Forum menu
Lots of info in the Private Eye series. Not necessarily saying she's innocent, more questioning the process and some of the evidence.
Private Eye Online | The Lessons of the Lucy Letby Case
I still can’t get my head around how or why her defence team did not call any expert defence witnesses. If or when she appeals, I hope she has a new legal team that will do a better job of offering a fair defence.
Ironically was it not the research work by Dr Shoo Lee which the prosecution used as evidence?
My understanding is that her appeal failed and she can't appeal again and all that can be considered now is a miscarriage of justice.
Since the entire prosecution case rested on expert medical advice and nothing much else I cannot see how the unanimous decision of the an international panel of medical experts can possibly mean anything other than she is completely innocent.
My heart goes out to Lucy Letby and also the devastated parents for all the turmoil it will have caused them, compounded by the fact that the medical panel found that in some cases poor medical practices were a contributory factor.
Saw that. I wonder if those poo-pooing my comments (and those of others) from a few weeks back have yet accepted that it has been terrible miscarriage of justice.
of course it is entirely possible that even if the expert witness evidence was wrong that there has not in fact been a miscarriage of justice.
There are some proper big hitters in that panel, people who do not have an agenda but do have serious credentials. It will be hard to ignore their voice, so long as judicial process allows for it to be heard.
The conduct of the appeal(s) and the (re)trial by media does make the case rather odd. I’m not sure if it’s just how the media reported it today - but I think their credibility as expert witnesses is undermined by both the manner of what has been said and where; the correct process is for the CCRC to look at the evidence not for a self appointed panel to make public statements that someone did not commit murder (when what they actually seem to mean, is the deaths may be explained by other causes).
I still can’t get my head around how or why her defence team did not call any expert defence witnesses.
certainly seems odd, but presumably the defence team knew what that expert was likely to say under cross examination - not only to their questions but to the questions the crown would almost certainly ask. I don’t think any expert was suggesting to the defence pretrial that none of the cases could possibly be murder?
If or when she appeals, I hope she has a new legal team that will do a better job of offering a fair defence.
she already has a new legal team. The jury are of course unable to explain how they reached their verdict, I only saw the edited media reporting of the evidence but some of the circumstantial evidence seemed to me like it would need a decent defence to explain, and didn’t come across well when giving her own evidence. I have no idea if she’s guilty or not, or whether even if she is guilty if there really was enough of a case to secure a conviction but it does feel as though people on both sides have already made their mind up which is never good.
and some of the evidence.
There was evidence ? I thought the whole case rested on theory and speculation.
If someone had misused or misinterpreted my past work, I'd want some redress in how that work was used. In this case, the lead author only went ahead to look at the data on the basis that ANY findings (for or against the defendant) would be made public. Naturally there were no financial incentives either. And to make things water tight, I would also want to assemble the best team possible of independent colleagues for review of interpretations using my work (which he has). It is naturally harder to blind the cases presented by merging them into a larger file of neonatal deaths and make a double-blind assessment of causation, but that would have been the next step to identify false positive assignment rate.
There is lots of evidence but its poor quality or outright wrong. I believe that they knew the case was weakso went hunting for anything they could use.
I stll think she harmed some babies but i am sure the conviction is unsafe
Since the entire prosecution case rested on expert medical advice and nothing much else I cannot see how the unanimous decision of the an international panel of medical experts can possibly mean anything other than she is completely innocent.
The what, now? That's one heck of a giant leap to make.
It's such a desperately sad situation. As much for the families who now face the prospect of a version of events that gave them some closure being torn down and rewritten.
We still don't know if Letby is innocent of some or all of these murders and attempts, although it's hard to believe she would be convicted today if the prosecution evidence was put under proper scrutiny.
It's an indictment of how Ill equipped the justice system is to handle complex medicolegal cases that require nuanced evaluation of clinical evidence, rather than black and white opinions.
"New evidence" under review.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj0y9673rjno
When it comes to the Lucy Letby case, there are two parallel universes. In one, the question of her guilt is settled. She is a monster who murdered seven babies and attempted to murder seven more while she was a nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016.
In the other universe, Letby is the victim of a flawed criminal justice system in which unreliable medical evidence was used to condemn and imprison an innocent woman.
...
I have spent almost three years investigating the Letby case - in that time I have made three Panorama documentaries and cowritten a book on the subject with my colleague Judith Moritz. Yet, if true, the new evidence, presented by [Letby's barrister] Mark McDonald in a series of high-profile press conferences and media releases, is shocking.
According to his experts, the prosecution expert medical case is unreliable.
Mark McDonald has not released the panel's full reports, which are currently with the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), the body he needs to persuade to reopen Letby's case, but he has released summaries of the panel's findings.
It sounds like 'campaigners' on both sides need to stop trumpeting firm 'conclusions' in a complex case where there still seem to be a wide spectrum of possible causes and contributory factors for these deaths.
If anything, it is an illustration that, if you run a crumbling, underfunded hospital with a culture of poor staffing, poor practice, and arse-covering, it potentially makes it quite easy for a serial killer to hide in plain sight, as their handiwork can be almost indistinguishable from your normal day-to-day tally of poor outcomes and avoidable harm to patients.
Devils advocate view - there were lots of deaths when she was working there. Has the death rate dropped since she was removed?
Devils advocate view - there were lots of deaths when she was working there. Has the death rate dropped since she was removed?
Unfortunately that doesn't prove anything. It is possible that the excess deaths dropped because staff were more aware of the problems in the unit & were taking steps to ensure it didn't happen again.
Has the death rate dropped since she was removed?
The unit was downgraded so that it could no longer look after very vulnerable and very sick babies, so yes, the rate of deaths decreased.
Expert defence witness failed to disclose he was under investigation for harming patients. Removed himself from the GMC register before the investigation could conclude
The whole idea that she killed babies by pumping air into their stomachs is just nonsense. What an absurd suggestion.
Why?
Just seen this and thought I would reply. Air into an IV line can lead to an air embolus. Air into a stomach tube really cannot. the prosecution totally misrepresented a piece of research about this claiming the research meant this was possible, the author of the paper said this was not what his paper showed. Its one of the bits of evidence that should have been thrown out
I would imagine the criminal Corporate Manslaughter investigation should help determine where the truth lies.
However I imagine it will conclude there is not sufficient evidence for a charge due to a lack of evidence on all sides , hence a conclusion that quality control was poor, management swept concerns under the carpet, LL remains the scape goat for a system and government failure
Snd I’m not saying she didn’t do it, just there were multiple failures everywhere.
It plays out still today in just about every NHS Trust