The Lucy Letby Case

Guardian had a extensive report on it
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...-public-inquiry-into-baby-deaths-to-be-halted

Reading some of the transcripts, its obvious many of those questioned by the enquiry are very much talking in hindsight. Some are blatantly contradicting what they said previously and now some are contradicting what they said to the enquiry as many are realising it is likely that an injustice has been done.

At this stage I can't see a full re-trial happening, as many of the key witnesses are so heavily tainted (and quite likely under investigation themselves.) The vast amount of new information on what wasn't presented at the original trial would take months if not years to cover. It would be a huge embarrassment to all concerned and I can't see the prosecution side having the stomach to go into the Lion's Den given what we now now. Not to mention the large team of expert witnesses who have indicated their willingness to bat for the defence. I'm not sure how these things work but I can imagine a scenario where the UK equivalent of the DPP simply drops the case, or states that in the light of new evidence, the original case is null and void and therefore overturned. (*Perhaps that's a tad naive - it's probably a lot more complex!)

For the Commission to be able to refer a case back to the appeal court, we will almost always need to identify some new evidence or other new issue that might give reasons for a fresh appeal.

We must be able to show the appeal court some new information, that was not used at the time of the conviction, or first appeal, and that might have changed the outcome of the case if the jury had known about it. It will not be any use simply to apply to the CCRC saying that the jury got it wrong when they chose to believe the prosecution case instead of the defence unless there is convincing new information to support that idea.

For us to be able to refer a case for appeal, we must think the new information is convincing enough that it raises a real possibility that the appeal court will overturn the conviction. If we refer a sentence for appeal, we must be convinced there is a real possibility that the court will reduce the sentence.

Anyway, getting a bit more coverage here....I'm surprised there's been so little.

“While the awaited decision of the CCRC cannot be predicted in time or decision, the increasing concern expressed by world-class experts that the prosecution case was based on medical misunderstandings and poor expert evidence, and other concerns raised that evidence was withheld from the jury, are in real danger of dissolving that bedrock into a beach of shifting sands.”


*Update: It looks like the original conviction could simply be quashed - according to this:

If the CCRC ultimately decides to refer the case to the Court of Appeal, it will be treated like any other appeal. It could result either in the conviction being quashed and Letby going free, or a re-trial.

History has shown that in the UK they'd rather ruin people's lives than accept they made a mistake.

The very recent post office scandal that resulted in dozens of wrongful convictions, ruined lives and suicides will attest to that.

Even when they knew the software was at fault they continued prosecution!

Yep...digging their heels in. This will work in the defence's favour as the Inquiry has now transformed from a lame duck into a dead duck.


However, the judge rejected those submissions in a ruling handed down on Wednesday. She said: “It is not the actions of Lucy Letby that I am scrutinising.

“It is the actions of all those who were in the hospital within the terms of reference whose actions I am reviewing: what they did at the time, in light of what they knew at the time and in light of what they should have known at the time.”

You wonder just how long the system - including the Police, NHS, Criminal Justice system and the politicians intend to hold out over this case.

Yet another view from a former Supreme Court Judge. He's not hopeful that a potentially innocent young woman will be released any time soon.

We can only hope that the Letby case will not be added to the long and depressing list of uncorrected miscarriages of justice in the English courts. These injustices destroy lives and discredit the whole system of criminal justice. A whole life order is a terrible thing. If Letby was wrongly convicted, and there is now a serious case that she was, it is horrifying to contemplate that this young woman of 35 may be locked up without hope until she dies, perhaps half a century hence, simply because our system is too rigid to allow a proper review of her case.

Yet more evidence that the phrase "British Justice" is a contradiction in terms and this is beginning to dawn even on those within the system now.

More happenings tomorrow on this...

LONDON, April 2 (Reuters) - A lawyer for nurse Lucy Letby said he would present new evidence on Thursday to the commission which considers miscarriages of justice, saying it undermined the case against the British nurse convicted of murdering seven babies in her care.

A detailed analysis of the cases due to be handed to the CCRC on Thursday suggests jurors were “misled” about several aspects of the insulin cases, Letby’s legal team said.

The report by seven experts claims that the Roche immunoassay test used in the two cases – and presented as proof of deliberate insulin poisoning – is unreliable.

Letby’s legal team said the new report was compiled by seven of the world’s leading experts in immunoassays, insulin and C-peptide testing, paediatric endocrinology and hyperinsulinism.

