Lucy Letby: the judge’s direction: Difference between revisions

Say a defendant is charged with murder. There is unimpeachable evidence that the victim died as a result of violent blunt trauma to the head during a period in which the only person to be in contact with the victim was the defendant, whom eyewitnesses say was engaged in a heated argument with the victim culminating in defendant announcing he was going to murder the victim. Immediately afterward, the defendant was arrested in possession of a hammer, a club and a lead pipe, all of which were covered in the victim’s blood. There no doubt that the defendant was responsible for the murder but it is not clear with which implement she administered the deadly blow.

The jury need not acquit the defendant because they do not know which weapon she used, if they are sure she used a weapon. The inference that “the defendant murdered the victim” depends on the defendant using one of the implements; it does not matter which one. In terms of the ingredients of the offence, the burden of proof is satisfied: the precise identity of the weapon is an extraneous detail.

In Ms Letby’s case, the equivalent scenario would be that, as well as evidence of a method of murder, there was independent evidence that Ms Letby was unequivocally responsible: that ''all reasonably plausible means of death involved Ms. Letby’s malice''. Given what we know, an innocent explanation is not reasonably plausible.

This could be because the nature of death was in itself inconsistent with any innocent explanation: gunshot wounds are generally not consistent with an episode of hypoglycemia, so even though a contemporaneous episode can’t be ruled out, it is not reasonably likely — or because the direct evidence positively supports the allegation that defendant did it. An unusually high insulin reading might be app or oddconsistent with undiagnosed hypoglycemia, but not when the defendant was witnessed administering insulin to the victim intravenously ten minutes before she collapsed.

 

In Ms Letby’s case there are no gunshots wounds, and there is no evidence that she, specifically , administered insulin, injected air, overfed or assaulted any of the victims. Furthermore more in every collapse that led to a formal medical examination, the initial conclusion was natural causes.  We are not in a situation where “all plausible causes of death involved Ms LetThis would mean first ruling out as a reasonable explanation death by natural causes, medical misadventure short of recklessness by Ms Letby, or medical misadventure of any kind by anyone else.