The Letby verdict is unsafe
Pressure is growing from medical experts.
When Lucy Letby was convicted, I was very much on the fence about her guilt or innocence.
I wrote a substack titled “Why I wanted to believe Lucy Letby was innocent”, and amusingly, I see that I said I'd been “less than subjective” about the case - when what I SHOULD have said was, of course, “less than OBJECTIVE ”. (Not one of my brainy readers questioned my meaning, either)!
But I'm leaving the post up, because it was my first attempt at unravelling my confusion about the verdict: confusion which was based on my own experience of being a vulnerable baby in an incubator myself, once.
So actually I had been far too subjective. We all relate news stories to ourselves in some way, because we all have some instance, however small, in our own lives, that we can relate them to. “That could have been me/my child/my family".
In hindsight I think I let myself and my basic NCTJ journalism training down by letting my own traumatic birth experience (which caused my life-long disability) influence me.
There has been another (final?) Letby trial, and an inquiry presided over by Lady Justice Thirlwall is now underway - not into the case, but into the failings of the hospital to sound the alarm earlier.
The verdicts are not being questioned.Except by these people:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/aug/27/lucy-letby-inquiry-should-be-postponed-changed-experts#:~:text=The%20public%20inquiry%2C%20led%20by,unable%20to%20reach%20a%20verdict.
Medical professionals lower down the food chain have also been expressing their concerns, and there's an open letter to the Prime Minister online for them to sign:
https://www.scienceontrial.com/pmletter
And this guy has been consistently, and thoroughly, analysing the Letby trial(s) and their aftermath, including these latest letters:
Private Eye, in the shape of their “mystery” doctor (TV doctor Phil Hammond) have recently published a critical 2-page report; and it's worth remembering that the Eye was the first to write a big expose of the Post Office Horizon scandal.
Even the UK State Broadcaster has been forced to report on the letters - with a predictable introduction from the presenter:
So if you're one of the increasing number of people who are worried about the verdicts in the Letby case, you are in good company.
Unfortunately the route to either a retrial or a quashing of the verdicts, is a long and difficult one. Those of us who are old enough can remember the extraordinary releases in the 1980s of the Guildford 4 and the Maguire 7. They were wrongly accused of IRA crimes, but they had a long wait to regain their freedom.
One, Patrick Conlon, died in prison. A movie was made in 1993, In The Name Of The Father, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Pete Postlthwaite, and Emma Thompson as their heroic lawyer, Gareth Peirce.
They also needed a huge machinery of public support, campaigning journalists, and politicians on their side.
It's hard to see such support for Lucy Letby. And the wheels of the Criminal Cases Review Commission grind notoriously slowly, as campaigners for another alleged miscarriage of justice, Jeremy Bamber, have found.
Jeremy Bamber is approaching his fortieth year in prison proclaiming his innocence, with numerous failed Appeal attempts behind him. But his case too, seems to have had a boost recently, with the New Yorker article at the end of July:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/08/05/did-the-uks-most-infamous-family-massacre-end-in-a-wrongful-conviction
He is the only whole-life prisoner in Britain who maintains his innocence, and undoubtedly would have been released under a new identity years ago, if he had admitted guilt.
I have always believed in Bamber's innocence. His case had too many holes in it to ever feel safe. There was a clear alternative suspect at the time, and people who had vested interests in framing him.
You should subscribe to my Substack - I think you’ll find it quite enlightening on the Jeremy Bamber case in particular.
As a retired midwife I instinctively viewed the Letby case as ‘scapegoating’. The fact that the hospital just like pretty much every hospital in the NHS is likely to be understaffed, underfunded and that there is an inherent culture of blame and bullying within the NHS, gives me enough (subjective) doubts. I also wouldn’t discount basic incompetence - as I’ve witnessed this often enough… I was interested in the statistician’s comments ( can’t remember which article) but the very fact that other baby deaths when Letby was not present weren’t shown I feel was a deliberate effort to incriminate her - they only shared her fists and those deaths she was accused of - this skews the data and facts enormously. Another somewhat left field feeling I had when I first saw that video of her arrest was that she may be somewhat neuro-diverse - I’ve no idea why? Whatever way I view things though is that the case has been remarkably low key news wise - odd.