Lucy Letby: the ineffable truth: Difference between revisions

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{{a|~~crime~~|{{wmc|aleebee.png|“She has no ''[[aleebee]]''.”}}{{small|70}}{{letby dramatis personae}}</div>}}{{drop|S|potted routinely in}} the trenches of the keyboard war that rages on — though I sense it is blowing itself out; only a couple of [[Burmese Jungler]]<nowiki/>s still remain — over Ms. Letby’s conviction, you often see variations on this:

{{freeessay|letby|Letby ineffable truth|{{wmc|aleebee.png|“She has no ''[[aleebee]]''.”}}{{small|70}}{{letby dramatis personae}}</div>}}

{{quote|''You were not at the trial''. Unless you sat through ten months of evidence — unless you saw everything the jury saw, and looked into the whites of the defendant’s eyes — you cannot know the facts and cannot have a viable opinion on her innocence.}}

~~Of all the commonplaces advanced to prop the Crown’s sagging case, this is surely the weakest.~~

~~Run by those who ''also'' were not at the trial and so, by the same logic, have no better idea of how good a spectacle it was, it really amounts to saying:~~

~~{{quote|“The outcome of this trial is agreeable to me. I wish to entertain no further debate about it.”}}~~

~~====Impermeability====~~

The trial was conducted according to the arcane rules of the criminal courts: the criminal law, the rules of procedure, the law of evidence, and long established (if often criticised) principles governing [[expert evidence]].

~~These institutions have been set up to vouchsafe justice, and generally do, but they are not infallible. Miscarriages of justice can and do happen. Even outrageous ones.~~

From all the evidence-in-chief, cross-examination, the fork-tongued duels between wigged barristers and ornery experts, from from this tremendous ''melée'', we must suppose that 12 random citizens formed a collective impression free enough from doubt to form a guilty verdict — but yet at the same time so mystic and ''ineffable'' that it cannot now be explained or rationalised. The verdict is a brute ontological fact, immune now to mortal analysis.

~~To the question:~~

~~{{Quote|How on Earth did she get convicted?}}~~

~~Comes the answer:~~

~~{{Quote|You had to be there.}}~~

~~The Holy Spirit was upon these jurors. A guilty soul was justly condemned. Now that spirit has passed. Like the peace of God, it passeth all understanding.~~

~~Justice has visited, done its thing and gone again, leaving no trace. None can now make sense of it. We must, instead, obediently abide.~~

~~====What the eye don’t see —====~~

~~{{drop|A|curious feature}} of this argument is its dependence on ''what we cannot see''. There is a “truth”, but it is comprised of darkness. We cannot apprehend it, so we cannot challenge it.~~

But, explicitly, the criminal law does not work like this. Quite the opposite: it is, to a fault, ''rational''. It is unflinchingly evidence-based: evidence is the be-all and end-all. There are strict rules governing what may be admitted. All of it may be interrogated. Everything that can influence an outcome must lie on the surface. If it cannot be made to float — if it comprises innuendo or prejudice, we must sponge it from the record.

~~In a criminal court, everything is open to audit. Anything that is not is disallowed. A concluded criminal case cannot defy comprehension.~~

~~''Darkness is not allowed.''~~

Lucy Letby’s trials ran for months. There was a colossal amount of data, that is true, and there is no doubt the jurors’ task was Herculean — beyond any reasonable expectations of twelve ordinary men and women. They should be commended for their work. But this is not to say that the material grounds for their decision cannot be summarised, analysed or criticised.

~~Indeed: that is the very trial process: both prosecution and defence summarise their positions and present them to the jury.~~

~~So we should ask the question now:~~

~~{{Quote|''How on Earth did she get convicted?''}}~~

~~There ought to be a manageable answer. At the time of the original trial, in the public’s mind, it was something like this:~~

~~{{Quote|~~

~~She admitted it on some post-it notes. <br>~~

~~She, and no other nurse, was present at every collapse.<br>~~

~~There was conclusive evidence that exogenous insulin was deliberately administered to several victims.<br>~~

~~There was conclusive evidence that several victims suffered air embolisms.}}~~

These are good grounds, if true, but they have been under sustained attack since Rachel Aviv’s ''New Yorker'' article in April last year. Not one of these comprehensible grounds for conviction holds water.

