lee's paper updates his 1989 case study with cases since ... 1989. That is, obviously, a proper scientific proceeding and not a "reinterpretation".

And there we go. Back to “she’s too white and pretty to be a killer” when her looks are irrelevant. I thought she was guilty at first. The vast majority of people that have changed their minds about her guilt or consider the conviction to be unsafe are doing so based on the testimony of the panel which was subject to more rigorous scientific scrutiny than the prosecution’s evidence. You can talk about cross examination as much as you’d like but scientific rigour and cross examination are not the same. Only one is objective. Cross examination is one thing when testing guilt, another when testing a professional opinion, because the entire cross examination is predicted on having received knowledge from another professional in order to put forward alternatives. That’s why the panel are relevant now. They have put together credible alternatives that were not put forward as defence because experts with their credentials weren’t available. Yes technically they could have theoretically been called which is why the appeal applications were dismissed, but it’s incredibly doubtful they’d have made themselves available because they are not witnesses for hire, so in practical terms, if not legal, they were not.

The public are engaging because it seems so staggering to have such a potential miscarriage of justice, hot on the heels of Andrew Malkinson’s release and renewed interest in the Horizon scandal. Sure, some might not know the first thing about the case and be drawn in by the media but plenty of other people care about the integrity of the judicial system.

As I said, I hadn’t appreciated you meant “legally discredited” (I’d love to know your definition and where it’s from?) given there’s a common meaning to the word. My comments stand though. If the trial was being heard now with the available defence experts it would be very interesting to see who the jury found more believable (let’s use that instead of credible to avoid confusion), because that’s what they’d be testing. So there are two questions:

> according to legal process, should LL be given a retrial (we’ll see what the CCRC say); and
> is the legal system right, and morally is it fair that someone can be denied the opportunity for an appeal except in extremely narrow circumstances even when it becomes apparent that there are serious flaws or because the defence wasn’t able to get world class experts that later become available? There’s arguments both ways and it’s a much wider question than LL.

I have no interest in second guessing what the CCRC will decide, likely in several years’ time, nor do I think the decision necessarily reflects guilt or innocence (in the actual sense, not legal) accurately.

I think if she had been more personally sympathetic, and had had an adequate defence team, she'd have walked.

I doubt she did it.

The ccrc don’t consider medical research not available at trial as significant

it was his 1989 paper that was used at trial and the defence didn’t bring any challenge other than their own cross examination

Im not wrong - you are misled about what the thresholds are - the crcc assumes medical knowledge evolves - what they focus on is what was available at the time

any new medical evidence as I said up post would have to show that methods used at the time were invalid or the jury was misled - it wasn’t - or uncertainty withheld - which it wasn’t as Dewey was cross examined for two weeks

you are believing that any new paper that evolves what was known is grounds for retrial - it most certainly isn’t - ongoing debate and reinterpretation by different experts are not grounds for appeal

lees paper is a review of known medical data out there already- it’s just it was published in 2025 - it’s not new scientific evidence - what he is discussing again was available at the time of trial so isn’t significant - its evidence that has been known for a long time including difficulties diagnosing the embolism thing

The original defence could not have used a study Lee hadn't conducted yet. They also could not have used experiments Chase hadn't undertaken yet. They couldn't refer to the literature Shannon and Chase used on insulin, which hasn't been published yet.

They couldn't tell the jury that information had been withheld from the pathologist who examined Baby O, because the prosecution did not disclose this to them. The couldn't tell the jury that the two "insulin babies" weren't the only ones with these results on the ward, because the prosecution did not disclose this to them.

The cases were linked, so that the jury was told that if it found Lucy Letby guilty of any offences, it could consider her more likely to be guilty of other offences. So once she was found guilty regarding the insulin cases and baby O (whose verdicts came back first), the other cases were tainted by association.

For some reason, many people don't want to know this, but it is clear that there is plenty of new, relevant and significant information making this conviction unsafe - much more than I've listed here, and we don't know a tenth of what the expert reports submitted to the CCRC contain. I hope the CCRC will decide soon.

Are you saying that if it is demonstrated that anomalous C peptide/ insulin ratios from the immunoassay are a test artefact and do not in fact indicate administration of medical insulin, then the CCRC would not consider that significant?

It isn’t apparent there are flaws and I’m sorry but there is no new evidence that wasn’t available at the time that’s what the legal system is interested in - you may not like it but it’s true - why wouldn’t shoo Lee do it? He’s doing it now? But unfortunately medics disagreeing/interpreting things differently is not grounds for retrial unless they can discredit methods used as invalid or show the jury were misled which they weren’t

these are not my personal opinions but facts

the whole LL is innocent has been driven by the media

as it stands now there is no way the ccrc would grant a review if you look at what is required in terms of thresholds - the fact that she has exhausted two appeals already is is weighty too

and discredited in the legal sense is what I’ve said - look it up - you need to be discredited by regulatory bodies or struck off if you are medical- neither of which has happened

and I don’t know what you mean about her appearance in terms of what I’ve said

I thought this too. I was in a 1-2-1 meeting with my boss yesterday and had to refer to my notes as to what I did last week. Ask me how to do something and I know.

If the murders she is accused of having committed happened, it's hard to see an alternative to her having committed them.

No one has established that those murders happened. The statistical "arguments" are hogwash. The medical arguments appear to be the same.

If they didn't happen, this is an appalling system failure for everyone involved.

They would but the key is whether it’s been demonstrated to always be the case and renders the test used at trial as unreliable or invalid and the jury misled

I’m not sure it’s there yet in terms of telling the jury the test couldn’t do what it was told it could do rather than what it shows now that there are plausible reasons to doubt the test

The CCRC certainly considers medical research not available at trial. Whether it considers it significant obviously depends on the research and the trial!

Its examples of grounds for review are a new legal argument, "new evidence not known about at the time, or a new development in science".

https://cdn.websitebuilder.service.justice.gov.uk/uploads/sites/5/2025/09/CW-POL-02-Making-an-Application-v4.0-1.pdf

How significant such developments are has to be considered case by case, obviously, but the idea that they wouldn't consider new medical developments because medical knowledge evolves is just not sensible. It is certainly not in the CCRC guidance. Where have you got that idea from?