[News] Lucy Letby

[pb21]

From what I gathered from the court case, they ruled out the 10 because Letby wasn't there and then used the fact that she was there at the other 8 to be evidence of guilt. The original 18 were all deemed to be natural until they changed their mind and decided to look for murder.

That's so obviously dodgy I cant believe that's what happened. I didn't follow this case or ready any details at the time, but are you sure this is correct?

They have 18 dead babies, Letby is at 8 of them so they conclude they have been murdered and the other 10 all must've died of unfortunate natural causes. The prosecution didn't first conclude how many crimes had been committed?

 

[The Clamp]

Posts on here aren’t evidence to anything…

Are you suggesting you think she’s innocent?

Nope. Fair point.

I think there is enough doubt surrounding her guilt to warrant a retrial.

Do I think she’s innocent? Based on the evidence the public have been privy to, I’d say yes. I think she’s innocent. BUT I am not privy to information the jury would be so my opinion isn’t worth much.

Regarding the notes or letters, even if they were an explicit confession (which they are not) the validity of them would still be very doubtful indeed.
Self confessions are notoriously unreliable.

 

[Lenny Rider]

FWIW I drink with a retired NHS senior executive, as this debate has unfolded on NSC I texted him and asked his opinion, he says she's innocent.

 

[Dorset Seagull]

This article gives a good timeline and detail of the concerns raised.

Hospital bosses ignored months of doctors' warnings about Lucy Letby - BBC News

Hospital bosses failed to investigate allegations and tried to silence doctors, BBC investigation finds.

www.bbc.co.uk

Interesting article. The 2 things that stand out for me are the fact that the deaths seemed to stop after Letby was taken off the ward and the fact a doctor appears to have witnessed Letby not attempting to help a baby that had stopped breathing. If those 2 facts are correct then it is pretty damming evidence against Letby

 

[The Optimist]

That's so obviously dodgy I cant believe that's what happened. I didn't follow this case or ready any details at the time, but are you sure this is correct?

They have 18 dead babies, Letby is at 8 of them so they conclude they have been murdered and the other 10 all must've died of unfortunate natural causes. The prosecution didn't first conclude how many crimes had been committed?

Probably not quite as simple as that, but all the deaths were originally recorded as natural. Individually they probably all do look like natural deaths. Put them all together and it makes something look amiss.

 

[TimWatt]

the other thing is the odd bed fellows this case has made. people seem to want to find her not guilty.

Not true in my case. Though it is true of someone near me who can spot a witch hunt. There first two things that swayed me were: 1. It was very odd that the first jury trial failed to reach a unanimous decision, a trial that was the longest in UK legal history, but instead of dropping the case, under pressure, a new trial was held, and with unusual reporting restrictions. 2. The statistical evidence (or lack of) was the first obvious faulty evidence.

Though one sided - the international panel of experts view was pretty damning for the prosecution. Most of all it concluded there was no evidence even of murders having actually occurred, never mind anyone being singularly to blame.

The question then is why is there a desire to find a simplistic answer to something far more likely to be a systemic issue by pinning blame on one person, as if 'someone must be blamed' (and someone in this case emotionally vulnerable) if somehow is helpful or right?

 

[The Optimist]

Interesting article. The 2 things that stand out for me are the fact that the deaths seemed to stop after Letby was taken off the ward and the fact a doctor appears to have witnessed Letby not attempting to help a baby that had stopped breathing. If those 2 facts are correct then it is pretty damming evidence against Letby

If a nurse is taken off a ward because of the high number of deaths that could also be a trigger for a review of what’s happening and new procedures put in place, at the very least the ward is under scrutiny which changes behaviours.

I don’t know what actually happened but it might not be as damming as it seems.

 

[ChickenDipper]

Nope. Fair point.

I think there is enough doubt surrounding her guilt to warrant a retrial.

Do I think she’s innocent? Based on the evidence the public have been privy to, I’d say yes. I think she’s innocent. BUT I am not privy to information the jury would be so my opinion isn’t worth much.

Regarding the notes or letters, even if they were an explicit confession (which they are not) the validity of them would still be very doubtful indeed.
Self confessions are notoriously unreliable.

My thing on this is why would a therapist suggest to write notes blaming herself - they wouldn’t surely. They may have said write your feelings down but she chose to do some really weird letters. I have little info on the case either but definitely lean towards guilty from what I’ve seen and heard FWIW.

 

[Dorset Seagull]

If a nurse is taken off a ward because of the high number of deaths that could also be a trigger for a review of what’s happening and new procedures put in place, at the very least the ward is under scrutiny which changes behaviours.

I don’t know what actually happened but it might not be as damming as it seems.

There would be a delay before new procedures were put in place so I guess it depends whether there were any deaths before that happened

 

[dsr-burnley]

Interesting article. The 2 things that stand out for me are the fact that the deaths seemed to stop after Letby was taken off the ward and the fact a doctor appears to have witnessed Letby not attempting to help a baby that had stopped breathing. If those 2 facts are correct then it is pretty damming evidence against Letby

The ward stopped being a high dependency unit after Letby had left so they were no longer getting babies likely to die.

 

[Dorset Seagull]

The ward stopped being a high dependency unit after Letby had left so they were no longer getting babies likely to die.

Again that would depend on the timescales involved as that wouldn't have happened immediately I shouldn't think

 

[dsr-burnley]

This article gives a good timeline and detail of the concerns raised.