There might be something in the contention that journalists can overplay their hands, sensationalising the dry evidence, cherry-picking facts to suit a sensational story-line, blowing small discrepancies out of proportion. This is hardly the ''New Yorker''’s style, of course, but when the reputation of the British criminal justice system is on the line, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

~~But then the extraordinary evidence started rolling in.~~

Statisticians picked up on The [[Texas Sharpshooter]] aspects. Lawyers questioned the operation of the expert evidence rules, and the unusual way they had been applied in this case. And neonatologists questioned every aspect of the Crown’s expert evidence.

people asking that question: The Lucy Letby dramatis personae, in the panel, refers. Are ''all'' of these people labouring under a delusion? Have they been misled by nefarious interests —and in which case, whose, and how? — to expressing formal, public doubt?

~~====— the eye can’t critique====~~

{{drop|I|f you are}} excused from having to make your case, you are excused from ''defending'' it from an all-points attack. This, again, is the hallmark of conspiracy theories — which appeal to innuendo and the general distrust of what one cannot see — and quite the opposite of criminal justice methodology. The prosecution must disclose everything it finds, however damaging to its own case to the defence in plenty of time before trial. It is understood that every point in the chain of logic is open to scrutiny.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The claim that someone meeting Ms Letby’s description would commit ''any'' act of physical violence, let alone serial murder of defenceless infants, is extraordinary. Why would a well-socialised medical professional with no known [[Criminal propensity|criminal propensities]] do that? Why would anyone even ''suspect'' it, absent direct eye-witness evidence?

We are told, disingenuously, that the “dodgy spreadsheet” had nothing to do with it. Well, what did then? What prompted the jury to entertain the inference that Lucy Letby was a murderer at all, let alone beyond reasonable doubt? No-one seems to be able to say. No one saw anything. No closed-circuit TV captured anything. We are just expected to believe that, somehow, this was all apparent to the court.

~~====Conspiracy theory shootout====~~

{{drop|W|ild allegations of}} conspiracy fly back and forth. Mainly, they are levelled by commentators for the prosecution, about Ms Letby’s defence team, their vested interests and motivations. By contrast, the miscarriage argument presumes only perfectly ordinary human failings.

~~But if Mark McDonald is orchestrating a [[Conspiracy theory|conspiracy]], he has chosen a pretty rum way to do it. Let us just rehearse the main points of a conspiracy:~~

~~{{quote|{{Conspiracy theory capsule}}}}~~

Firstly, Mr McDonald’s putative conspiracy — orchestrating a cabal of senior neonatologists from around the world into hoodwinking the world into believing a serial murderer is innocent — is not going awfully well, since Ms. Letby is currently in prison for fifteen whole-life terms, and has exhausted her formal rights of appeal.

~~Nor is it clear what his unstated ulterior motive might be. What does he, or this unpaid collection of eminent neonatologists, expect to get out of perverting the course of justice?~~

And in what sense has anyone kept anything secret? To the contrary, Mr McDonald has shipped a fair bit of professional criticism for courting publicity. This is, among barristers, really not the done thing. It is certainly not the done thing amongst secret conspirators.

And again, rather against the conspiracy playbook, Mr McDonald has been garrulous about the arguments he and his team of experts wishes to make. He has held interminable press conferences. He has circulated slides. He has invited questions. He has set out his arguments, in the alternative, in tremendous detail. He has opened himself to detailed rebuttal. Some have, rather feebly, tried to provide it.<ref>Liz Hull’s analysis is {{Pl|https://web.archive.org/web/20250212070002/https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14386175/new-evidence-Lucy-Letby-innocent-LIZ-HULL.html|here}}. Christopher Snowdon’s is {{Pl|https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/02/08/the-devils-advocates/|here}}. The closing submissions on behalf of Family Groups 2 and 3 to the Thirlwall Inquiry — which would not hear any evidence doubting Ms. Letby’s guilt, remember — are {{Pl|https://thirlwall.public-inquiry.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Written-Closing-Submission-of-Family-Group-2-and-3-7-March-2025.pdf|here}}.</ref> In places, the alternatives have not entirely cohered.

