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Lucy Letby’s acting was Oscar-worthy if she really is guilty, former boss says
Lucy Letby retrial needed after ‘clear miscarriage of justice’, says David Davis
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/lucy-letby-retrial-needed-clear-204132543.html
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/lucy-letby-retrial-needed-clear-204132543.html
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A press conference on Tuesday will seemingly set out 'new medical evidence' about the case.
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/lucy-letby-conviction-evidence-case-appeal-experts-173551527.html
After a panel of doctors said they found no evidence that Lucy Letby murdered babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital, here's what's next for her legal team.
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/lucy-letby-case-evidence-appeal-what-happens-next-154703111.html
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/lucy-letby-convictions-branded-one-105052326.html
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/lucy-letby-walk-free-194528417.html
a lot of things remain unclear. What is certain is this:-
1. At least some of the Medical evidence presented to the Jury was either inaccurate and/or misleading
2. That should not obscure the fact that there is a lot of remaining evidence that points to Guilt
3. I think it is inevitable that there will be some sort of retrial at some point
4. The bereaved families will be put through He ll. Again.
But-proved beyond reasonable doubt? Time will tell-and that is the key.
I also saw a bit of the press conference the other day, where the panel of experts claimed that there were no murders.
They also claimed that one of the experts had written a paper which was used in court as evidence.
This was despite the fact that he had subsequently written another paper which refuted the findings in the first.
All that's happened here is that there were some inaccuracies in some facets of the trial. This will now snowball in the media creating imbalance to the reality.
My opinion - still guilty, but i'm open minded to some real facts, of course.
I didnt pay much attention to the court case, because like everyone else, I assumed she was guilty.
It is very strange for a panel of well respected experts to conclude that there were no murders, just natural causes, and bad healthcare.
The outcome will be interesting.
I just hope it is not yet another "lessons will be learnt".
However, the Defence seem to be concentrating on the "medical" evidence, and conveniently ignoring the fact that Ms Letby put quite a lot of what did happen in writing as a personal "wish list". Words like "I am evil" and "I killed those babies"
People are also conveniently forgetting that she was not found guilty on all charges-she was found not guilty on 6 of the 22 charges. And that the jury deliberated for over 100 hours.
Mark McDonald, Letby's barrister, said that because her previous legal team had not called a medical expert at her trial, the information presented was "new, fresh evidence".
He said the nurse was convicted because of the medical evidence, and if that was wrong any circumstantial evidence would "fall away".
"The most important thing, the reason why Lucy Letby was convicted, was because of the medical evidence that was presented to the jury that today has been demolished," he said.
Veteran MP Sir David Davis, who has been assisting Letby's legal team, described her convictions as "one of the major injustices of modern times".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgl5yyg1x6o
After her arrest, on searching her property police found medical and handover notes taken from the ward as well as notes filled with hundreds of scrawled words in black ink. She had written: “I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them” and “I AM EVIL I DID THIS”.
In court, Letby claimed they were the ramblings of a person in crisis, and pointed out she had also scribbled: “I am innocent.” Detectives saw them as the confessions of a serial killer.
After listening to 30 weeks of evidence, from nearly 300 witnesses, the seven women and four men on the jury were left to make a decision on the 17 children she was accused of murdering or attempting to murder. As well as the seven guilty verdicts for murder, and six for attempted murder, she was found not guilty of two counts of attempted murder, while the jury did not reach verdicts on six further counts of attempted murder.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/horrifying-full-story-lucy-letby-27560797
Either way, in this case, this woman needed locking up somewhere for mental rehabilitation.
Must have been mind boggling for the jury.
Strange that the defence didnt call one medical expert.
Having followed the case closely, he has had concerns from the outset about the convictions. A criminal and childcare lawyer, he describes the medical evidence as “a matter of opinion,” and notes that there are quite often “differing medical views on a particular set of circumstances”.
Ultimately, the CCRC must decide whether there is a realistic prospect of the Court of Appeal quashing the conviction, at least on some of the counts. If they decide there is, then the case would be referred back to the Court of Appeal.
This would be a “massive step”, says the KC. “The CCRC is very conscious of getting told off by the Court of Appeal for referring cases that don’t merit referral.”
Yet some, of course, do. From its inception in April 1997 to December 2024, the CCRC received 32,758 cases, more than 1,100 of which are still awaiting consideration or under review.
