Lucy Letby: Difference between revisions

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This fits two profiles: either this is some cold, callous, monstrous psychopath — or ''a perfectly ordinary young woman''. You know — a sparky, fun, popular young woman. The life and soul of the party.

==On herd minds, groupthink and narrative bias==

Lucy Letby’s case is in the news and those internet citizens who have taken more than a passing interest have divided into opposing camps: a large preponderance for whom she is a cold-blooded monster, and a small band who, based on statistics, have questioned the safety of her conviction. Some of those have spilled over into the conviction that Letby absolutely did not wilfully kill anyone.

The first thing to consider is the difference between the substantive — the wilful ending of a life, the formal — the commission of the act of murder as defined in law, and the procedural — the process gone through to determine whether a murder was committed.

These are different questions, with different considerations, and it is important they are not confused. A person who murders unobserved in cold blood, leaving no evidence, and without motive cannot be convicted of murder. The procedural element fails. A person who kills in cold blood, before witnesses but in demonstrable, reasonable self defence, cannot be convicted of murder because the formal elements are not met.

Where there is no eye-witness evidence the form and procedure becomes all the more important.

In Lucy Letby’s case there is no direct evidence. This means it is logically possible she did commit the murders, and logically possible she did not. The question of whether she should be convicted comes down, at some point, to an estimation of ''probabilities''. These inform how “sure” one can be about the proposition “defendant murdered victim”.

This is a murder case with an unusual range of unknowns. It is unclear whether there was any murder at all. The deaths could have been innocent, and they could have been culpable to some legal standard short of murder (negligence, for example)

If you conclude that “foul play” (including negligence) is at work there is then the question of who did it. Did other personnel have an opportunity?

Each of these enquiries requires an answer “beyond reasonable doubt”. If a victim dies in the presence of a single person with a means and motive, such that if the death was intentional there is no other possible suspect, if there is a reasonable doubt as to the death being natural — even if it probably was not — there can be no conviction.

{{Quote|

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”

— Ian Fleming, ''Goldfinger'' (1959)}}

Here is where a sequence makes a difference. One such occurrence might be improbable, five occurrences extremely improbable, 500,

==So==

What are the percentages of serial killers with history of broken homes, physical or sexual abuse, and mental illness? What percentage are female?

Lucy Letby: Difference between revisions

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