~~This is not how conspirators behave.~~

Indeed, all the “strange band of misfits and ghouls” who have questioned the safety of the conviction have adopted the same stance. The defence case is by nature public, detailed, specific, articulated, and ''welcoming'' of good-faith challenge.

It has not had much. The credible challenges that have come back have been either ''formal'' in nature— “the rules have been followed, she had her chance, ''alea iacta est''” — or somehow ''mystical'' — there are things about this process that resist intellectual inquiry and must not be disturbed.

This is especially perplexing since it is generally the prosecution who must makes the intellectual running. The burden of proof is such that it is the crown, not the defence, that should be best at spelling out the ingredients of its case. That the burden reverses on conviction should not alter this fact

For if the evidence was so compelling, and the crown’s case so immaculate, you would think someone would be able to articulate it. There are any number of erudite criticisms of the law, the application of evidence, the use of statistics, of the crown witnesses’ speculative diagnoses, available in the public domain. Bar one cantankerous lobbyist for the alcohol and tobacco industries — whose professional calling is to champion dubious causes —— no one has managed to mount any explanation of the merits of the crown’s case.

If you weren’t at the trial you can’t know: “context is everything”, and guilt with events through a combination of interlocking facts. This is a kind of “[[emergence]]” argument. It is routinely run, ironically enough, by people who ''also'' were not at the trial.

If this is right then the outcome of no trial can ever be gainsaid, appeals should also be forbidden, and the curial process should be sanctified as some ineffable, inexplicable conveyance of mystical verities by means of ''holy procedure'', to be hereafter obeyed.

~~That is not how things work. Trials are reported, there are sequences, there are critical phases, points of sharp drama and afternoons of procedural guff.~~

~~{{sag|Lucy Letby|Lucy Letby: statistics|Lucy Letby: the missing defence evidence~~}}

