UK - Nurse Lucy Letby Faces 22 Charges - 7 Murder/15 Attempted Murder of Babies #3

[Marantz4250b]

Do we know that she is not taking the stand?

How does it work with a defendant? Do the prosecution not have the right to question her? Is there no cross examination? Perhaps her mental health may not be good enough to take the stand?

No. Everyone has the right to stay silent if they wish.

 

[Legally Bland]

12:20 pm

The court is now being shown a walk-through of the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital, dated September 2021 - which has changed following hospital upgrades since 2016.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Friday, October 14

THE trial of Lucy Letby, the former Countess of Chester Hospital nurse accused of seven baby murders and attempting to murder 10 more, resumes today…

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

 

[Legally Bland]

12:26pm

The 10-minute video is being played to the jury, showing all the rooms in the neonatal unit, and what purpose the rooms served back in 2016.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Friday, October 14

THE trial of Lucy Letby, the former Countess of Chester Hospital nurse accused of seven baby murders and attempting to murder 10 more, resumes today…

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

 

[Marantz4250b]

The court is now being shown a walk-through of the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital, dated September 2021 - which has changed following hospital upgrades since 2016.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Friday, October 14

THE trial of Lucy Letby, the former Countess of Chester Hospital nurse accused of seven baby murders and attempting to murder 10 more, resumes today…

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

Ironically, the upgrades of which she was the face of the fundraising campaign, I think!

 

[Legally Bland]

12:30pm

The court is hearing from a list of agreed facts - ie, evidence agreed by the prosecution and defence.
The hierarchy of the Countess of Chester Hospital staff is being explained to the court.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Friday, October 14

THE trial of Lucy Letby, the former Countess of Chester Hospital nurse accused of seven baby murders and attempting to murder 10 more, resumes today…

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

 

[Legally Bland]

12:33pm

Doctors would be alerted by two forms of 'bleep' - one non-urgent, the other 'urgent' - the latter being labelled a 'crash call'.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Friday, October 14

THE trial of Lucy Letby, the former Countess of Chester Hospital nurse accused of seven baby murders and attempting to murder 10 more, resumes today…

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

 

[Legally Bland]

12:37pm

The neonatal unit baby monitors, used to monitor vulnerable/unwell babies, are now being explained to the court.
Dr Evans says if levels fall below specified values, or if monitoring equipment falls off the baby, an alarm will go off to alert medical staff.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Friday, October 14

THE trial of Lucy Letby, the former Countess of Chester Hospital nurse accused of seven baby murders and attempting to murder 10 more, resumes today…

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

 

[Legally Bland]

12:39pm

A video explaining the technicalities of the Phillips IntelliVue monitors is played to the court.
They are similar to monitors found for hospital patients, but the values are set to a 'neonatal profile', and cannot be changed.
Dr Evans explains the values for neonatal babies are different to children, and to adults. Values for neonatal babies would be "far too fast" for children.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Friday, October 14

THE trial of Lucy Letby, the former Countess of Chester Hospital nurse accused of seven baby murders and attempting to murder 10 more, resumes today…

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

 

[Legally Bland]

12:41pm

A heart-rate of 140 is "fine" for a neonatal baby, but a sign of sickness for an adult.
The normal saturation rate is 96-100 for a neonatal baby, but over oxygenation "can lead to blindness" so greater care should be taken for such babies.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Friday, October 14

THE trial of Lucy Letby, the former Countess of Chester Hospital nurse accused of seven baby murders and attempting to murder 10 more, resumes today…

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

 

[Legally Bland]

12:44pm

Alarm parameter settings can be adjusted by a nurse, but must be in 'clincially safe' settings, the video explains.
For example, a heart rate range can be between 50bpm and 165bpm, with the alarm sounding if the heart rate goes outside that range.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Friday, October 14

THE trial of Lucy Letby, the former Countess of Chester Hospital nurse accused of seven baby murders and attempting to murder 10 more, resumes today…

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

 

[Legally Bland]

12:46pm

Dr Evans explains the monitor also shows wavy lines which show how regular the heart rate is, and the pattern of breathing.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Friday, October 14

THE trial of Lucy Letby, the former Countess of Chester Hospital nurse accused of seven baby murders and attempting to murder 10 more, resumes today…

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

 

[Legally Bland]

12:51pm

The video, played to the jury, demonstrates what alarms sound when a 'yellow alarm' goes off, and a 'red alarm'. The red alarm is for more immediate emergencies, and has a different tone to the yellow alarm sound.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Friday, October 14

THE trial of Lucy Letby, the former Countess of Chester Hospital nurse accused of seven baby murders and attempting to murder 10 more, resumes today…

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

 

[Legally Bland]

12:53pm

The alarms can be 'paused', via the 'pause' button, which turns the alarm off for one minute.

12:53pm

A light will continue to show on the monitor, either yellow or red, depending on the type of alarm that sounded, even when paused.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Friday, October 14

THE trial of Lucy Letby, the former Countess of Chester Hospital nurse accused of seven baby murders and attempting to murder 10 more, resumes today…

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

 

[kittythehare]

12:53pm

The alarms can be 'paused', via the 'pause' button, which turns the alarm off for one minute.

