Lucy Letby’s so-called confessions were written on advice of counsellors

[MrAnderson]

1 hour ago, itsnotoutthere said:

Well, we've been here so many times before. 

I don't know whether she is guilty or innocent. It seems there are many questions about her conviction and the circumstances of the trial that are really troubling. I would say that another trial is the least it has to be offered if they want to find out what happened. And also fair and equal representation. One side had medical experts to present and the other had nothing.

[pellinore]

5 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

 One side had medical experts to present and the other had nothing.

It was all about medicine. What other experts could give evidence- architects, engineers, arborists?

[MrAnderson]

3 hours ago, pellinore said:

It was all about medicine. What other experts could give evidence- architects, engineers, arborists?

True. I am saying that the Lucy Letby's  side didn't call any medical experts or was unable to find any for whether reasons. Am I correct?

[Grey Area]

6 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

True. I am saying that the Lucy Letby's  side didn't call any medical experts or was unable to find any for whether reasons. Am I correct?

Do you think you are correct?  Do you think in the 10 month trial of a medical professional the defence had no medical witnesses?

I mean there is the part in which Letby herself, in the opening stages of the trial admitted that the deaths were not natural causes, and also, with regards to the so called confessional notes the police found at her home, Letby was questioned about these during the trial.  At no point did she state that they were part of any therapy she was receiving.

It may well be that her defence was poor, it may well be that is the result of overwhelming evidence, but when the accused doesn’t seem to want to defend themselves, what can you do?

For the record, I am not opposed to a retrial, I have no real stakes in this, I do think she is guilty, but could be wrong.  But what hasn’t been talked about here, especially when you keep banging on about automatic appeals and such, is the victim impact, which is horrendous.

[MrAnderson]

3 hours ago, Grey Area said:

Do you think you are correct?  Do you think in the 10 month trial of a medical professional the defence had no medical witnesses?

I mean there is the part in which Letby herself, in the opening stages of the trial admitted that the deaths were not natural causes, and also, with regards to the so called confessional notes the police found at her home, Letby was questioned about these during the trial.  At no point did she state that they were part of any therapy she was receiving.

It may well be that her defence was poor, it may well be that is the result of overwhelming evidence, but when the accused doesn’t seem to want to defend themselves, what can you do?

For the record, I am not opposed to a retrial, I have no real stakes in this, I do think she is guilty, but could be wrong.  But what hasn’t been talked about here, especially when you keep banging on about automatic appeals and such, is the victim impact, which is horrendous.

There is no evidential value in what Lucy Letby thinks about the deaths and how they were caused. Her opinion or my opinon and your opinion have no evidential value and they are speculations only. How could she know what have caused the deaths of the babies if she wasn't the one to kill them (as she says she is innocent).

The notes have been questioned quite a lot and they don't amount to a confession. The article here for which this thread was created suggests that the notes were written on advise by councillors and they contain some information which can be interpreted in a number of ways and not only that she murdered the babies. That should be clear.

Part of the same notes

Quote

But in the same notes Letby also said: “Not good enough”, “Why me?”, “I haven’t done anything wrong”, “Police investigation slander discrimination victimisation”.

I don't think she had someone from a medical background testifying for her and defending her position or at least presenting other plausible causes from which the babies could have died from. It seems there was a plumber who was called by the defence as weird as it seems.

I am from the US and I don't know whether she is guilty or innocent. Based on some of the experts' opinions, and a number of articles that have caused upset, especially the newyorker and later on the guardian and the telegraph that all question the safety of her conviction I think another trial is the most wise option.

Remember the case of Lucia de Berg in the Netherlands for which I made a thread? She was also convicted for killing babies as a nurse and everyone was absolutely sure she was behind the deaths, the media, the people, the jury, the judges. But the conviction was overturned and she received an apology from the Prime Minister I think. Too late but at least she didn't spend her whole life in prison but almost a decade. I would have sued them for 1 trillion dollars or probably more and make sure they wouldn't get much sleep from now on.

What I am trying to say is that if you want to be very strict and convict someone to spend the rest of their life in prison you better be sure the conviction is safe and you must allow a number of appeals that could lead to another trial or trials. Having only one appeal is outrageous  

Edited September 9 by MrAnderson

[Grey Area]

5 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

There is no evidential value in what Lucy Letby thinks about the deaths and how they were caused.

