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Lucy Letby: Difference between revisions
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Given the probabilities at play — 99% of us are neither pure angels or devils, but somewhere along the continuum between — allowing Lucy Letby to sit at only one or other of these extremities seems an injustice in itself. | Given the probabilities at play — 99% of us are neither pure angels or devils, but somewhere along the continuum between — allowing Lucy Letby to sit at only one or other of these extremities seems an injustice in itself. | ||
====Confirmation bias==== | ====Confirmation bias==== | ||
{{drop|T|he problem with}} “angel” and “devil” narratives is that they become self-fulfilling: once you’ve settled on one, you can panel-beat most subsequent information to suit that view. The hard-edged peripheral evidence we do have | {{drop|T|he problem with}} “angel” and “devil” narratives is that they become self-fulfilling: once you’ve settled on one, you can panel-beat most subsequent information to suit that view. The little hard-edged peripheral evidence we do have about Lucy Letby has been coloured through that lens. For example, her social media activity. Here is BBC reporter Judith Moritz, in a piece to camera,<ref>{{Plainlink|https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001q7dl/panorama-lucy-letby-the-nurse-who-killed|''Panorama'', 18 August 2023}}</ref> on reviewing Letby’s social media posts: | ||
{{quote| | {{quote| | ||
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{{Quote|“She comes across as — mousy; a bit ''normal'' — you can’t really marry that with the enormity of what she’s been accused of.”}} | {{Quote|“She comes across as — mousy; a bit ''normal'' — you can’t really marry that with the enormity of what she’s been accused of.”}} | ||
If — and ''only'' if — we are already persuaded of her guilt, her vivacious personality and active social life ''notwithstanding | If — and ''only'' if — we are already persuaded of her guilt, her vivacious personality and active social life ''notwithstanding her malign nature'' mark her out as a psychopath. It ''corroborates'' and ''amplifies'' her wickedness. | ||
If we believe her to be innocent, that she has been convicted ''despite'' her vivacious personality and active social life — what sort of serial killer is like that? — only illustrates the single-mindedness with which a vicious criminal system will crush an innocent, unsuspecting spirit. | |||
If we believe neither, but hold a neutral perspective, we see this behaviour as ''perfectly'' ''normal''. It tells us nothing. It places Lucy Letby in that ordinary space, with the rest of us, within a standard deviation of the mean. There have been very, very few serial-killer nurses. We have no idea what, as a rule, they are like. In any case, normal social media activity is neither direct nor circumstantial evidence of her perpetration of the crimes with which she has been accused, or her innocence. | |||
In the language of the criminal law, then, this social media activity has low “probative” content — it doesn’t prove anything — but high “prejudicial” value — it colours any existing preconceptions a jury might hold. A court may exclude this evidence if “its prejudicial effect is out of proportion to its probative value”.<ref>Section 126, Criminal Justice Act 2003, which (per explanatory notes) preserves the common law power for the court to exclude evidence where its prejudicial effect is out of proportion to its probative value. </ref> | In the language of the criminal law, then, this social media activity has low “probative” content — it doesn’t prove anything — but high “prejudicial” value — it colours any existing preconceptions a jury might hold. A court may exclude this evidence if “its prejudicial effect is out of proportion to its probative value”.<ref>Section 126, Criminal Justice Act 2003, which (per explanatory notes) preserves the common law power for the court to exclude evidence where its prejudicial effect is out of proportion to its probative value. </ref> | ||
Similarly, that Lucy Letby searched online for the parents of the deceased is consistent with ''either'' breathtaking malevolence — if she is a serial killer — ''or'' affecting compassion — if she is not. By itself, it is ''evidence'' of neither. We all | Similarly, that Lucy Letby searched online for the parents of the deceased is consistent with ''either'' breathtaking malevolence — if you take it that she is a serial killer — ''or'' affecting compassion — if you take it that she is not. By itself, it is ''evidence'' of neither. We all search online for individuals we meet in real life — even people we know we probably shouldn’t: this is perfectly normal behaviour. We are curious animals. | ||
These mechanisms by which we process information are ''biases'' — [[confirmation bias]] — a well-documented logical fallacy where we frame any information to validate what we already believe — or its less-understood converse: [[ignore|''ignorance'' bias]],<ref>JC made this term up.</ref> where we tactically ''ignore'' information that does not support, or tends to contradict, our working theory. | |||
