CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. VARIOUS COMMENTS ON THE LUCY LETBY TRIAL.
In this chapter, I provide comments from various sources regarding the Lucy Letby trial.
These quotes are from The Daily Telegraph, February 5th, 2025, front page:-
A panel of 14 international specialists in neonatology reviewed the deaths and collapses of the various infants. This panel was headed by Doctor Shoo Lee, president of the Canadian Neonatal Foundation. He stated that they had found no murders. Death or collapse was the result of “natural causes or just bad medical care”. Doctor Lee told reporters that doctors failed to spot dangerous bacterial infections, and did not give life-saving antibiotics, and made errors in inserting breathing tubes. He said that, if the hospital had been in Canada, it would hve been closed down.
The panel of experts concluded:- No medical evidence of malfeasance causing harm in any of the 17 cases in the trial.
Lord McDonald, the former director of public prosecutions said that the experts report “had to be taken seriously”.
James Phillips, a former special scientific advisor to Boris Johnson said “The Lucy Letby case is a national embarrassment”.
The following quotes are from the book Lucy is Innocent, by Paul Bamford, SECOND EDITION, ISBN number 9798326484130 (I strongly recommend this book.)
Pages 40 to 41:- Many statisticians, medical, and legal experts have expressed doubts (about Lucy Letby’s guilt). Nineteen nurses wrote an open letter to The Prime Minister requesting a royal commission. Davis Davis (former Minister for Brexit) regards her innocence as “highly probable”.
Here is a quote from Private Eye Special Report. The Lessons of The Lucy Letby Case, by Doctor Phil Hammond. MD. (available online.)
Private Eye Report, Part 17:- Neonatologist Doctor Svilena Dimitrova comments:- “This is the most extraordinary interlude of bad science and bad medicine in neonatology that I have ever witnessed. - - - - deeply flawed.”
Now here is a selection of quotes taken from the internet – mostly comments to U-Tube videos concerning The Lucy Letby trial. I have not corrected for grammar or spelling.
I know a paediatric nurse who specializes in pre-term neonates. She always volunteers for extra hours because they are so short staffed and she is dedicated. She always gets given the toughest cases because she is the most experienced. By far the most deaths occur amongs "her" babies. She is just one incompetent statistician away from an investigation. 1) above average hours 2) above average assignment to difficult cases 3) above average death rates due to poor prognosis A statistical perfect storm.
Having worked for the nhs, in senior roles representing staff against directors, there was always scapegoating. From the finance dept to a healthcare worker. Sometimes we managed to win the case, but most of the time the directors got the response they wanted to every case. In my experience a nurse against a consultant, the consultant would always win the investigation, why? Because why would a consultant lie. I had my doubts as a senior staff representative and also a senior clinical member of staff from pathology if she was guilty. Having gone through the case I very much doubt that she is. Anyone who knows how most NHS trust work will think the same as me. Ultimately the trust that she worked would find it easier to place the blame on letby, it takes away from consultant blame and director and manager blame. Seen it many times before. I left the nhs 10 years ago because It was making me ill after 30 years service, working 60+ hours a week, pathology 30 hours and 30+ hours representing staff. I’m proud to have saved so many jobs but also saddened by those jobs I couldn’t save, it took a massive toll on my personal life.
Years ago, in the three months after I started work in a new job, there were SEVEN fires. People started calling me the "Fire Queen" and saying I was "jinxed". I was lucky in that there was never any suspicion it was me (I had cast iron alibis) but it has left me with the knowledge that coincidences really can happen.
The reaction of the consultants to the prospect of their unit having a bad reputation that they are ultimately responsible for, can vary. But one reaction is to look for a scapegoat. It occurs over and over in the NHS, and I've seen it before.
For folk who have no background in the NHS and it's Byzantine internal politics, its simple to say she must have done it especially when the jury were shown the time sheet with the crosses on it showing that nurse Letby was present at all the incidents on the unit. What they weren't shown was the full list of incidents over the same time period, during which there were 17 not 10 deaths, and correspondingly more near misses, at which nurse Letby was absent. The unit itself had been recently upgraded to a local referral centre a year or so before, and during its inspection prior to any of the Letby drama, had been rated as chaotic. Obviously that reflects very poorly on the consultants in charge, and when things continued to be chaotic and more mistakes were made, by an understaffed, overstressed unit, some of the consultants rather than accepting responsibility looked for a scapegoat. Since then the unit has been downgraded, and several of the consultants have been on tv trying to repair their reputations by emphasizing their amateur sleuthing. No-one wants to admit that this conviction is unsafe, and its much easier, for everyone concerned to simply say she did it and not face the difficult questions that this case raises. I didn't see a single case of air embolus in 40yrs as a Dr, and neither have any of the experts called, or the doctors on the unit either.
