Lucy Letby, Unanswered Questions.

Well sai, Sarnia
She was found guilty on the evidence presented to the court, armchair scientists and doctors are just prolonging the agony for those poor families.

I hope this draws a line underneath this case now. She was found guilty on the evidence at her trial. The poor parents of those babies do not need the knife turning in their very raw wounds.

Allira

Indigo8

I have read both these statements Allira and it is possible that both are the truth. Lucy Letby may have had colleagues who were prepared to support her and those who had concerns.
Management probably issued a general warning "Don't get involved or you may lose your jobs. NHS management does not favour squealers.

Hospital bosses failed to investigate allegations against Lucy Letby and tried to silence doctors, the lead consultant at the neonatal unit where she worked has told the BBC.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66120934

My point exactly.

From the Telegraph, just now:

“Child serial killer Lucy Letby has had her bid to challenge a conviction for the attempted murder of a baby girl dismissed by the Court of Appeal.

Letby was convicted of trying to kill the newborn, known as Child K, following a retrial in July, and was sentenced to a 15th whole life order.

She sought approval to challenge her conviction for trying to kill the child on the basis that the trial should not have gone ahead because of the “overwhelming and irremediable prejudice” caused by media coverage.

Wearing a green wrap-around top and dark trousers, Letby looked tired and drawn when she appeared via a video link from HMP Bronzefield.

She remained emotionless as her application was dismissed by three senior judges during a hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice.

Permission refused
Lord Justice Davis, sitting with Lord Justice Baker and Mrs Justice McGowan, said at the start of their ruling that they would “refuse permission” for Letby to challenge the conviction.

He added: “There has been significant media coverage on the basis of those convictions.

“Some of the public comment has called into question whether Letby ought to have been convicted in 2023. Whether there are issues arising from the first trial… is not for us to say, that would be speculative.”

Lord Justice William Davis added: “That notion that after a substantial criminal trial that police officers should not speak to the media is fanciful.”

Anniebach

Timothy Evans was found guilty March 1950. Hanged June 1950.

Evans was granted a posthumous pardon. The High Court dismissed proceedings to officially quash Evans's murder conviction in 2004 on the grounds of the cost and resources that would be involved, but acknowledged that Evans did not murder his wife or his daughter, a full 54 years after his wrongful execution.

I think pardoning someone when they have been proved not guilty is an insult, how can you possibly be pardoned for something you haven't done. The conviction should have been quashed.

As to Lucy Letby all I got from the program is that her defence team were inadequate at best if not downright inept.

Indigo8

I have read both these statements Allira and it is possible that both are the truth. Lucy Letby may have had colleagues who were prepared to support her and those who had concerns.
Management probably issued a general warning "Don't get involved or you may lose your jobs. NHS management does not favour squealers.

Hospital bosses failed to investigate allegations against Lucy Letby and tried to silence doctors, the lead consultant at the neonatal unit where she worked has told the BBC.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66120934

I have read both these statements Allira and it is possible that both are the truth. Lucy Letby may have had colleagues who were prepared to support her and those who had concerns.
Management probably issued a general warning "Don't get involved or you may lose your jobs. NHS management does not favour squealers.

Peter Hitchens is no more qualified than any other lay person in the street to decide on this matter.

Peter Hitchens think she is innocent. I tend not to agree with him on most things but he has stuck his neck out on this

Colleagues were told not to give evidence in support of her if they valued their own jobs

On the contrary, when other staff tried to bring their concerns about the unexplained deaths when she was on duty to management, they were threatened with their jobs.

M0nica

i think much of the hoo haa around Lucy Letby is led by the usual social media trolls that did so much harm by baseless rumours around the death of Nicola Bulley and her drowning.

Much of the rumour around Letby is of a minor items of evidence that do nto undermine the whole body of evidence presented at her trial. Further investigations are also producing evidence that the number of babies she harmed extends well beyond those for whom evidence was sufficient to present in court.

Comparing the Timothy Evans case with Lucy Letby is ridiculous, the crime, the circumstances around it are entirely different. Might as well compare Letby with one of the executed Queens of HenryVIII. It would be just as far fetched.

She wasn’t even present when some of the deaths took place. It was an old copy of the rosta. It looks like mega NHS bullying (very common) and a stitch up. Colleagues were told not to give evidence in support of her if they valued their own jobs

silverlining48

She has been found guilty in court. 12 jurors listened to the evidence every day for some weeks and made their decision. I didnt see the programme but a tv programme for an hour can’t possibly cover all the evidence heard in court.

Completely flawed evidence. No actually evidence that murders took place. Jurors can only work with the facts presented

Personally my view is that if she did do those acts she did not act alone OR her colleagues were so lazy they did not work and left her alone.
Either way there are lots of questions yet to be answered.

She was encouraged to write negative things

The ward had issues before Letby moved to that ward .

