Lucy Letby

She murdered 7 babies and tried to murder another 7.
The trials were held with evidence being submitted to a jury who found her guilty. If fresh evidence is found that is likely to make a difference to that verdict, an appeal should be launched by her solicitor and a retrial be considered by a judge.
Until then, she's guilty.

Í watched the program last night - it's very good. I've read some of the reports in the papers that are critical of the guilty verdict (including Peter Hitchens take on it) but this covered all the relevant points and a few more.

The big question is how on earth any jury could come to the conclusion that Letby was guilty "beyond reasonable doubt" on the purely circumstantial evidence presented. Apparently the jury couldn't agree on her guilt and the judge eventually accepted a majority verdict. I've been on juries where the judge eventually agreed to accept a majority verdict but it was on a fairly trivial case of "twocking" and the guy was obviously guilty - the judge accepted a 10:2 verdict in this case. But Letby's case was about as serious as it gets.

Also the evidence of ANY foul play in the deaths of these babies was dubious. The post mortems did not find any evidence of foul play. This evidence came later from medical expert witnesses for the prosecution who posed the possibility that they were killed by air embolism or by insulin injections. But this evidence is heavily disputed - even by doctors who have written papers on these conditions.

And this is where the crucial shortcoming of Letby's trial comes in. While the prosecution had medical expert witnesses the defence had NONE. So the medical evidence was blatantly one sided. Apparently the reason for this lack of any medical defence for Letby is because the medical profession are very unwilling to provide expert evidence for the defence in criminal trials. This is because some doctors who have done so in recent years have had action taken against them by the medical council to strike them off. So Letby had no proper defence.

Also the "evidence" that when Letby was removed from her duties as a nurse (and given a desk job) the number of deaths went down is misleading. The role of ward was at the same time reduced so that very sick babies were no longer sent to it and it handled fewer babies.

And the statistical evidence is also misleading because other babies died in this ward but were not included in the statistical evidence because Letby wasn't there when they died. So the data that showed Letby was there when every death happened is simply not true.

Basically the whole thing stinks to high heaven and an appeal should be allowed ASAP - but leave to appeal has been denied. This has the makings of one of the worst cases of a miscarriage of justice.

Yes, I wonder how influential those notes were in getting the guilty verdict. Some people seem to think they're an admission of guilt - and I wonder if the judge gave any direction on them. One of them was "I killed them on purpose because I'm not good enough to care for them". Who knows what she meant by that. Presumably they've been analysed by psychiatrists - they're beyond my interpretation.

All I can say is that they are not IMO an admission that she killed the babies. She certainly did not plead guilty in court and even clear admissions of guilt are not acceptable without definitive proof that a crime has taken place. The prosecution have never established that these babies were killed. The post mortems said they died of natural causes and the methods that Letby allegedly used to kill them have been dismissed by many doctors. The fact is that these were very sick babies and the nurses were over worked.

But I suspect that the jury were heavily influenced by the notes. Maybe the judge misdirected them. Remember guilt has to be established "beyond reasonable doubt" and there are serious doubts about MOST of the prosecution's evidence. 

The fact that seems to bring the fairness of the whole trial into question is that Letby was given no defence based on expert evidence. Only the prosecution side had expert witnesses. Considering that the prosecution was based on "expert" analysis of statistics this seems very unfair. After the trial there has been no shortage of experts who have attacked the proscution's expert witnesses.

This alone is a reason to allow an appeal.

I am no Lawyer far from it but I have given evidence in many trials at Crown Court and Higher in the past over many years, IMHO

This is probably the most complicated series of Trials I have ever read about    

It is Common for a Crown Court or higher Court to accept a Majority Verdict if all Jurors cannot agree.

Yes I agree the Crown submitted a lot of Circumstantial Evidence but that is also acceptable to the Court, the Crown produced a number of Medical Experts to explain to the Jury what they considered happened and why the babies died or were injured.

If the Defence cannot find any Medical Experts willing to confront the Crowns Experts Testimonies and Doctors who worked in the Care Unit there is nothing the Court can do, from what I can gather the Defences main thrust was that the Care Unit was badly run and failing and that Letby was used as a scapegoat to cover those failings, 

She has already had one Appeal against conviction rejected, if the Defence Team can find any evidence that is new and was not used or available in her series of Trials the Appeal Court may well allow an appeal on some or all of the Convictions.

No matter her Trials and Convictions will be discussed by Legal Experts for many years 

 

   

Indeed. Of course, the Letby sympathisers will say that's because working practices have changed since Letby was convicted. But have they really, in any meaningful way? It's just as likely that the deaths have stopped because, as you say, Letby is banged up.



Totally agree. Concerns about Letby were raised years before, by a number of different people, and brushed under the carpet.

She's guilty.

This is true across the board, the NHS is run by jokers.