Lucy Letby: the ineffable truth

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Spotted routinely in the trenches, culverts, comments sections and mentions of the keyboard war that yet rages — though I sense it is blowing itself out — over Ms. Letby’s conviction we find this rhetorical:

Were you at the trial? That anyone who was not present, and who therefore has extremely limited knowledge of the facts, can have an opinion on her innocence, is preposterous.

Of all the dwindling commonplaces advanced in favour of Lucy Letby’s convictions, this is surely among the weakest.

Run as it is by those who also were not at the trial, who by their own logic have no better idea of how compelling a spectacle the trial was, it really amounts to this declaration:

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

It is as if, res ipsa loquitur the process is presumed so immaculate, infallible, to be impervious to later inspection. It was orchestrated by the arcane rules of court: the curious rules of criminal procedure, the law of evidence, the oft-derided principles governing expert evidence. Its midwife was the fork-tongued swordplay of duelling barristers.

From that tremendous melée, we are asked to suppose that 12 random citizens, with no particular powers of critical analysis between them, carried off a special feat: from months of fact, parry, thrust and counterthrust they are supposed to have extracted a simple impression clear enough of reasonable doubt to form a verdict but yet at the same time so mystical and magical and ineffable that it cannot thereafter be replayed, explained or rationalised to an increasingly sceptical public. No one can now make sense of it, and this is meant to be okay.

“What happened during the trial” is, apparently, immune to synopsis. Its salient points may not be drawn out, distilled or decanted, in broad strokes or fine, for those who were not there. Like the peace if God, it passeth all understanding. It is immune to mortal analysis. The holy spirit was upon these jurors, they spoke in tongues, their word was made flesh, a guilty soul was condemned and the spirit is gone. We who remain must silently abide.

A curious feature of this argument is that itd force depends on what we cannot see. It stays in the shadows. It strikes from the dark. What we cannot apprehend we cannot challenge.

This quality of impermeability it shares with two other kinds of intellectual construct: conspiracy theories and sacred faiths. To hold these beliefs we must subordinate the causes of movement across the landscape’s surface to something unseen, inferred machinations beneath it. These are deep impressions, not readily rendered in argument, matters of deep, unmentionable faith; allegiance to certain people whom we place upon a pedestal, and dark imputations of base instinct — primordial corruptions of the human spirit from villainous others, whom we assuredly don’t.

But explicitly, the criminal law does not work like this. It is — to a fault — rational. It is unfailingly evidence-based. Evidence is the be-all and end-all. Admissibility rules are strict. All that is allowed to matter is what lies on the surface. Innuendos and prejudicial suspicions are sponged from the record, unless they can be raised to the surface and put in full view of everyone for inspection and test. Everything is open to audit. A concluded case cannot defy comprehension.

It is also marked in contrast to the defence case, whether made by Ms. Letby’s actual defence team and their experts or those the unaffiliated journalists, statisticians, doctors, scientists, lawyers and (ahem) windbags who have chosen to speak on her behalf. 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, ilea 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.

, they are appealed in segmented