The one thing that confirmed to me that she was guilty was:
She was found by a Dr, stood next to a baby whose tube had come out. This was a medical emergency and she should have pressed the alarm bell, or call for help. She did absolutely nothing and just stood there.
Also it was said to be highly impossible for this baby to wriggle about enough to detach the tube themselves.
Any medical professional would recognise this as an emergency and alert someone to re-insert the tube. She did nothing and just stood there.

I watched the panorama programme and think the people who think she is innocent are relying on isolated incidents where either statistics or a diagnosis was possibly incorrect. But, as an ex nurse I know that there is a lot more evidence, that does show she is guilty and that all pieces of evidence added together make it overwhelmingly convincing that she is guilty. One of Letbys mentors when she was still a student nurse, said that she had had to fail Letby on her final placement and stated that Letby showed no compassion towards parents and children and did not have what it took to be a children's nurse. It was only after further training with a different mentor that she passed and could qualify. As an ex nurse, I think this says a lot about Letbys character. In my opinion she is definitely guilty.

So very sad when someone loses a baby then another etc, but more likely than a lot of babies dying from different families.
If she did do it none of us will be able to fathom why because we are not people that could imagine doing such a thing, any more than we could understand Shipman and his murders. Or any other serial killer. While it's not right, we can understand making a mistake that proves fatal
I'm sure many of us have had the experience of someone they thought would never do such a thing doing something seemingly out of character (which actually turned out to be in character but hidden under a mask. It's very easy to project your own values ( ie I can't imagine doing whatever to anyone let along a vulnerable person, on someone who on the face of it seems a nice person) and take someone on face value. So we can't imagine someone like a nurse doing dreadful things.
I saw the programme and don't understand why if there was info for her defence that was relevant it wasn't presented to the court, likewise other deaths that happened when she had not been there. The state of the unit sounds dire, and I can sort of understand people who think she's being scapegoated because of that, but as it was known about surely the coroner tested for infection etc

Ziplok

I feel so sorry for the families of the babies lost by this woman’s actions. Are they ever going to be left alone to grieve - every time these reports about Letby come out and speculation about her possible innocence (which I personally doubt), their wounds must be ripped open.
Those poor babies didn’t kill themselves.

No babies do not kill themselves, but very ill premature babies do die, even with the best of medical care and it seems this unit was struggling with a large increase in cases and inadequate staffing.
I think everyone must feel compassion for the parents. To lose a new born baby at all must be so hard but to believe a nurse entrusted with their care deliberately killed one's baby must be unbearable.
However to be found guilty of killing babies in your care, if you did not do that, must also be the greatest of tortures. And I think most people would feel compassion for any woman in that position.. if this is the case the parents will not have had justice.
Unfortunately we may never know for sure.

I feel so sorry for the mother who had two children die of cot death and was found guilty of their murder and sent to prison. False expert evidence was presented to the jury, claiming that the chances of two babies dying of cot death in the same family was infinitesimally small. But in fact if one child dies in this way , the.chance of a sibling also dying is higher probably because of genetic susceptibility. And this mother's conviction was squashed but too late to save her mental health and she died soon after her release.
Statistics are tricky things. There is virtually no chance that someone will win the lottery but someone does. I don't know if, as ordinary people, we can really understand the science. And juries must be easily misled. It must be very difficult to serve on a jury where children have died.
But we must all endure our fates for good or bad.

I think her right to appeal was refused shortly after the sentence. It’s not new news.
I am not sure but thought there have already been two trials.

I found both private eye and the panorama investigations quite enlightening ,without their evidences !I would have assumed guilt but having read/ watched both ,I do see huge wholes in the given evidence .

And just now in the Telegraph:

“ Lucy Letby has bid to challenge conviction dismissed”

“BREAKING NEWS
Child serial killer Lucy Letby shows no emotion as she is denied retrial for attempted murder of baby girl.”

silverlining48

She has been found guilty in court. 12 jurors listened to the evidence every day for some weeks and made their decision. I didnt see the programme but a tv programme for an hour can’t possibly cover all the evidence heard in court.

I'm inclined to agree with this although I haven't watched the programme either. As far as I understand the situation, there were fewer baby deaths before she arrived in the department and the higher rate of deaths dropped after she was stopped from working there. But it's the jurors who have sat through months of evidence, and I do also worry that all this speculation isn't helpful, for want of a better expression, to the bereaved parents and families trying to grieve for their loss.

my news flash this minute just said she is appealing, but not that it was denied.

Completely agree with M0nica! Serious court reporters who sat through the whole case said that there was far more convincing evidence than the (possibly wobbly) stats. Of course, stats experts are right to point out that the statistical evidence presented was flawed, but all evidence, forensic, witness etc is flawed to some extent. The jurors' job is to make a decision which is "beyond reasonable doubt". It is likely that they took this extremely seriously, but, of course, they are forbidden from talking about this. The Appeal was dismissed, and the Appeal Court judges will have also combed through the evidence. The papers know that the Letby case sells copies, hence the impetus to keep it going.

LL has been denied a retrial - according to the Daily Mail - just now, breaking news.