Lucy Letby (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

[Wile E. Coyote]

I found this whilst looking at somebody posting on the Letby case.


https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1556-4029.70190?af=R

[Mick Harper]

The two sides aren't judged the same by juries. Prosecution expert witnesses are assumed to be 'official' whereas Defence ones are assumed to be 'hired guns'. (This is however, quite often the case.)

It was given voice to by Dewi Edwards, the chief prosecution expert, last night in Channel 4's two-parter. "They are... er... North American... hired guns." He didn't comment when asked how come they, combined, had several thousand published peer-reviewed papers to his none. [Something I hadn't realised i.e. it hadn't been mentioned before This is significant both in terms of careful ignoral and overall as pertaining to his expertise.]

The new chief defence witness, a (Chinese stock) Canadian neonatologist wasn't a hired gun but came to the party because his 1989 paper on discolouration of babies with too much insulin had been misused by Edwards in the first trial.

[Mick Harper]

Talking of experts, it is becoming more and more obvious that Letby's defence team at her initial trial was grotesquely inadequate. They were topnotch in terms of being QC's and so forth but were clearly handicapped by Mike Tyson-syndrome i.e. the best lawyers money could buy but not the best lawyers for the case.

[Mick Harper]

In some respects the Letby case is a follow-on from the 'shaken baby' trials that punctuated the turn of the last century. It was pretty obvious that the syndrome didn't exist and that all the babies had died from various brain disorders. I had assumed this was all more or less settled.

I was pretty shocked therefore to learn today that a man has just been reprieved at the last moment after spending twenty years on Texas death row for fatally shaking his two-year-old daughter.

I have no idea what has taken them twenty years to decide -- perhaps whether it would be appropriate to shake him up in his turn in the electric chair -- but even if they won't let him out for not doing anything, we must hope they don't kill him for not doing anything.

[Wile E. Coyote]

I found this worrying. Professor David Mangham, a bone pathologist who Police forces have paid (to be clearer, they paid his laboratory) more than £1 million in eight years, has self referred hiself to the GMC. He did this following criticism by a High Court judge in a case where he identified non-accidental rib fractures on a 21-month-old girl who had been found asphyxiated by a scarf in a tragic accident.
.
Tana Adkin KC, who represented Laura Langley, the child's mother, who was cleared of murder at trial, believes that all of Mangham’s previous cases should be reviewed by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). That's a lot of cases.

https://archive.is/MEurX#selection-1643.0-1643.223

[Mick Harper]

This reminds me of a case I was personally involved in as a solicitor's clerk of a child who died of 'multiple fractures'. Was it parental abuse or brittle bones? Damned if I knew even after spending hours with the defendant in prison and several days at court. Their expert said the former, our expert said the latter.

[Mick Harper]

Interesting developments. As we know--as everyone knows--conditions at Countess of Chester during Letby's 'year of murder' was more the rule than the exception for NHS maternity services generally. This might lead to two rather different sets of conclusions to be drawn

1. If you looked at Letby's record during other years at Chester and previous years at other hospitals, you would find similar evidence of her murderous activities.

2. If you looked at other years, and other hospitals, where Letby didn't work, you would find similar evidence of 'suspicious deaths'.

After several years of intensive investigation the police found evidence of 'nine murders or attempted murders of babies' by Letby at Chester before her Big Year and at Liverpool where she worked previously. Seek and ye shall find!

The police confidently sent the evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service who have just announced 'it is insufficient to pass the '50/50 chance of success' rule. She's suffered enough, poor lamb. We've all suffered enough. The CPS has suffered more than enough.

The police are reported to be 'furious'.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Lucy Letby was also not prosecuted for a number of neonatal deaths that occurred during the spike at the Countess of Chester......

The Countess of Chester had a spike in neonatal deathes in 2015-6.

This was firstly investigated and found to be the result of poor medical practice, which could lead to the unexplained spike (there was good evidence).