Mark McDonald, Letby’s new barrister, said he would also hand to the CCRC on Thursday a separate 698-page report by 14 other experts which, he said, found no evidence of deliverate harm

A long read but summarises the current state of affairs in comprehensive detail - conclusion included below. (The Netflix documentary that will eventually emerge when all this is over should be fascinating - and explosive.)

Conclusion​

I don’t know if Lucy Letby is innocent, but I know she deserved a “not guilty” verdict. The facts are very clear:

1. The medical evidence against Letby has been utterly vaporized by a team of the world’s leading experts on infant mortality, meaning that the “suspicious” deaths may have been anything but. Even those who still defer to the original prosecution experts must admit that serious doubt has been introduced by the expert panel.
2. The correlational evidence was statistically worthless and manipulated, and there are innocent explanations for Letby’s presence on the unit when babies deteriorated. Statisticians were appalled at the prosecution’s sloppy invocation of correlation. Similar reasoning has been used before, in the de Berk case, to falsely accuse a nurse of being a killer.
3. The public was misled about the case. The babies were not healthy, and the hospital was not functioning well. The head of the expert panel says the unit should have been shut down.
4. Letby’s behavior was perfectly consistent with innocence. In fact it is remarkable just how little incriminating evidence there is in her texts or her coworkers’ accounts.
5. Serial killer nurses are extremely rare. Bad hospitals and bad nurses are much more common. We should test every possible plausible alternate explanation before coming to the conclusion that Letby was a sadistic murderer. These alternate explanations were never rigorously investigated.

Bad reasoning has pervaded discussion of this case, both inside the courtroom and out. During the trial, the prosecutor actually took Letby to task for not crying enough when talking about the babies, even though as a nurse who dealt with sick and dying children she would be expected to have learned to remain emotionally composed.

If Lucy Letby is innocent, it would be “one of the worst miscarriages of justice we have ever seen.” If she is innocent, it would mean that British prosecutors, police, and the media ruined the life of a caring nurse, turning her into a national hate figure and obscuring systemic failures. As Phil Hammond comments, the case has cost the public tens or even hundreds of millions of pounds that could have been spent “employing neonatal nurses for these units to make them safer.” It would be another example of individual scapegoats being blamed for injustices that ultimately have political causes. It would also have been a grave disservice to the families of the dead children, who now above all deserve the full truth about what happened to their babies.

Lucy Letby could be freed after email casts doubt on court claim that nurse was caught 'red-handed'

https://mol.im/a/14603131 via

It is truly extraordinary how many holes there are in this case. Calling it a "stich-up" doesn't even come close. Essentially, the doctor who claimed he walked in on her and "caught her red-handed" says in the email that Letby had called him for assistance as the baby was deteriorating. Which is the complete opposite of the evidence he gave in court.

For those who haven't read the story above, this is the key excerpt:

Dr Ravi Jayaram was the only medical witness at Letby's two trials who was able to point to behaviour directly linking her to babies' deaths, testifying that she was standing over Baby K's cot as the girl was deteriorating – and that she did not call for help.

But, extraordinarly, in an email sent to his colleagues at the Countess of Chester Hospital on May 4, 2017 – before she was investigated by police – Dr Jayaram wrote: 'At time of deterioration ... Staff nurse Letby at incubator and called Dr Jayaram to inform of low saturations.'

In the newly revealed email Dr Jayaram also suggested Baby K's frailty was the cause of death, saying: 'Baby subsequently deteriorated and eventually died, but events around this would fit with explainable events associated with extreme prematurity.'

Neither Dr Jayaram's claim that Letby called him for help, nor that he thought the baby's death was explained by issues associated with extreme prematurity, made it into the final version of the document that the consultants sent to the police.

The one issue that will get in the way is that there are so many people who have said things "incorrectly" or had flawed "recollections" or who "forgot" pertinent information and therefore their credibility will be called into question that they will continue with their "incorrect" statements, will continue to have flawed "recollections" and will continue to "forget" pertinent information for as long as they possibly can and hope against hope that what seems to be a very innocent nurse is never released.

Effectively a repeat of the Post Office Horizon scandal that caused numerous suicides, over 900 wrongful criminal convictions and hundreds imprisoned even though several people knew that it was a software issue - but legal "experts" and "management" in the post office & fujitsu continued with their bare faced "incorrect" statements even though it was known back in 2003 that there were issues with the software. The Post Office continued legal proceedings up to 2015 and it took until 2024 for many to be declared innocent.