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-{{a|crime|{{wmc|aleebee.png|“She has no ''[[aleebee]]''.”}}{{small|70}}{{letby dramatis personae}}</div>}}{{drop|S|potted routinely in}} the trenches of the keyboard war that rages on — though I sense it is blowing itself out; only a couple of [[Burmese Jungler]]<nowiki/>s still remain — over Ms. Letby’s conviction, you often see variations on this:
+{{freeessay|letby|Letby ineffable truth|{{wmc|aleebee.png|“She has no ''[[aleebee]]''.”}}{{small|70}}{{letby dramatis personae}}</div>}}
-{{quote|''You were not at the trial''. Unless you sat through ten months of evidence — unless you saw everything the jury saw, and looked into the whites of the defendant’s eyes — you cannot know the facts and cannot have a viable opinion on her innocence.}}
-Of all the commonplaces advanced to prop the Crown’s sagging case, this is surely the weakest.
-Run by those who ''also'' were not at the trial and so, by the same logic, have no better idea of how good a spectacle it was, it really amounts to saying:
-{{quote|“The outcome of this trial is agreeable to me. I wish to entertain no further debate about it.”}}
-====Impermeability====
-The trial was conducted according to the arcane rules of the criminal courts: the criminal law, the rules of procedure, the law of evidence, and long established (if often criticised) principles governing [[expert evidence]].
-These institutions have been set up to vouchsafe justice, and generally do, but they are not infallible. Miscarriages of justice can and do happen. Even outrageous ones.
-From all the evidence-in-chief, cross-examination, the fork-tongued duels between wigged barristers and ornery experts, from  from this tremendous ''melée'', we must suppose that 12 random citizens formed a collective impression free enough from doubt to form a guilty verdict — but yet at the same time so mystic and ''ineffable'' that it cannot now be explained or rationalised. The verdict is a brute ontological fact, immune now to mortal analysis.
-To the question:
-{{Quote|How on Earth did she get convicted?}}
-Comes the answer:
-{{Quote|You had to be there.}}
-The Holy Spirit was upon these jurors. A guilty soul was justly condemned. Now that spirit has passed. Like the peace of God, it passeth all understanding.
-Justice has visited, done its thing and gone again, leaving no trace. None can now make sense of it. We must, instead, obediently abide.
-====What the eye don’t see —====
-{{drop|A|curious feature}} of this argument is its dependence on ''what we cannot see''. There is a “truth”, but it is comprised of darkness. We cannot apprehend it, so we cannot challenge it.
-But, explicitly, the criminal law does not work like this. Quite the opposite: it is, to a fault, ''rational''. It is unflinchingly evidence-based: evidence is the be-all and end-all. There are strict rules governing what may be admitted. All of it may be interrogated.  Everything that can influence an outcome must lie on the surface. If it cannot be made to float — if it comprises innuendo or prejudice, we must sponge it from the record.
-In a criminal court, everything is open to audit. Anything that is not is disallowed. A concluded criminal case cannot defy comprehension.
-''Darkness is not allowed.''
-Lucy Letby’s trials ran for months. There was a colossal amount of data, that is true, and there is no doubt the jurors’ task was Herculean — beyond any reasonable expectations of twelve ordinary men and women. They should be commended for their work. But this is not to say that the material grounds for their decision cannot be summarised, analysed or criticised.
-Indeed: that is the very trial process: both prosecution and defence summarise their positions and present them to the jury.
-So we should ask the question now:
-{{Quote|''How on Earth did she get convicted?''}}
-There ought to be a manageable answer. At the time of the original trial, in the public’s mind, it was something like this:
-{{Quote|
-She admitted it on some post-it notes. <br>
-She, and no other nurse, was present at every collapse.<br>
-There was conclusive evidence that exogenous insulin was deliberately administered to several victims.<br>
-There was conclusive evidence that several victims suffered air embolisms.}}
-These are good grounds, if true, but they have been under sustained attack since Rachel Aviv’s ''New Yorker'' article in April last year. Not one of these comprehensible grounds for conviction holds water.
-There might be something in the contention that journalists can overplay their hands, sensationalising the dry evidence, cherry-picking facts to suit a sensational story-line, blowing small discrepancies out of proportion. This is hardly the ''New Yorker''’s style, of course, but when the reputation of the British criminal justice system is on the line, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
-But then the extraordinary evidence started rolling in.
-Statisticians picked up on The [[Texas Sharpshooter]] aspects. Lawyers questioned the operation of the expert evidence rules, and the unusual way they had been applied in this case. And neonatologists questioned every aspect of the Crown’s expert evidence.
- people asking that question: The Lucy Letby dramatis personae, in the panel, refers. Are ''all'' of these people labouring under a delusion? Have they been misled by nefarious interests —and in which case, whose, and how? — to expressing formal, public doubt?
-====— the eye can’t critique====