Both biases are in play whether we believe Lucy Letby is a serial killer, or the victim of a grave injustice. Both standpoints are equally ''emotive''. | Both biases are in play whether we believe Lucy Letby is a serial killer, or the victim of a grave injustice. Both standpoints are equally ''emotive''. | ||
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There is no comfortable centre to hold here. | There is no comfortable centre to hold here. | ||
====Standpoint intersection ahoy==== | ====Standpoint intersection ahoy==== | ||
{{Drop| | {{Drop|C|riminal justice stands}} at the intersection of at least four discrete fields of intellectual enquiry: law, medicine, statistics and ethics. The perspectives they afford are not “[[The Structure of Scientific Revolutions|commensurate]]”: each has its own rules, customs and institutions. Authority in one discipline does not commute to the others. In a perfect world, their outcomes would converge, but the world is not perfect. There will be times where the legal outcome is not the moral one, where the moral one is not borne by the statistics, where the statistics are at odds with our knowledge, and vice versa. | ||
You cannot but frame your understanding of the overall scenario through one or other of those prisms. There is no transcendent, “neutral” frame of reference. Without some kind of framework, the territory is random, incoherent noise. | |||
====Victims==== | ====Victims==== | ||
{{Drop|E|motions are already}} aggravated; the stakes are raised yet higher by the undoubted loss and grief of the families of lost infants. But | {{Drop|E|motions are already}} aggravated; the stakes are raised yet higher by the undoubted loss and grief of the families of lost infants. But that grief is unavoidable and attaches to the families’ loss, which is the same whatever its cause. ''That'' the families are bereaved is not at issue: the question is ''why'': Lucy Letby’s acquittal does not postpone or deny them justice for their loss: no injustice may have been done. So advocating for Lucy Letby’s innocence should be no affront to the grieving families: one can respect their unimaginable grief and, in some way seek to ameliorate it, by arguing her case. | ||
====Substance, form and process==== | |||
{{Drop|T|he first thing}} to bear in mind is the difference between the ''substantive'' — the morally unjustified ending of a life (this is an ''ethical'' frame of reference), the ''formal'' — the commission of the act of “murder” as defined in law (in some ways an ethicist’s [[map]] of the [[territory]]: a systematic way of economically delivering that ethical framework), and the ''procedural'' — the process one must gone through to determine whether a “murder” was committed. | |||
This “procedural” includes the presumption of innocence, the adversarial tradition of British criminal justice, the laws of evidence, the rules of court procedure, and tactics and strategies that defence and prosecution teams adopt within that milieu to best present their case, whose outcome is ultimately determined not by judges, lawyers, ethicists, statisticians, physicians or metaphysicians but by 12 ordinary people, drawn at random from the electoral roll, who may have none of these skills. These change, drastically, the terms of the debate in a way that ''New Yorker'' articles, blogposts, twitter rants, podcasts, reddit subforums are not limited. | |||
These are different questions, with different considerations, and it is important they are not confused. A person who murders unobserved in cold blood, leaves no evidence, and has no motive cannot be convicted beyond reasonable doubt of murder ''unless no other explanation is possible''. The procedural element fails: there is not enough evidence. 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. She has a defence. | These are different questions, with different considerations, and it is important they are not confused. A person who murders unobserved in cold blood, leaves no evidence, and has no motive cannot be convicted beyond reasonable doubt of murder ''unless no other explanation is possible''. The procedural element fails: there is not enough evidence. 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. She has a defence. | ||
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But even then we get it wrong sometimes. | But even then we get it wrong sometimes. | ||
====The medical misadventure cases==== | ====The medical misadventure cases==== | ||
{{Drop|I|ndeed, cases involving}} medical misadventure, no direct evidence and which rely on statistics are a recurring case of injustice: Sally Clark, Daniela | {{Drop|I|ndeed, cases involving}} medical misadventure, no direct evidence and which rely on statistics are a recurring case of injustice: Sally Clark, Daniela Poggiali and Lucia de Berk are but three recent examples with strikingly similar facts patterns. We should not take concerns about statistics lightly. | ||
Where there is no “direct” evidence, the form and procedure becomes all the more important. | Where there is no “direct” evidence, the form and procedure becomes all the more important. | ||