As an NHS employee I can say there are managers and medical staff that would stop at nothing to hide and gloss over failings in the services they are presiding over!
There use to be a programme on BBC during the 80's called Rough Justice. It was a litany of '000s of cases of corruption, incompetence, criminal negligence. I'm not saying Lucy Letby is innocent but she could be. Andrew Malkinson ring a bell.
It wouldn't be the first time that doctors are happy to blame a nurse when things go wrong..
This woman is a scapegoat for sheer incompetence. She was constantly on my Local evening news. I knew her name years ago, that in and of itself almost has her as Guilty already in the court of public opinion. The amount of arrests & bails shows how weak the evidence was that "showed" she was the culprit. Her so called "Admission notes" are her actually writing down the questions she has of herself because of what she has been interrogated over. No doubt she was on all sorts of anti depressants. The Police & CPS shot at a barn door 100 times and circled the closest together shots and said "look how accurate we are"
He keeps saying Lucy Letby was associated with all the events and deaths. NO. SHE WASN’T. She was associated with the ones that they listed where she was on duty. THERE WERE MORE DEATHS and events when she wasn’t on duty. She also did the most shifts!. Let’s see the whole list of every event and death over the whole two year period then everyone would have a clearer picture. If you discount the deaths when LL was on duty, there was a considerable increase of deaths over previous years. Why was that? Someone else was a murderer too!!??? Or more likely it was due to cuts in staffing competence including doctors, sewage in the wards, increase in very early neonates that the department could not cope with as the July 2016 report stated.
This case makes me terrified for everyone working as a nurse or in any kind of care capacity. Its sickening and feels endlessly corrupt. The fact they are trying to keep the evidence out of the public eye in the UK is also terrifying. Free Lucy Letby or at revisit it with non biased opinions at the very least.
I wouldn’t trust the NHS, not to cover up mistakes. They try and do it all the time. Maternity units have a poor reputation in regard to mistakes, and babies deaths.
No we dont have to respect the juries verdict....thats always an easy out...they were lied to by the prosecutors and neglected by the defense
I said from the beginning of this case that the trust were failing, and senior management used her as their fall guy. As someone who works in the NHS, I have first hand experience of being blamed for patient harm by nhs managers. When the investigation concluded, and I was not the nurse found to have administered a wrong (and dangerously high) dose of insulin, I was never informed. I was left for MONTHS to wonder why I had made such a dangerous error. Months left to hate and blame myself for the actions of another nurse. It wasn’t until I received an apology from the nurse 2 months after the investigation concluded, where I found out I had nothing to do with it. At the time, it tore me apart and made me question my competency and skill. It made me question my whole career. I was wrecked with guilt and my journal entries during that time, are similar to Lucy’s. To this day, I am still waiting for an apology from senior management. It can happen to any nurse.
This case stank of convenient scapegoating for institutional failures from the moment it broke. imho she's probably very lucky that the Post Office inquiry broke, proving that organisations will cheerfully see people jailed in disgrace rather than tackle procedural problems.
Mate you’ve clearly not paid attention over the last 4 years. Nobody would be surprised at the NHS or justice system either intentionally or accidentally getting this wrong. You overestimate the people’s faith in either.
When someone is accused of a serious crime and that accusation is made public, the majority of people naturally assume that the accused would not have been made unless there was proof of guilt. In this young nurses case, there was no proof. The case against her was built by a very clever and experienced prosecuting team whose sole task is to seek a conviction,
As a retired AnE Nurse and knowing what NHS managers are really like, I always had my doubts about this. Having seen withheld information that the jury didn't see, i now know she is innocent....
The more the MSM and establishment insist she is guilty and that the police investigation and trial process were fair, the more innocent she looks. We all know a stitch up when we see one.
It’s a frightening prospect that someone could face a whole life term to conceal the incompetence of an entire department.
Now after Mark McDonalds press conference that describes how baby O died is so shocking not because a doctor made a mistake that took this baby’s life! But to lie about it & be the lead accuser of an innocent nurse is a massive scandal! Horrifying!
What does the NHS do when babies die unexplainably in their care.......... they call in the Witch finder General
Covering up negligence on a massive scale
I know all about being wrongly accused. The system does not want the truth and justice. They just want someone convenient to place the blame on and the mess to be cleaned up. The scapegoat is ALWAYS the nurse who creates waves and does not go along with the status quo. It’s the nurse that management likes the least- not because she’s a bad nurse, but because she stands up for herself and advocates for her patients, just like Lucy Letby did.