Testimony during a trial and under oath IS evidence.  As part of Letby’s testimony she agreed that the deaths were not natural.  This is very important evidence because it means that Letby cannot challenge the prosecutions assertion that the babies were murdered.

 

5 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

Her opinion or my opinon and your opinion have no evidential value and they are speculations only. How could she know what have caused the deaths of the babies if she wasn't the one to kill them (as she says she is innocent).

She would know because post mortems were performed and the police investigation was carried out, and the deaths were explained.  Assuming she is innocent.  Plus she is a medical practitioner.

5 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

The notes have been questioned quite a lot and they don't amount to a confession. The article here for which this thread was created suggests that the notes were written on advise by councillors and they contain some information which can be interpreted in a number of ways and not only that she murdered the babies. That should be clear.

 

 That wasn’t my point though.  Letby said nothing about therapy and these notes being part of a therapeutic process she had been undergoing.  The question is not whether they were or weren’t, but more why she didn’t say anything about the conditions with which they were written under.

 

5 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

I am from the US and I don't know whether she is guilty or innocent.

Why is being from the US a reason for not knowing her guilt?

6 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

Based on some of the experts' opinions, and a number of articles that have caused upset, especially the newyorker and later on the guardian and the telegraph that all question the safety of her conviction I think another trial is the most wise option.

I don’t think there will be a retrial.  There is no new evidence to present.  The concerns about the notes if they were in isolation would be a worry.  The issues raised about the use of stats comes from a place of institutional and professional concern, not concern around miscarriage of justice.

Remember this was a historically long trial.  The above points were not considered in isolation the jury are asked to weigh all evidence.

Add into this you would be asking the families of the murdered children to relive life changing trauma, and off the back of some medical professionals worried about their careers.

6 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

Remember the case of Lucia de Berg in the Netherlands for which I made a thread? She was also convicted for killing babies as a nurse and everyone was absolutely sure she was behind the deaths, the media, the people, the jury, the judges. But the conviction was overturned and she received an apology from the Prime Minister I think. Too late but at least she didn't spend her whole life in prison but almost a decade. I would have sued them for 1 trillion dollars or probably more and make sure they wouldn't get much sleep from now on.

 

Is this trial that trial?  Can every medical professional now go out and kill babies because a nurse from the Netherlands was wrongly convicted?

6 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

What I am trying to say is that if you want to be very strict and convict someone to spend the rest of their life in prison you better be sure the conviction is safe and you must allow a number of appeals that could lead to another trial or trials. Having only one appeal is outrageous  

Not sure how many times you have to be corrected, but this is wrong you are not limited to one appeal and you can challenge a conviction off the back of a bad defence.  Just not indefinitely.

[MrAnderson]

7 hours ago, Grey Area said:

Testimony during a trial and under oath IS evidence.  As part of Letby’s testimony she agreed that the deaths were not natural.  This is very important evidence because it means that Letby cannot challenge the prosecutions assertion that the babies were murdered.

 

She would know because post mortems were performed and the police investigation was carried out, and the deaths were explained.  Assuming she is innocent.  Plus she is a medical practitioner.

 That wasn’t my point though.  Letby said nothing about therapy and these notes being part of a therapeutic process she had been undergoing.  The question is not whether they were or weren’t, but more why she didn’t say anything about the conditions with which they were written under.

 

Why is being from the US a reason for not knowing her guilt?

I don’t think there will be a retrial.  There is no new evidence to present.  The concerns about the notes if they were in isolation would be a worry.  The issues raised about the use of stats comes from a place of institutional and professional concern, not concern around miscarriage of justice.

Remember this was a historically long trial.  The above points were not considered in isolation the jury are asked to weigh all evidence.

Add into this you would be asking the families of the murdered children to relive life changing trauma, and off the back of some medical professionals worried about their careers.

Is this trial that trial?  Can every medical professional now go out and kill babies because a nurse from the Netherlands was wrongly convicted?

Not sure how many times you have to be corrected, but this is wrong you are not limited to one appeal and you can challenge a conviction off the back of a bad defence.  Just not indefinitely.

Again you need to understand that there is no evidential value in what Lucy Ketby thinks about who killed these babies. The same is true for me and you. Even if she said that they could have been harmed how did she know? She guessed, given that she said she was innocent and so others myst have done it. Guesses are not evidence of anything.