Of the 31,590 cases it has completed, 855 were referred to the appeal courts. Of these, 592 appeals were successful. In other words, an average of almost 22 cases a year are successfully appealed following a referral to the CCRC.
Some suggest that Letby’s case has parallels with one of them: the 1999 conviction at Chester Crown Court of solicitor Sally Clark for murdering her two baby boys. The CCRC received an application for review of the verdict in 2001.
Both babies had died suddenly, and Clark’s trial had heard expert evidence regarding the statistical improbability of multiple cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome in one family.
The CCRC concluded the medical and statistical evidence at the trial had been misleading, and the Court of Appeal quashed Clark’s conviction in 2003.
Four years later, she died accidentally, aged 42, from acute alcohol intoxication. She had “never recovered” from her wrongful conviction, said the coroner.
“In that case there was a lot of disquiet, in the same way as with Letby, around the misuse of statistics,” says the KC.
He nonetheless believes that if the CCRC refer Letby’s case to the Court of Appeal, the most likely outcome will be that the latter upholds the original verdict.
There are two other possibilities, however: that the verdict is quashed and prosecutors order a retrial, or that no retrial is brought and Letby walks free.
“That’s not going to happen,” says the KC of the second option. “Even leaving aside the evidence, [there’s] the institutional embarrassment of saying these trials and two appeals were messed up so badly that this innocent person was convicted of seven counts of murder. They might end up doing it in 15 years’ time when some completely new medical [light is shed] and the Court of Appeal [judges have] changed. But it seems incredibly unlikely.”
Others aren’t so sure, McDonald being one of them. The case that the medical evidence put before the jury was wrong is now “overwhelming”, he argues. He describes the panel who reviewed it as “the best in the world in neonatology medicine”.
He cannot see how their findings can be rebutted, he says. “My view is they have to send it back to the Court of Appeal. I don’t see how they’ve got any other choice.”
He expects a retrial. And in this event, he intends to call everyone on the 14-strong expert panel to give evidence. “If the jury had heard what was said in that press conference [on Tuesday], they would not have convicted Lucy Letby,” he says.
The huge amount of publicity Letby’s case has attracted would not stand in the way of the case being put before a jury again. “There’s no rule that stops a retrial, whatever the publicity is,” says the KC.
Nor will the Court of Appeal be unduly influenced by public opinion, suggests Adam King, a criminal barrister at QEB Hollis Whiteman, who has written about the case. He offers a cautiously optimistic assessment of Letby’s chances of eventually walking free.
“You can’t be guaranteed to overturn a conviction by getting some new experts to say the experts in the trial were wrong,” he points out. “Experts can be found to say just about anything. What matters is the credibility of those experts and the reports they provide to the court.”
However, he believes there is a “significant” chance that Letby will be freed.
“I wouldn’t want to give a percentage,” he says. “If I had to answer ‘in 30 years’ time will Lucy Letby be a free woman?’ I would say she would be.”
The legal implications of this would be enormous: it would represent the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history, says McDonald. Bigger, he says, than the case of the “Birmingham Six”, who were wrongly convicted of the 1974 pub bombings.
It would also be the fastest a conviction has ever been overturned, he believes, as the process usually takes many years. Admittedly, in Letby’s case, it still could, even if McDonald is bullish.
“It’s not going to take [the CCRC] more than four months to recognise the conviction is unsafe and needs to go to the Court of Appeal,” he says.
No reconsideration of the case should forget the bereaved families at the centre of this ordeal. The mother of a baby boy Letby was convicted of attempting to murder was scathing about the attempts to exonerate her. The families “already have the truth”, she has said. “We believe in the British justice system, we believe the jury made the right decision.” It’s worth noting, too, that police are continuing to investigate two baby deaths linked to the hospital where Letby worked – and even if a retrial happens, they could bring fresh charges.
But if it is found after all that Letby was wrongly convicted and jailed, there will doubtless be calls for a serious look at the process that led to this.
“I think it will require a public inquiry,” says McDonald.
Either way, the ripples from the findings announced in that packed, thickly carpeted room in the heart of London this week will continue to spread. The families hoping for closure on an agonising saga will continue to wait. The controversial case of Lucy Letby is by no means over.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/lucy-letby-walk-free-194528417.html