Where was her lawyer in all of this ? Didnt take up the offer of expert advice from the Royal Statistical Society, didnt call their own medical Expert Witness, didnt ssy her "confession" was therapy etc etc. Was the lawyer incompetent or a State plant? I predict the Public Inquiry will be rapidly closed down to prevent searching questions
Thank you for this. Everything Lucy did was considered suspicious, so a classic witch hunt. That poor young woman needs to be released from prison urgently, and the doctors (and others) who framed her arrested and charged with perverting the course of justice.
The NHS does everything in its power to cover-up bad practice, neglect, laziness, arrogance and ignorance, and I believe strongly that doctors and those in charge would rather blame a single person than admit their hospital is failing. I know many people who have been made seriously ill, and others who have died, because of poor practice, and it was all admitted, yet the hospital fought to the very end, so they wouldn't have to pay out. A solicitor told us the NHS has deep pockets and will fight until the person has run out of money. The whole NHS system is corrupt.
Having worked for the NHS, there are no limits to what these people will cover up, and will throw anyone under the bus.
The main stream media really destroyed this poor woman, it was a witch hunt, they decided she was a monster and she never stood a chance.
As a former nurse myself. I seriously question Lucy Letby’s guiltiness. I strongly believe she was set up by rogue Doctors. Especially if she had challenged their practice in the past. There would have been non concordance approaches by CPS and an element of corruption.
Convicted on zero evidence, and faked heavily biased statistics. The first serial killer in history to use multiple MOs, have zero past form, and zero motive.
As a former Dutch DA, penal judge and barrister with thirty years experience in courts of law I'm deeply shocked by the medieval level of the law in England. Even though the Dutch legal system like most legal systems in the world is seriously flawed at least the law that derives from the French Code Penal and procedures is in order. It seems to me to be so bad that if possible England should be expelled from the European Convention of Human Rights. It's a bloody legal witch hunt trial. If I understand it correctly the judge, prosecution, and defence decide pre trial what evidence is admissible. They must thus be telepathic. Thus the jury isn't shown the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth when as in this case during the trial expert opinions in their respective fields of expertise are brought to the attention of all parties except Lucy Letby and the jury! The so called free independent press accepts a gag order during what was it 7 or more months of a trial that with any competent judge would have been thrown out of court for lack of evidence. It shouldn't even have come to trial. For me the first time a saw some evidence of the case the what was it writing by Lucy Letby in which she stated to be a bad person is convincing evidence of someone who is innocent even though for people who don't have much experience how certain personality types react to the pressures and feelings of guilt having failed to save the babies in such a way being openly scape goated by writing it down is coping behavior I've witnessed several times in different cases. The jury should have been presented with the expert opinions based on broadly held consensus in the respective fields of expertise including the methods of research. On several key points this hasn't been the case. Leading also to a trial by media. Boy oh boy.
I am sure they wanted a scapegoat for their malpractice (we all know what was doing it) and the perfect target is someone who not only challehged them but was proved right and got an aopolgy off her seniors , they would have hated that...
It seems the media had her convicted long before the actual verdict!.
This is a classic example of what happens in the case of the most horrific crimes. People lose all sense of reason and just want to punish the first person who is brought in front of them. Birmingham Six, anyone?
If the trust had been found to be negligent, imagine what they would have had to have paid for every child that died. L.L in my mind is a scapegoat.
I spent 6 months in ICU with my daughter (23 weeks) and many times caught the nurses almost double dosing her meds. Apparently that would have killed her. I thought If every nurse had dosed immediately on shift change (without me there to say to check with the previous nurse, who hadn't updated the notes) she would have been dead many times over. ... Food for thought.
The NHS and Care Sector is loaded with scapegoating. I speak from personal experience, and a Psychiatric Nurse I spoke with confirmed it to me.
A major consideration in this case is that Lucy Letby, by the time she went to trial, was among the most famous people on earth. She had been called “The Baby Killer” so many times it was synonymous with her surname. During the run up to the trial if you typed ”Lucy” into Google it would auto fill with “Letby”. These are not normal circumstances to conduct a trial; they’re not even the usual circumstances when somebody renowned is on trial. This was wild raging world wide hatred, and there’s simply no conceivable way the jury didn’t decide on her guilt before the trial started.
The truth is that there were NO MURDERS but these poor babies died in a totally dysfunctional, under-resourced, badly led and managed unit which was bound to fail its sick patients. These babies should never have been in that unit as it was so clearly unsafe and THAT was the problem. Lucy Letby was a convenient scapegoat for a lot of powerful professional people to save themselves from disgrace. I suspect their moment is coming.....
I will share my experience, working for the NHS Scotland,got all documents, plus false allegations against me and other people,at the work place