12:53pm

A light will continue to show on the monitor, either yellow or red, depending on the type of alarm that sounded, even when paused.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Friday, October 14

THE trial of Lucy Letby, the former Countess of Chester Hospital nurse accused of seven baby murders and attempting to murder 10 more, resumes today…

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

It's reading like a very coherent and easy to understand presentation.

 

[Legally Bland]

12:58pm

The alarms can be manually turned off, the video explains, for each parameter.
If done so, a display on the monitor would show the alarm for that parameter had been turned off.
"This would not be standard practice," the court is told.
If the monitor numbers then headed outside the alarm parameters, the numbers on display would then start flashing.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Friday, October 14

THE trial of Lucy Letby, the former Countess of Chester Hospital nurse accused of seven baby murders and attempting to murder 10 more, resumes today…

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

 

[Whitehall 1212]

For anyone interested in the Phillips Intellivue Patient Monitoring, including red and yellow alarms.

 

[Legally Bland]

1:02pm

The court is now adjourning for the lunch break.
It will resume this afternoon, with Dr Evans due to give further evidence.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Friday, October 14

THE trial of Lucy Letby, the former Countess of Chester Hospital nurse accused of seven baby murders and attempting to murder 10 more, resumes today…

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

 

[catgreen]

This is exactly what I was thinking about. That even an unexplained rise in NICU mortality at any given time should have been the reason for root-cause analysis. At any given time such analysis is performed, many factors might be discussed, but how often does “a murderer among staff” is even considered as the factor?

This makes me wonder if the whole story with accusing LL started as a subjective case, with someone reporting something, be it a certain incident, or a SM post, or something inexplicable to them but seeming suspicious.

And here is my concern. What we are reading about is interpretation of someone’s behavior. What LL said during a critical situation, the FB she checked. This, yet, is not an indication of her involvement. FB behavior is subject to multiple models. If someone tells me that Lucy spends all her time on FB, I’d say, she could end in any part of it. Other situations, like: Some peculiarities in LL’s comments + a sharp rise in the deaths in the NICU at a given moment in time; or, a unit worker seeing LL directly attack an infant, might be more serious. Were there a hospital camera registering LL attacking the victim, that would be proof. But I don’t feel it existed.

There might be also a situation of LL confessing to a friend, a priest, own doctor, or someone else. This in itself is yet not a 100% proof, but could explain how the case started.

Now, about the accusations of injecting air during feeding. I remember feeding my own babies. How long would it sometimes take them to burp. And LL’s alleged victims were premature babies. With all her experience, could LL be merely negligent? Putting them in cribs too soon? Being too tired?

(What was per nurse load in NICU?)

Another situation. The accusation of injecting insulin. This should be easily traceable, what medications are drawn from the med cart. Likewise, who draws the drug, and at what time. The accusation can’t be based on hypoglycemia, it should be based on the evidence of a wrong person drawing a wrong drug at a wrong time. If that person was allowed to stay and work as a nurse after allegedly causing death by injecting insulin, then, something is amiss in the hospital.

Lots of questions. Mainly, postmortems not performed initially.

I think 'injecting air during feeding' refers to parenteral feeding (where nutrition is given intravenously) and so is not comparable at all with normal infant feeding. And I'm not sure on NICU but in most critical settings where I have worked you have the keys to the drug trolley, or the drug fridge in the case of insulin, and unless it is a controlled drug you can access any medication with the key. Normally the onus would be on the patients nurse/registered nurse to check medication dose with another nurse, but if you were up to no good I would imagine it would be relatively easy to access insulin in the very small amounts needed. I worked at Grantham Hospital in the 1980s, where Beverley Allitt worked, and I know that insulin overdose was her method of killing the babies/children

 

[Dotta]

As it happens, I have a photo of a card on my phone which I took on Monday. I was supposed to give it to someone the previous day but we didn't manage to get together as she was laid out with Covid and still is. I was intending to send her the picture of the card but never did as she's been really ill. So, perfectly legit reason for having it on my phone but not really an explanation anyone would think of.

The card was bought from a gallery near where I live and features a local scene by a local artist. If my friend were to go missing and the picture were found on my phone might it be speculated that this was the place that I'd disposed of her? Also, the card is currently locked in my safe - for legitimate reasons as I currently have builders in and I don't want it lost or damaged - so it might be suggested that it was some sort of sick trophy that I placed great value in. Also in that safe is a box containing a ring which belongs to an ex (she's asked me to keep it safe as it was her mothers and she doesn't want it lost and I have very secure facilities due to my job), an earlier exes engagement ring and some other stuff of hers. It could be made to look really weird if someone got it into their head that it was anything less than 100% legit.

Several random and unconnected events or items can be used to imply absolutely anything. It's not that hard to put two and two together and come up with six. It's pretty easy to come up with a fairly horrendous but entirely untrue story about someone. Perhaps the card is a trophy of her killing spree? Perhaps it's entirely innocent? Thus far though, I don't see much other than a lot of unconnected random events, each of which could have perfectly plausible explanation which doesn't involve serial murder. I can see why this trial is slated to be six months, quite frankly.

Hmm
You say: "random and unconnected".

And I as a sleuth say:
You seem quite a "Lady killer"

 

[Legally Bland]

2:10pm

The afternoon session is about to begin in the Lucy Letby trial.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Friday, October 14

THE trial of Lucy Letby, the former Countess of Chester Hospital nurse accused of seven baby murders and attempting to murder 10 more, resumes today…

www.chesterstandard.co.uk