VERDICT WATCH UK - Nurse Lucy Letby, Faces 22 Charges - 7 Murder/15 Attempted Murder of Babies #30

[marynnu]

So how did Letby get into room 1 from room 3 where she was looking after 2 children without being seen ?

No idea if she was seen going in there or not, but didn't she confirm she was the only person in the room when Baby C collapsed?

 

[CS2C]

No idea bif she was seen going in there or not, but didn't she confirm she was the only person in the room when Baby C collapsed?

Originally in police interview she said she wasn’t sure but because Sophie Ellis had told the police she was at the incubator she believed that to be correct. It wasn’t until she was told which babies she was looking after that night and the fact Melanie Taylor didn’t mention Letby in the room at the same stage Sophie Ellis claims, she then realised she was in room three and actually attended AFTER being alerted that there was a problem in room one.

 

[JosieJo]

Also what I found a little odd is where Nurse Sophie Ellis claims she left the room “around the corner” I can only imagine looking at the layout that she means to the nursing station ? And then Letby appears in room 1. So how did Letby get into room 1 from room 3 where she was looking after 2 children without being seen ?

A retrospective note written by Ms Ellis says: "Had 2x fleeting [Bradycardia]s - self correcting not needing any intervention shortly before prolonged [Bradycardia] and apneoa requiring resus[citation].

She said she had left the room "just around the corner", then the alarm went off. She said she could not recall which type of alarm it was - a lower-level yellow or a more frequent [urgent] red alarm.

She said she went into the nursery, having been out for "not a long" time.

She recalls, upon entering: "I saw Lucy standing at [Child C's] incubator. She said he had just had a Brady and a desaturation. I can't remember what she was doing at the time."

Was LL in room 3 at the time ? Despite her babies being In room 3 her starting point could have been anywhere,?

Do we know which corner Sophie meant ,? Could she just as easily gone towards the staff room?

 

[Parker Knoll]

This is the CS write up for that days cross examination.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Monday, October 31

The trial of Lucy Letby, who denies murdering seven babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital neonatal unit and attempting to murder 10 more,…

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

 

[katydid23]

That said, the police prompting for a specific person could be perceived as leading.

Exactly. Very early on if they had asked each person--- " was Nurse Letby there?" ---that would be seen as leading and possibly unfairly prompting a desired answer. JMO

 

[katydid23]

Also what I found a little odd is where Nurse Sophie Ellis claims she left the room “around the corner” I can only imagine looking at the layout that she means to the nursing station ? And then Letby appears in room 1. So how did Letby get into room 1 from room 3 where she was looking after 2 children without being seen ?

A retrospective note written by Ms Ellis says: "Had 2x fleeting [Bradycardia]s - self correcting not needing any intervention shortly before prolonged [Bradycardia] and apneoa requiring resus[citation].

She said she had left the room "just around the corner", then the alarm went off. She said she could not recall which type of alarm it was - a lower-level yellow or a more frequent [urgent] red alarm.

She said she went into the nursery, having been out for "not a long" time.

She recalls, upon entering: "I saw Lucy standing at [Child C's] incubator. She said he had just had a Brady and a desaturation. I can't remember what she was doing at the time."

." So how did Letby get into room 1 from room 3 where she was looking after 2 children without being seen ?"

I think there is a difference between 'not being seen' and 'not being noticed' JMO

In a small unit, where everyone is busy and preoccupied, they are not always noticing colleagues routine comings and goings through the hallways.

 

[notsure]

I've been wondering if we might think about how the jury might have organised their deliberations.

Imagine you are the foreperson and it's day 1 of jury retirement, and you have to all agree the way in which you will structure the discussion of these cases.

Even though the prosecution mixed it up a little bit in their closing speech, and provided lists of patterns to consider, would you follow the same approach? I think it could quickly get messy, if they decide to use patterns as their order of deliberation, because then you are jumping in at random points of the year, if say you are looking at the cases where the prosecution say she attacked when parents had just left, you then miss the context of the evolution of change of alleged methods, say her beginning to allegedly falsify babies' notes to say doctors had examined when they hadn't and babies had started to deteriorate when they hadn't, and texting friends to say the babies were poorly on handover etc.

I think the starting point makes a difference to how deliberations would evolve. The insulin poisonings could, if the jury decided she was guilty of them, provide a springboard from which they would accept the mindset of malice aforethought, which you wouldn't have if you started at A. Even if you started at A, your mind would still be conscious of what laid ahead, but would you decide that you should put the blinkers on and not consider that until you got to it? And then would you discuss F and L together and interrupt the sequence, or still plough through in date order?

