UK - Nurse Lucy Letby, murder of babies, 7 Guilty of murder verdicts; 8 Guilty of attempted murder; 2 Not Guilty of attempted; 5 hung re attempted #35

[Tortoise]

I think the MSM is being absolutely irresponsible with this, giving mouthpieces to some absolute cranks. They aren't considering the damage this is doing to confidence in the justice system, including our most senior judges and barristers on both sides, esteemed experts used in the trial, harm to the victims' families, and undermining not only the jurors who served but those who are yet to serve in the future, in a world in which everyone and their dog can not only get a platform to express hateful and defamatory opinions but have them printed by MSM in a battle for clicks. I think it is inciting more of this kind of behaviour and they should be held to account, because it is contemptuous of court, the police and the CPS, and undermining the entire justice system, which is dangerous territory in the wrong hands. It is happening all over, with demonstrators outside courts in the US turning up and trying to interfere with jurors and legal process. IMO

 

[Eloise]

I think its a confluence of things... its a general refusal for people to believe that young, conventionally attractive women can be evil, especially in regards to child victims. I think if she was a nurse who was older, schlubbier, perhaps a man, nobody would have blinked an eye at the convictions and sentence received. But its also a general distrust these days of social institutions such as governments and courts; and, its a growing tendency for larger quantities of people to think there are conspiracies afoot. The mainstream media's skewing towards sensationalism for clicks rather than reporting investigated facts sure doesn't help. Also, I think very few people who actually sat through ALL the trial would think anything other than she deserves what she got; but these days it feels like very few people have the mental stamina for more than superficial, easily digested clickbait.

This post just all MOO

 

[ColourPurple]

I think all of those 'LucyIsInnocent' twitter accounts and FB profiles and TikTok's finally grew viral. It caught on and those who never followed the trial could read the cherry picked 'facts' and could then believe this poor young nurse was railroaded by the NHS.

I think it would be different if there were actually facts involved ( I note you used quotation marks for the word facts ) but those of us who followed the trial in great detail know that these theories are largely based on the twisting of truth, deliberate misinformation and in some cases full blown lies.

The people who are new to the story don’t realise this and think they are reading an accurate summary of events, but the ones who spread the misinformation in the first place do, and it all stems from the same tiny group of people who tried to intervene in the first trial and were warned for possible contempt of court.

The majority of people who followed the trial were satisfied with the result and moved on. The anonymity orders meant that there were none of the usual mainstream articles about the victims, their families and the impact LL’s crimes had on them. Add to that the reporting restrictions because of the retrial, and this created a vacuum, which on social media was filled by this small minority who had decided LL was innocent and did everything they could to spread the word.

Accuracy or honesty didn’t seem to be a priority and the focus appeared to be on increasing their numbers by any means necessary. One of the ringleaders’ social media account is full of claims that the police, the court and the senior doctors were all corrupt and that the judge was a “biased fool.” They also make claims that several medical experts deliberately lied in court and claim that LL witnessed a doctor euthanise a baby. The lies are frankly disgusting and it’s this same person who has been courting the press and spreading the word that LL is innocent and didn’t get a fair trial!

I won’t even get started on the source of the claims that the science was all wrong. I do still believe that at some point the people behind these stories will become the story, and people will wonder how the hell things got this far, but Jesus it’s frustrating to watch in the meantime!

 

[ColourPurple]

I think the MSM is being absolutely irresponsible with this, giving mouthpieces to some absolute cranks. They aren't considering the damage this is doing to confidence in the justice system, including our most senior judges and barristers on both sides, esteemed experts used in the trial, harm to the victims' families, and undermining not only the jurors who served but those who are yet to serve in the future, in a world in which everyone and their dog can not only get a platform to express hateful and defamatory opinions but have them printed by MSM in a battle for clicks. I think it is inciting more of this kind of behaviour and they should be held to account, because it is contemptuous of court, the police and the CPS, and undermining the entire justice system, which is dangerous territory in the wrong hands. It is happening all over, with demonstrators outside courts in the US turning up and trying to interfere with jurors and legal process. IMO

There’s also this weird assumption that people’s own opinions on something they admit they don’t know the full details about , are more important than the opinions of the jury who saw and heard every bit of evidence in a 10 month trial! This isn’t X factor , there was no public vote. The GBP don’t get to decide whether LL was guilty of not. That was the jury’s job!

The fact that somebody who has read a biased summary of events is not convinced “beyond reasonable doubt” that LL is guilty is frankly irrelevant. And why do they keep using the term “beyond reasonable doubt”? Aside from the fact that it’s now been replaced by “sure” in UK courts, it has never been the case that everybody in the country needed to be convinced “beyond reasonable doubt” of somebody’s guilt. It was always only the jury.

ETA that’s not to say that there can’t ever be miscarriages of justice, but a conviction will never be overturned just because some uninformed random member of the public wasn’t convinced beyond reasonable doubt.