Lucy Letby: the ineffable truth: Difference between revisions

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There was conclusive evidence that exogenous insulin was deliberately administered to several victims.<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.}}
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.


This only stands to reason: if you cannot articulate how a defendant ever came to be convicted: if you have to shoulder-shrug, and say, well, the jury must have been persuaded by ''something'' we now cannot divine — if your best form of defence is to attack anyone who asks that question, then there is a weakness in the case. And there are now a lot of 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?  
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====
====— 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.
{{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.

Revision as of 13:10, 29 March 2025

Crime & Punishment

“She has no aleebee.”
Those Lucy Letby experts in full
Name Profession Field Interest Camp
Dr. Andreas Marnerides Consultant Pathology Expert witness Prosecution[1]
Dr. Owen Arthurs Professor Radiology Expert witness Prosecution[2]
Dr. Sally Kinsey Professor Haematology Expert witness Prosecution[3]
Dr. Peter Hindmarsh Professor Endocrinology Expert witness Prosecution[4]
Dr. Stavros Stivaros Professor Radiology Expert witness Prosecution[5]
Dr. Simon Kenney Consultant Paediatrics Expert witness Prosecution[6]
Dr. Dewi Evans Medical Doctor Paediatrics Expert witness Prosecution
Dr. Sandie Bohin Medical Doctor Paediatrics Expert witness Prosecution
Dr. Shoo Lee Professor Neonatology Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Neena Modi Professor Neonatology Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Geoff Chase Professor Mechanical Engineering Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Jane Hawdon Consultant Neonatology Independent Neutral[8]
Dr. Michael Hall Consultant Neonatology Expert witness[9] Defence[10]
Dr. Roger Norwich Consultant Neonatology Independent Defence[11]
Dr. Eric Eichenwald Professor Paediatrics Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Helmut Hummler Professor Neonatology Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Tetsuya Isayama Professor Neonatology Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Joanne Langley Professor Paediatrics Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Sandra Moore Consultant Neonatology Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Mikael Norman Professor Paediatrics Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Bruno Piedboeuf Professor Neonatology Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Prakeshkumar Shah Professor Paediatrics Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Nalini Singhal Professor Paediatrics Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Erik Skarsgard Professor Paediatrics Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Ann R. Stark Professor Paediatrics Independent Defence [7]
Dr. Helen Shannon Professor Chemical Engineering Independent Defence[7]
Dr. Christian Yates Professor Mathematical Biology Independent Defence
Dr. Alan Wayne Jones Professor Forensic toxicology Independent Defence[12]
Dr. Peter Green Professor Statistics Independent Defence
Dr. Richard Gill Professor Statistics Independent Defence
Dr. Svilena Dimitrova Consultant Neonatology Independent Defence
Dr. Neela Shabde Consultant Paediatrics Independent Defence
Jenny Harris Intensive Care Nurse Neonatology Independent Defence
Dr. Stephen Senn Professor Statistics Independent Defence
Dr. Tariq Ali Consultant Paediatrics Independent Defence
Dr. Philip Dawid Professor Statistics Independent Defence
Dr. Jane Hutton Professor Statistics Independent Defence
Dr. Gillian Tully Professor Forensic Science Independent Defence
Dr. Neil Aiton Consultant Neonatology Independent Defence[12]
Lord Sumption Supreme Court Judge Criminal Law Independent Defence[13]
Dr. Faye Skelton Professor Criminology Independent Defence[14]
Dr. Colin Morley Professor Neonatology Independent Defence[15]
Dr. Richard Taylor Consultant Neonatology Independent Defence[12][16]
Dr. Waney Squier Consultant Pathology Independent Defence[14]
Dr. Matthew Orde Consultant Pathology Independent Defence
Dr. David Wilson Professor Criminology Independent Prosecution[17]
Dr. Keith Frayn Professor Human Metabolism Independent Prosecution[18]
Dr. Normal Fenton Professor Statistics Independent Defence[19]
Dr. Scott McLachlan Lecturer Informatics Independent Defence[19]
Dr. John Ashton Professor Public Health Independent Defence[20]
Dr. David Livermore Professor Medical Microbiology Independent Defence[21]
Dr. John O’Quigley Professor Statistics Independent Defence[22]
Dr. Carola Vinuesa Professor Immunology Independent Defence[23]
Dr. Adel Ismail Consultant Endocrinology Independent Defence[12][24]
Adam King Barrister Criminal Law Independent Defence[25]
Dr. Joseph Wolfsdorf Professor Hypoglycaemia Independent Neutral[26]
Dr. Charles Stanley Professor Paediatrics Independent Defence[12]
Dr. MaAhew Johll Professor Forensic Science Independent Defence[12]
Dr. Hilde Wilkinson-Herbots Associate Professor Statistics Independent Defence[12]
Index: Click ᐅ to expand:
Criminal law
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Spotted routinely in the trenches of the keyboard war that rages on — though I sense it is blowing itself out; only a couple of Burmese Junglers still remain — over Ms. Letby’s conviction, you often see variations on this:

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:

“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:

How on Earth did she get convicted?