So it would be a near miracle if Lucy Letby is free within the next 5 years - even with absolute, irrefutable proof of her innocence.

That's the UK "justice" system

And when she is freed and it is finally accepted that she was innocent and many people made bare faced "incorrect" statements - not ONE of them will face any consequences whatsoever.

More info - Lucy Letby filed a grievance for bullying and harassment against Dr Ravi Jayaram back in 2017. That grievance was upheld. - I suspect he held a little grudge against her. How dare a nurse challenge and make a complaint against a consultant

Oh I didn't know that info contained in your last paragraph - peemac. That makes it even more interesting...

Seems to be more developments in this case in recent weeks...in this instance the only medical witness who said he caught her "red-handed" appears to be not only unreliable - but a downright liar.


The Conservative MP Sir David Davis has demanded that Cheshire police open a formal perjury investigation into the testimony of a leading doctor whose evidence helped to convict Lucy Letby.

The former cabinet minister has written to Mark Roberts, chief constable of Cheshire, to make a “formal complaint” against Dr Ravi Jayaram, a consultant paediatrician at the Countess of Chester Hospital.

The complaint focuses on an email that emerged last month and was sent by Jayaram in 2017 regarding the attempted murder of Baby K by Letby, who is serving 15 whole-life orders for killing seven babies and attempting to murder seven more between 2015 and 2016.

Jayaram was the only medical witness able to point to behaviour directly linking the former nurse to the babies’ deaths, testifying that he discovered her standing over Baby K’s cot as the girl’s health was deteriorating and that she did not call for help. Baby K later died.

After he was asked by prosecuting counsel Nick Johnson KC whether he had heard “any call for help from Lucy Letby?” he responded: “No, not at all. I was surprised that the alarm was not going off, although my priority was [Baby K] and I didn’t question it at the time.

“In retrospect, I was surprised that help was not called, given [Baby K] was a 25-week gestation baby and her saturations were dropping.”

In a police witness statement made on April 17, 2018, Jayaram also said: “It is also the case that Lucy had not called me in to Nursery 1 at the point that desaturation had taken place. Quite often a nurse will come looking for a doctor to assist when a baby begins to deteriorate. Lucy didn’t.”

However, last month an email emerged that had been sent to some staff at the Countess of Chester on May 4, 2017 — before Letby was investigated by police. In it Jayaram wrote: “At time of deterioration … staff nurse Letby at incubator and called Dr Jayaram to inform of low saturations.”

Even more revelations today...

The compensation figure Lucy Letby will inevitably receive for this appalling travesty will be in the millions - not to mention the publishing rights to her story.


Public records filed by the Police and Crime Commissioner for Cheshire show six separate payments made by Chesire Constabulary to Media Factory Limited between 2022 and 2024.

The company was founded and run by Caroline Cheetham, the Daily Mail journalist who is a co-host of the The Trial of Lucy Letby.
The podcast boasted of getting “exclusive interviews with detectives” as it recounted the trial of the former neonatal nurse convicted of the murder of seven babies and attempted murder of seven more.

One payment for publicity was made two days after Letby’s trial began in October 2022.

Mark McDonald Letby's barrister, said: “If this is true it’s very concerning. The Daily Mail podcast of Lucy Letby was seen as quite biased, selective and on occasion too focussed on her guilt. It had influence within the general public and undoubtedly the narrative.
“If they received a generous sum of money from the police, this is the most appalling conflict of interest and goes to the very core of the police investigation around Letby.

PETER HITCHENS on a secret police briefing held during the Letby trial

The unpleasant stench which rises from the unfair and dubious prosecution of the nurse Lucy Letby grows stronger and fouler by the day.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Today's Guardian. Another detailed, comprehensive analysis of the saga....

There's been more media coverage on this case in recent days...no doubt the Cheshire Police, NHS and Appeals Court etc., are usefully buying time given the delay to any update on the appeal.

If I was a betting man I would predict she'll be free by the end of this year at the latest....

Editorial in yesterday's Guardian:

A miscarriage of justice may have occurred in this case. It may not. But accepting the possibility that it could have – and allowing a mechanism to guard against error is essential. The criminal justice system, like all human institutions, makes mistakes. Its integrity depends not on infallibility but on the ability to admit errors and correct them. The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is weighing the merits of an appeal. The commission has faced justified criticism over its failings in the wrongful conviction of Andrew Malkinson