I think they might have collectively agreed to start at A and work in order, which might also have been at the expense of using the alleged patterns, at least initially. It would avoid the messiness of jumping forwards and backwards, and people having different ideas about what for them was their strongest case. It might not be the best way of deliberating but it avoids what might be perceived as personal biases and less time spent deliberating how to deliberate, rather than actually deliberating the cases.

Great post, Tortoise. I guess we'll never know how they reach their decision, but it's fascinating to speculate about the possible approaches.

For me, one of the biggest dilemmas is having to consider cases both individually and in the context of all the other charges as a whole.

For instance, if the jurors are convinced of guilt in a number of the charges and decide that she is therefore probably guilty of the others, even though less overwhelmingly convincing - does that not potentially create a problem in future if one of the charges is somehow proven to be unreliable? Would that make the convictions as a whole unreliable?

If, on the other hand, they find her guilty of some charges and not guilty of others, they must be aware that this is going to cause great distress to some of the parents.

No wonder they're taking so long!

IMO

 

[Tortoise]

Cross-examination revealed that LL was not in nursery 3 just before baby C collapsed -

10:44am

Mr Johnson says text messages were exchanged between Letby and Jennifer Jones-Key between 11.01pm and 11.09pm.
Letby says she does not accept she was in room 1 at the time of Child C's collapse. She says she has "no memory" of it.
Nurse Sophie Ellis had said she was in room 1 at the time, and Letby said in police interview, based on that, she was in room 1.
Letby says she "disputes" that, as she has "no memory" of it.
"Do you dispute being born?" Mr Johnson asks.
"No." Letby replies.
NJ: "But you have no memory of it?"
LL: "No."

10:50am

Letby is asked why she let a band 4 nursery nurse look after her designated baby.
Letby says it's "not unusual" for band 4 nurses to assist her in her duties.
LL: "I have no memory of that".
NJ: "Did you have something better to do?"
LL: "No."
Mr Johnson says the text at 11.01pm sent by Letby to Jennifer Jones-Key meant she must not have been in a clinical area, and would not have had time to feed her designated baby in room 3.
LL: "I can't answer that."
Mr Johnson says it took her out of the nursing area. Letby said she would have been "in the doorway" of the unit.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, May 19 - cross-examination continues

The court is shown the neonatal schedule for the night shift of June 13-14, 2015. Letby is shown recording observations for her designated babies, and made medication prescriptions for babies not in room 1.
Letby says the medications for those babies would have been drawn up in room 1. "They could not have been done in a special care nursery".

In police interview, it is put to Letby that Child C collapsed six minutes after she sent the last of her text messages.
Letby: "I don't recall where I was at the time" - Letby says she may have been in a nursing station before going into room 1.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, May 18 - prosecution cross-examines Letby

Johnson put it to Letby that when Ellis went to the nurses' station, "that was the opportunity you took to sabotage (baby C) wasn't it?"
"No," she responded.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-65602988/page/2

 

[Dotta]

Great post, Tortoise. I guess we'll never know how they reach their decision, but it's fascinating to speculate about the possible approaches.

For me, one of the biggest dilemmas is having to consider cases both individually and in the context of all the other charges as a whole.

For instance, if the jurors are convinced of guilt in a number of the charges and decide that she is therefore probably guilty of the others, even though less overwhelmingly convincing - does that not potentially create a problem in future if one of the charges is somehow proven to be unreliable? Would that make the convictions as a whole unreliable?

If, on the other hand, they find her guilty of some charges and not guilty of others, they must be aware that this is going to cause great distress to some of the parents.

No wonder they're taking so long!

IMO

These are allegedly "medical killings" of vulnerable patients.
Very difficult to prove if taken separately.

One needs to look at the whole picture.
Then patterns emerge.

Only those perps who went overboard were ever caught.

Their sheer arrogance was their downfall.

JMO

 

[notsure]

These are allegedly "medical killings" of vulnerable patients.
Very difficult to prove if taken separately.

One needs to look at the whole picture.
Then patterns emerge.

Only those perps who went overboard were ever caught.

JMO

That suggests a verdict of guilty of all charges or not guilty of all charges, I suppose?

 

[Dotta]

That suggests a verdict of guilty of all charges or not guilty of all charges, I suppose?

I have no idea how the Jury will treat these charges.
I only know my point of view

 

[Tortoise]

Great post, Tortoise. I guess we'll never know how they reach their decision, but it's fascinating to speculate about the possible approaches.

For me, one of the biggest dilemmas is having to consider cases both individually and in the context of all the other charges as a whole.