Comes the answer:

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 —

Acurious 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:

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:

She admitted it on some post-it notes.
She, and no other nurse, was present at every collapse.
There was conclusive evidence that exogenous insulin was deliberately administered to several victims.
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

If 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 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

Wild 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, he has chosen a pretty rum way to do it. Let us just rehearse the main points of a conspiracy:

  1. Deliberate deception: The “commonsense” narrative is a deliberate deception by persons with the means and motives to obscure the truth.
  2. Secret knowledge: Conspirators may have “secret knowledge” and ulterior motives that are not available to outsiders, but may be inferred by those believing the conspiracy theory.
  3. Agents, not systems: Outcomes are caused by malice, not complexity. They are manufactured by conspirators: they do not arise through system effects, coincidence, or error.
  4. Scale: The outcome implies improbably deep, competent and effective confidential coordination among conspirators over extended periods.
  5. Sincere confabulations: Sincere believers tend to “infer”' — that is, invent — facts to fill information gaps to be consistent with the conspiracy. Over time, these flimsy inferences harden into corroborative facts.
  6. Unfalsifiability: The very lack of evidence of conspiracy is evidence of conspiracy. Evidence contradicting the conspiracy is a part of the conspiracy. Also, it is not falsifiable: evidence, whether it suggests “black” or “white”, is taken to confirm the theory. Confirmation bias is weaponised.

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.[27] 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.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Lucy Letby Trial recap, Chester Standard, July 3, 2023.
  2. ↑ Lucy Letby Trial recap, Chester Standard, July 6, 2023: “Professor Owen Arthurs viewed radiographic images for Child M and said they could not support or refute an air embolus.”
  3. ↑ Lucy Letby: Baby's catastrophic bleed not spontaneous, trial told, BBC, November 29, 2022. Per this report, Dr. Kinsey accepted in cross-examination that her findings did not assist with the cause of death, and that she had limited familiarity with air embolus.
  4. ↑ Baby had dangerously low blood sugar levels over three days, Letby trial told, The Standard, 24 February 2023.
  5. ↑ Lucy Letby Trial recap, Chester Standard, July 6, 2023: “Paediatric neuroradiologist Dr Stavros Stivaros provided agreed evidence in which he said Child M had shown signs of brain damage, likely caused by the collapse on April 9, 2016.”
  6. ↑ This may seem controversial, but in all the reports online there is no indication of what evidence he gave. It is not reported or mentioned in judgments or summing up. I am assuming, therefore, it was uncontroversial evidence, that may have admitted by consent as a witness statement and not cross-examined. Happy to be corrected.
  7. ↑ Jump up to: 7.00 7.01 7.02 7.03 7.04 7.05 7.06 7.07 7.08 7.09 7.10 7.11 7.12 7.13 7.14 Member of International Expert Panel
  8. ↑ Specialist doctor ‘felt misled’ about suspicion over baby deaths, Lucy Letby inquiry hears, ITV, 12 November 2024. Dr. Hawdon’s contemporaneous review concluded that the deaths of Babies A, I, O and P – were “unexpected and unexplained.” Her evidence to the Thirlwall Inquiry was that she may have taken a different approach to her review if she knew of the consultants’ suspicions of murder.
  9. ↑ Not called.
  10. ↑ My evidence might have changed killer nurse Lucy Letby's trial Express, August 26, 2024.
  11. ↑ Lucy Letby: killer or coincidence? Why some experts question the evidence Guardian 9 Jul 2024.
  12. ↑ Jump up to: 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6 Summary of Joint Expert Witness Report on Baby F and L.
  13. ↑ Why I believe Lucy Letby is probably innocent Sunday Times, March 30 2025.
  14. ↑ Jump up to: 14.0 14.1 Lucy Letby: The New Evidence, Channel 5, September 2024.
  15. ↑ File on Four, BBC, 1 October 2024
  16. ↑ Lucy Letby Expert ‘changes mind’ over how babies died, The Times, December 16 2024
  17. ↑ Accept that Lucy Letby is a killer, no matter how “nice” she seems, The Herald, 24 March 2025. (Dr. Wilson is often cited as being pro-prosecution, but his views seem more nuanced than that. For example, his article closes as follows:

    “I’m still left wondering that if her case had been heard in Scotland would the prosecution have been dismissed as ‘not proven’?”

  18. ↑ The actual evidence against Lucy Letby, The Times, February 5, 2025.
  19. ↑ Jump up to: 19.0 19.1 Is Lucy Letby guilty? Professor Norman Fenton interviews Law Health Tech from Twitter and Substack
  20. ↑ Former Cumbrian director of health voices concerns over Letby trial, Cumberland News and Star, March 31, 2025.
  21. ↑ Lucy Letby Must Be Allowed an Appeal, The Daily Sceptic, 11 September 2023
  22. ↑ Suspected serial killers and unsuspected statistical blunders Sage, 1 April 2024.
  23. ↑ Sample post on X.com, December 30, 2024
  24. ↑ Lucy Letby: Experts tell BBC about medical evidence concerns BBC, 1 October 2024.
  25. ↑ The flaws in the Lucy Letby case, Unherd, July 24, 2024.
  26. ↑ Lucy Letby: Serial killer or a miscarriage of justice? Daily Telegraph, July 9, 2024. There is some suggestion that Professor Wolfsdorf walked this back in Judith Moritz’ book, but it is not well reported. Moritz quotes Wolfsdorf as saying:

    “All I can confidently state is the insulin: C-peptide molar ratio ... is consistent with factitious [deliberately introduced] hypoglycaemia.”

    As regular readers know, “consistent with” is often used for heavy lifting, and Ms. Moritz asks a lot of it here, concluding — these are her, and not Professor Wolfsdorf’s, words — that:

    “In other words, the surest conclusion we can draw from Baby L’s test result is that he was poisoned with insulin.”

  27. ↑ Liz Hull’s analysis is here. Christopher Snowdon’s is 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 here.
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