-{{drop|I|f you are}} excused from having to make your case, you are excused from ''defending'' it from an all-points attack. This, again, is the hallmark of conspiracy theories — which appeal to innuendo and the general distrust of what one cannot see — and quite the opposite of criminal justice methodology. The prosecution must disclose everything it finds, however damaging to its own case to the defence in plenty of time before trial. It is understood that every point in the chain of logic is open to scrutiny.
-Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The claim that someone meeting Ms Letby’s description would commit ''any'' act of physical violence, let alone serial murder of defenceless infants, is extraordinary. Why would a well-socialised medical professional with no known [[Criminal propensity|criminal propensities]] do that? Why would anyone even ''suspect'' it, absent direct eye-witness evidence?
-We are told, disingenuously, that the “dodgy spreadsheet” had nothing to do with it. Well, what did then? What prompted the jury to entertain the inference that Lucy Letby was a murderer at all, let alone beyond reasonable doubt? No-one seems to be able to say. No one saw anything. No closed-circuit TV captured anything. We are just expected to believe that, somehow, this was all apparent to the court.
-====Conspiracy theory shootout====
-{{drop|W|ild allegations of}} conspiracy fly back and forth.  Mainly, they are levelled by commentators for the prosecution, about Ms Letby’s defence team, their vested interests and motivations. By contrast, the miscarriage argument presumes only perfectly ordinary human failings.
-But if Mark McDonald is orchestrating a [[Conspiracy theory|conspiracy]], he has chosen a pretty rum way to do it. Let us just rehearse the main points of a conspiracy:
-{{quote|{{Conspiracy theory capsule}}}}
-Firstly, Mr McDonald’s putative conspiracy — orchestrating a cabal of senior neonatologists from around the world into hoodwinking the world into believing a serial murderer is innocent — is not going awfully well, since Ms. Letby is currently in prison for fifteen whole-life terms, and has exhausted her formal rights of appeal.
-Nor is it clear what his unstated ulterior motive might be. What does he, or this unpaid collection of eminent neonatologists, expect to get out of perverting the course of justice?
-And in what sense has anyone kept anything secret? To the contrary, Mr McDonald has shipped a fair bit of professional criticism for courting publicity. This is, among barristers, really not the done thing. It is certainly not the done thing amongst secret conspirators.
-And again, rather against the conspiracy playbook, Mr McDonald has been  garrulous about the arguments he and his team of experts wishes to make. He has held interminable press conferences. He has circulated slides. He has invited questions. He has set out his arguments, in the alternative, in tremendous detail. He has opened himself to detailed rebuttal. Some have, rather feebly, tried to provide it.<ref>Liz Hull’s analysis is {{Pl|https://web.archive.org/web/20250212070002/https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14386175/new-evidence-Lucy-Letby-innocent-LIZ-HULL.html|here}}. Christopher Snowdon’s is {{Pl|https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/02/08/the-devils-advocates/|here}}. The closing submissions on behalf of Family Groups 2 and 3 to the Thirlwall Inquiry — which would not hear any evidence doubting Ms. Letby’s guilt, remember —&nbsp;are {{Pl|https://thirlwall.public-inquiry.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Written-Closing-Submission-of-Family-Group-2-and-3-7-March-2025.pdf|here}}.</ref> In places, the alternatives have not entirely cohered.
-This is not how conspirators behave.
-Indeed, all the “strange band of misfits and ghouls” who have questioned the safety of the conviction have adopted the same stance. The defence case is by nature public, detailed, specific, articulated, and ''welcoming'' of good-faith challenge.
-It has not had much. The credible challenges that have come back have been either ''formal'' in nature— “the rules have been followed, she had her chance, ''alea iacta est''” — or somehow ''mystical'' — there are things about this process that resist intellectual inquiry and must not be disturbed.
-This is especially perplexing since it is generally the prosecution who must makes the intellectual running. The burden of proof is such that it is the crown, not the defence, that should be best at spelling out the ingredients of its case. That the burden reverses on conviction should not alter this fact
-For if the evidence was so compelling, and the crown’s case so immaculate, you would think someone would be able to articulate it. There are any number of erudite criticisms of the law, the application of evidence, the use of statistics, of the crown witnesses’ speculative diagnoses, available in the public domain. Bar one cantankerous lobbyist for the alcohol and tobacco industries — whose professional calling is to champion dubious causes —— no one has managed to mount any explanation of the merits of the crown’s case.
-If you weren’t at the trial you can’t know: “context is everything”, and guilt with events through a combination of interlocking facts. This is a kind of “[[emergence]]” argument. It is routinely run, ironically enough, by people who ''also'' were not at the trial.
-If this is right then the outcome of no trial can ever be gainsaid, appeals should also be forbidden, and the curial process should be sanctified as some ineffable, inexplicable conveyance of mystical verities by means of ''holy procedure'', to be hereafter obeyed.
-That is not how things work. Trials are reported, there are sequences, there are critical phases, points of sharp drama and afternoons of procedural guff.
-{{sag|Lucy Letby|Lucy Letby: statistics|Lucy Letby: the missing defence evidence}}