Lucy Letby: the judge’s direction

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That judge’s direction

“You don’t need to be know how she did it as long as you are sure she did it”. There are different scenarios:

1. Death definitely has 1 of 3 causes, the defendant definitely was responsible for all 3, jury need not be sure which of the 3 it was. Does not apply here: no direct evidence, no finite set of causes. Some natural causes.
2. Death definitely has 1 of 3 causes, defendant definitely responsible for 2. Jury must be sure it was not the 3rd cause. Between the other 2, 1. above applies. Does not apply here for same reason as 1.
3. Death definitely has 1 of 3 causes, defendant may have been responsible for all of them. If they do not know which it was, Jury must still be certain defendant was responsible for all three. Does not apply here: Same as 1 above. In Ms. Letby’s case, there were an unknown set of possible causes, some innocent, some malign, it was not clear she was even responsible for the malign ones. Since you can’t rule out unknown innocent causes, if they don’t know how Ms. Letby committed the acts, the jury can’t be “sure” she committed them.