You are wrong on this. Guesses are just guesses and she knows nothing about how these babies died if we assume she didn't kill them. Nobody has ever seen Lucy Letby or anyone else attempting to kill or harm these babies. There is no CCTV camera to record what happened and no direct evidence other than how she could have killed the babies. That's according to the two Professors that I linked earlier in this thread and her legal team. And it's true all evidence seems to be circumstantial without this to mean that she is innocent.

The fact that it took very long to come to this verdict doesn't make the verdict safe. It's not a good argument to use as evidence that they got it right. A possible miscarriage of justice is independent of the time taken to reach the verdict.

I don't know why Lucy Ketby or her legal team didn't raise this issue with respect to the notes. They may have done it in the trial but I highly doubt it. But it seems to be true and if this is the case then they were written after advise given by councillors. Regardless of this, they are not confession notes.

Are you sure it's only the Dutch Nurse who was exonerated and there are no other cases? I think I have heard a lot of Brits talking about how crap the justice system is with several miscarriages of justice over the years.

 

Edited September 9 by MrAnderson

[MrAnderson]

7 hours ago, Grey Area said:

Testimony during a trial and under oath IS evidence.  As part of Letby’s testimony she agreed that the deaths were not natural.  This is very important evidence because it means that Letby cannot challenge the prosecutions assertion that the babies were murdered.

 

She would know because post mortems were performed and the police investigation was carried out, and the deaths were explained.  Assuming she is innocent.  Plus she is a medical practitioner.

 That wasn’t my point though.  Letby said nothing about therapy and these notes being part of a therapeutic process she had been undergoing.  The question is not whether they were or weren’t, but more why she didn’t say anything about the conditions with which they were written under.

 

Why is being from the US a reason for not knowing her guilt?

I don’t think there will be a retrial.  There is no new evidence to present.  The concerns about the notes if they were in isolation would be a worry.  The issues raised about the use of stats comes from a place of institutional and professional concern, not concern around miscarriage of justice.

Remember this was a historically long trial.  The above points were not considered in isolation the jury are asked to weigh all evidence.

Add into this you would be asking the families of the murdered children to relive life changing trauma, and off the back of some medical professionals worried about their careers.

Is this trial that trial?  Can every medical professional now go out and kill babies because a nurse from the Netherlands was wrongly convicted?

Not sure how many times you have to be corrected, but this is wrong you are not limited to one appeal and you can challenge a conviction off the back of a bad defence.  Just not indefinitely.

For your last part I have commented before saying that I didn't know you can challenge the conviction on the basis of bad representation. It seems though this is extremely unlikely to happen so in a few words you can't do it.

Here is the conversation from a link poster in the last page.

My post #12 (you can have a look at)

From the link

"The Court of Appeal have made it clear that only in extreme circumstances will they allow an appeal as a result of bad legal representation.

You will need to show that not only were the legal team incompetent but this incompetence led to identifiable issues in the trial which in turn made your conviction unsafe."

This is not what we have in the US. When they say they only allow it in extreme circumstances means almost never.

Also In the UK you are restricted to one appeal and a review of application. Then you can ask the criminal cases review commission (which I think this is where it will be going). I am very concerned about your legal system.

Edited September 9 by MrAnderson

[MrAnderson]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/09/lucy-letby-conviction-unsafe-says-boris-johnson-adviser/

Letby’s conviction is unsafe, says Boris Johnson’s former science adviser

Evidence presented to the jury was so flawed as to make it not a fair trial, argues James Phillips.

The Lucy Letby conviction is unsafe and raises questions about whether juries should be allowed to try complex scientific evidence, a former science adviser to Boris Johnson has warned. 

James Phillips, who worked as a special adviser to the former prime minister and to the secretary of state for science during the Covid pandemic, said he believed evidence presented to the jury in Letby’s trial was flawed.

@Grey Area

And he isn't the only one who is saying the same thing again and again. Take a look at the two interviews with the scientists that I have linked in the first page.

 

Edited September 9 by MrAnderson

[Grey Area]

9 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

Again you need to understand that there is no evidential value in what Lucy Ketby thinks about who killed these babies. The same is true for me and you. Even if she said that they could have been harmed how did she know? She guessed, given that she said she was innocent and so others myst have done it. Guesses are not evidence of anything.