Nevertheless consultants put forward a second explanantion that found favour with Police CPS and resulted in Letby's conviction, ie there was a serial killer.....

But note that second explanation does not fully explain the spike. In a number of cases Letby simply could not have done it. So we are now led to believe (if you still think Letby guilty) that the Countess Of Chester must have suffered a catastrophic double whammy of both serial killer and poor medical practice both at the same time, neither of which were previously occurring.

[Mick Harper]

It was also interesting to hear, appended sotte voce to the announcement, that this

[Wile E. Coyote]

Wiley found it interesting that the CPS found that "the evidence threshold was not met " for the latest Liverpool charges rather than, say, going for "not in the public interest" (she is already banged up for life).

The police clearly thought their new cases against Letby were as strong as the previous Countess of Chester ones, the CPS openly opted for disagreement?

[Mick Harper]

I suspect the police are angry because they now realise there was never any intention to prosecute Letby further but going through the motions gave the impression that the CPS believed in Letby's overall guilt. Maybe the police should bring a 'wasting police time' charge against the CPS.

Using the "the evidence threshold was not met" excuse must have further got the police goat because it is an implied criticism of them for not gathering enough evidence. Actually I'm a bit surprised the CPS didn't say it was "not in the public interest". Perhaps they thought it might raise public eyebrows. It certainly would be if it was a Doctor Shipman at work. If my baby had died at Liverpool Women's during Letby's time, I'd certainly think so.

I don't know whether it was generally reported but the newsreader (or rather the news editor) I heard, archly added 'In an unprecedented development, police circles expressed their opposition...' or words to that effect. The media are certainly on Letby's side.

[Mick Harper]

Netflix has just released The Investigation of Lucy Letby, a ninety-minute documentary. The Guardian is a bit dismissive of the end product but if Netflix is financing such a thing, it suggests the British authorities haven't managed to put the Letby Case to bed in their usual desultory fashion.

I'll report back when I've watched it. If I can watch it.

[Mick Harper]

I am belatedly catching up with the Netflix documentary and will make notes here as I go along. Taking up the theme of that last post:

1. It has been reported the doc is among the 'most watched' among British Netflix viewers. This is perhaps not surprising but, given its gruelling nature (I'm certainly finding it so), also heartening.

2. But not, apparently, particularly so elsewhere in the world. This is really bad news. British judicial wheels grind with glacial speed when it's only British voices demanding they speed up, but they can dazzle with dispatch when the world is watching.

Halfway through I can report that, considered as an end-product, the documentary is first class. Pacy, non-preachy, low key but with frequent shocks. There is genuinely new material especially on the police procedural side...

[Mick Harper]

It is clear Letby was poorly advised by her solicitors (or declined their advice).

* If she had adopted the standard policy of saying 'No comment' at all police interrogations, it would have been advantageous to her.
* If she had adopted the 'complete co-operation' policy throughout, it would have been advantageous to her.
* To co-operate at the initial stages and 'no comment' at the later ones was to her distinct disadvantage.

The comments in the doc from various police individuals were particularly telling. "She came over at first as a normal, very knowledgeable practitioner with an excellent memory but when we started asking her specifically about her actions when the babies were dying, she became evasive and forgetful."

When footage of the interviews was shown in the doc, it was perfectly clear Letby was saying 'I don't know' and 'I can't recall' to questions nobody would be able to answer viz "Why were you in Unit X when baby A died?' or 'What was your reaction when you heard Baby B had died?' or 'Who did you call when Event Z happened?'

But, after the police had amassed all the 'incriminating' paperwork squirrelled away in Letby's home, you cried out for her to say, 'Because my therapist told me to' rather than 'No comment'. That way, it would at least have featured in her trial.

P. S. There was a pre-echo of the Prince Andrew case when the superintendent in charge said, "We had to arrest Letby in order to question her." Though she was bailed twice after two of these interrogations. Surely the first time in Britain that has happened to someone under arrest for multiple murders. "Thank you, Mr Sutcliffe, you're free to go. We'll be in touch."