For instance, if the jurors are convinced of guilt in a number of the charges and decide that she is therefore probably guilty of the others, even though less overwhelmingly convincing - does that not potentially create a problem in future if one of the charges is somehow proven to be unreliable? Would that make the convictions as a whole unreliable?

If, on the other hand, they find her guilty of some charges and not guilty of others, they must be aware that this is going to cause great distress to some of the parents.

No wonder they're taking so long!

IMO

They must be sure she did a harmful act (with the requisite intention) to each of the babies they convict on. It's not a case of she probably did; probably being only 51% certain. Any case in which they are so sure, can be (but doesn't have to be) used to "support" (not be the entire basis for) their decision that any other baby was intentionally harmed and she was the person responsible.

If she is convicted of some or all of the charges, there will never be any way of knowing how the jury reached that level of certainty. They could do it without using other cases as support and ignoring the experts' opinions on cause.

Just as a for instance, they might decide that they aren't sure it was air embolism, but that she did something harmful that the experts aren't aware of. They could decide in one of the cases where the experts are less certain of cause, that any number of other factors, or just one, such as false/altered nursing notes, the timing of people leaving, the treating doctors saying the collapses defied their years of experience, the spreadsheet, make them sure of her guilt.

For these reasons I don't believe, if new evidence came to light relating to one of the babies, that it would disturb any of the other verdicts. It might give grounds for appeal for that charge, but it might not succeed on balance because of the remaining convictions and because of the circumstantial evidence as a whole that was available for that baby.

If a new virus was discovered which can cause sudden death, or sudden collapse and equally sudden recovery, or reversal, it might make a selection of the convictions unsafe, and give grounds for a new trial for those cases, but I don't see much chance of said virus existing - only affecting one baby at a time, spread over a year, in only one NNU in the country, at the precise hour and minute that one nurse was consistently on duty, with all the other variables taken into consideration such as other people leaving the cotside, also while other babies were deliberately poisoned on the same unit.

JMO

 

[RichardKimble]

That suggests a verdict of guilty of all charges or not guilty of all charges, I suppose?

In the trial of Robert Black, similar fact evidence was used linking three murders, the police understood that if it failed on the first charge all would fail, conversely if it was proven on the first charge then all would succeed, is there a element of that in here or are all judged alone?

 

[Kemug]

Does anyone think deliberations could go into September?

I'd be ok with that, so long as it's September 2023.

 

[Eloise]

In the trial of Robert Black, similar fact evidence was used linking three murders, the police understood that if it failed on the first charge all would fail, conversely if it was proven on the first charge then all would succeed, is there a element of that in here or are all judged alone?

the jury is considering each separately. She could be found guilty of all, some or none. That's all up to the jury. The judge did give them the advice that they could look at them as a whole, though.

 

[RichardKimble]

the jury is considering each separately. She could be found guilty of all, some or none. That's all up to the jury. The judge did give them the advice that they could look at them as a whole, though.

Thanks, is there any indication of which order, murders first or attempted murder first?

 

[Parker Knoll]

No - they can find verdicts in whichever order they like.
When asked in court to give their verdicts when reached it will be in indictment order so Baby A - Baby Q

 

[Parker Knoll]

This must of been an utter nightmare for the CPS to charge.
We have two previous arrests and bails then the final arrest and charges issued and between each arrest further evidence gathering.
Too “ many “ charges and it could become overwhelming for a jury ( and not to mention the prosecution counsel to present though IMO he did a first rate job ) but all of the separate charges were intrinsically linked to show the bigger picture so we’re totally necessary.
Minefield.
JMO

 

[RichardKimble]

This must of been an utter nightmare for the CPS to charge.
We have two previous arrests and bails then the final arrest and charges issued and between each arrest further evidence gathering.
Too “ many “ charges and it could become overwhelming for a jury ( and not to mention the prosecution counsel to present though IMO he did a first rate job ) but all of the separate charges were intrinsically linked to show the bigger picture so we’re totally necessary.
Minefield.
JMO

So in effect if intrinsically linked it's akin to similar fact.

IMO the CPS had the easy bit, it's the jury who have the devil's own job, let's say babies x,y,z survive an attempt on their lives either by the grace of God or medical intervention, how on earth do at least 10 of a jury decide someone is guilty BARD.
Incidentally now I've raised that how did the 15 survive alleged attempts on their lives, was it intervention?

 

[Tortoise]

Imagine the day had arrived when all the expert medical opinions were in, and someone was tasked with entering the dates of events flagged 'suspicious' and the nurses' shift-data into Excel. It must have been like winning on the fruit machine in that office.

JMO