As someone who seems to believe the statistical side of the Letby case is unsafe, you will understand the argument around why it is unsafe.  Therefore you will understand that just because you repeat something twice doesn't make it any more real.

9 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

The same is true for me and you. Even if she said that they could have been harmed how did she know? She guessed, given that she said she was innocent and so others myst have done it. Guesses are not evidence of anything.

 What are you on about?  Evidence was presented to her in court and she agreed.

9 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

You are wrong on this. Guesses are just guesses and she knows nothing about how these babies died if we assume she didn't kill them.

This is a ridiculous statement.  Even if she is innocent, as the one person who was providing care consistently to every single baby, as an experienced and qualified medical practitioner who is in receipt of the finding of the coroners inquest, the police investigation and expert witness testimony.  Her conclusion that the victims were murdered is a bit more than a guess.

 

9 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

Nobody has ever seen Lucy Letby or anyone else attempting to kill or harm these babies. There is no CCTV camera to record what happened and no direct evidence other than how she could have killed the babies.

This is true

9 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

That's according to the two Professors that I linked earlier in this thread and her legal team. And it's true all evidence seems to be circumstantial without this to mean that she is innocent.

There's a general belief with laymen around circumstantial evidence and a very distinct lack of awareness of it's meaning, which I think stems from police procedurals like law and order, where you get the lawyer shouting 'Objection, Circumstantial' and the judge replies 'Sustained'.  This is silly.  Just because evidence is circumstantial, doesn't mean it isn't valuable, and doesn't somehow point to the innocence of the accused.

9 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

The fact that it took very long to come to this verdict doesn't make the verdict safe. It's not a good argument to use as evidence that they got it right. A possible miscarriage of justice is independent of the time taken to reach the verdict.

And that wasn't the point I made.  The point is that the trial was so long due to the sheer amount of evidence presented, because the point is that the verdict was not made in isolation of evidence.

10 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

A possible miscarriage of justice is independent of the time taken to reach the verdict.

Sure.  And a possible miscarriage of justice is not exclusive to this case.  It's a bit like the referee in a football match, it's an unavoidable obstacle.  Every trial is always going to be a flawed process.

10 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

I don't know why Lucy Ketby or her legal team didn't raise this issue with respect to the notes. They may have done it in the trial but I highly doubt it.

We are talking about the trial, they didn't raise the therapy aspect during the trial.

10 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

But it seems to be true and if this is the case then they were written after advise given by councillors. Regardless of this, they are not confession notes.

The media has termed them as confession notes.  I don't know how they were presented during the trial.  I would suggest that due to the length of time the jury took deliberating, they were probably not framed as confessions.

10 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

Are you sure it's only the Dutch Nurse who was exonerated and there are no other cases? 

Jesus.  Of course there are other examples of miscarriages of justice, from all over the world.  Not every trial gets it right, it's a flawed process, it's adversarial, disruptive to people's lives, but each trial is inherently different, so it doesn't follow that we should automatically be looking at one case and applying that to another, and lawyers can cite precedents during a trial as a way of linking other verdicts to a current case.

10 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

I think I have heard a lot of Brits talking about how crap the justice system is with several miscarriages of justice over the years.

Oh have you heard that?  Lucy must be innocent then, because when us Brit's talk we are always, ALWAYS right, and never needlessly gripe about stuff.  Unless it's the weather.

10 hours ago, MrAnderson said:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/09/lucy-letby-conviction-unsafe-says-boris-johnson-adviser/

Letby’s conviction is unsafe, says Boris Johnson’s former science adviser

Evidence presented to the jury was so flawed as to make it not a fair trial, argues James Phillips.

The Lucy Letby conviction is unsafe and raises questions about whether juries should be allowed to try complex scientific evidence, a former science adviser to Boris Johnson has warned. 

James Phillips, who worked as a special adviser to the former prime minister and to the secretary of state for science during the Covid pandemic, said he believed evidence presented to the jury in Letby’s trial was flawed.

@Grey Area

And he isn't the only one who is saying the same thing again and again. Take a look at the two interviews with the scientists that I have linked in the first page.

Yes it seems everyone who is anyone is having a public opinion on this.  I am happy to revisit the trial if people more knowledgeable than I believe it needs to be re-tried.