Hospital bosses ignored months of doctors' warnings about Lucy Letby - BBC News

Hospital bosses failed to investigate allegations and tried to silence doctors, BBC investigation finds.

www.bbc.co.uk

The chart halfway down that article is exactly what I am concerned about, re. the statistics. It is a chart of all the incidents that Letby was at and points out that Letby was at all of them - it does not include the incidents that she was not at, which it would have to to be a sensible statistic. (Nor does it include babies who survived without incident.)

Suppose I wanted to prove that Lewis Dunk was deliberately causing Brighton to lose matches. I could produce a chart of all Brighton's lost matches in the last 15 years, listing all the players, and then cross off the matches that Dunk didn't play in - then I could produce my revised list, showing that Dunk was the only man who played in every single game on that list and using it as evidence that he was a guilty man. Absurd? Of course. But that's what happened in the Letby trial.

It may be that statistics presented fairly would have produced the same conclusion - that Letby was guilty - I wouldn't know,. But these statistics were definitely false.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

The chart halfway down that article is exactly what I am concerned about, re. the statistics. It is a chart of all the incidents that Letby was at and points out that Letby was at all of them - it does not include the incidents that she was not at, which it would have to to be a sensible statistic. (Nor does it include babies who survived without incident.)

Suppose I wanted to prove that Lewis Dunk was deliberately causing Brighton to lose matches. I could produce a chart of all Brighton's lost matches in the last 15 years, listing all the players, and then cross off the matches that Dunk didn't play in - then I could produce my revised list, showing that Dunk was the only man who played in every single game on that list and using it as evidence that he was a guilty man. Absurd? Of course. But that's what happened in the Letby trial.

It may be that statistics presented fairly would have produced the same conclusion - that Letby was guilty - I wouldn't know,. But these statistics were definitely false.

Well presented.

When a case (or indeed decision making about anything) depends on probabilities it is essential that the input data are unbiased. There seems to be a strong suspicion that they were cherry-picked here.

Also (and this refers to another post) if she were observed egregiously failing to resuscitate a dying patient (by that I mean not freezing or panicking or having a petit mal seizure, but making the choice to be an observer of distress and death rather than intervene as trained) then this trumps any need to consider probabilities.

I don't know enough about laws to understand how much due process can be gamed, but it is surely the case that it can be,
which explains how expensive briefs of rich clients can sometimes pull off seemingly absurd 'not guilty' verdicts.
And how the state, with the wind of public outrage in its sails, can achieve the converse.

 

[pb21]

The chart halfway down that article is exactly what I am concerned about, re. the statistics. It is a chart of all the incidents that Letby was at and points out that Letby was at all of them - it does not include the incidents that she was not at, which it would have to to be a sensible statistic. (Nor does it include babies who survived without incident.)

Suppose I wanted to prove that Lewis Dunk was deliberately causing Brighton to lose matches. I could produce a chart of all Brighton's lost matches in the last 15 years, listing all the players, and then cross off the matches that Dunk didn't play in - then I could produce my revised list, showing that Dunk was the only man who played in every single game on that list and using it as evidence that he was a guilty man. Absurd? Of course. But that's what happened in the Letby trial.

It may be that statistics presented fairly would have produced the same conclusion - that Letby was guilty - I wouldn't know,. But these statistics were definitely false.

That chart is a BBC graphic on a news website, is this how the evidence was presented in court, with no explanation or rebuffal?

 

[southstandandy]

Apparently the chances of her being on shift every time one of the babies died was something like 16m to 1. If she is innocent then that's one hell of a coincidence and a major miscarriage.

 

[The Clamp]

Apparently the chances of her being on shift every time one of the babies died was something like 16m to 1. If she is innocent then that's one hell of a coincidence and a major miscarriage.

She wasn’t.

 

[The Fits]

Apparently the chances of her being on shift every time one of the babies died was something like 16m to 1. If she is innocent then that's one hell of a coincidence and a major miscarriage.

How does that work? I know nothing about the shift patterns of a hospital but I’d imagine every nurse would have contact with every baby?
Not saying it isn’t right, just have no idea how 16 million to 1 can make any sense.

 

[The Optimist]

Apparently the chances of her being on shift every time one of the babies died was something like 16m to 1. If she is innocent then that's one hell of a coincidence and a major miscarriage.

But that’s if the only relevant deaths are the ones looked. If you take all deaths - 18 and she was present at 8 was stated earlier in this thread - then the odds are completely different. Therefore the process of how deaths were determined to be suspicious or not is crucial. See an earlier post about Dunk could be blamed for all Brighton’s losses, it demonstrates what could have happened - and I think has happened in other cases where people were convicted based on odds.

 

[The Optimist]

How does that work? I know nothing about the shift patterns of a hospital but I’d imagine every nurse would have contact with every baby?
Not saying it isn’t right, just have no idea how 16 million to 1 can make any sense.

It wasn’t contact but being on shift when the babies died. Of the deaths presented she was on shift for all of them (or at least I thought she was but @The Clamp says otherwise) - if they were indeed the only suspicious deaths then you get those stats.

 

[The Fits]

It wasn’t contact but being on shift when the babies died. Of the deaths presented she was on shift for all of them (or at least I thought she was but @The Clamp says otherwise) - if they were indeed the only suspicious deaths then you get those stats.

Got you.
Totally pointless stat then. And it’s that sort of thing that is so dangerous. If that sort of stat is floating about on social media etc then it’s clearly going to influence people’s opinion the case.