UK - Healthcare worker arrested on suspicion of murder/attempted murder of a number of babies, 2018

[annpats]

Newborn deaths doubled at hospital where nurse arrested on suspicion of babies' murders worked

According to this article, deaths at The Countess of Cheater Hospital where she worked, went from 'unremarkable' to the highest in the country.

 

[Mrs Marple]

I wonder how much will be disproving other theories such as poor practice and training etc.

 

[Marantz4250b]

Newborn deaths doubled at hospital where nurse arrested on suspicion of babies' murders worked

According to this article, deaths at The Countess of Cheater Hospital where she worked, went from 'unremarkable' to among the highest in the country.

Sorry, it's a tad harsh to insert that into your post but accuracy matters here.

This relates back to the point I made earlier; in the Italian case deaths dropped significantly at the time coinciding with admissions dropping significantly, which was immediately after DP stopped working there. Similarly, TCoC stopped caring for premature babies sometime after it instigated it's own investigation in June 2016 - which, by amazing coincidence, happened to be just around the time of the last alleged offence by LL. So, when LL stopped killing or attempting to kill premature babies (allegedly), no premature babies were present at the unit in any event and deaths reduced dramatically entirely naturally.

Any legitimate statistical analysis of the death figures has to control for the change in status of the patients and their vulnerability to dying. If patients with say an 80 rating of death in any week are alternated for patients with a 50 rating of dying in any week and you change the nursing staff at the same time then then the previous nursing staff will by definition be on shift during the occurrence of more deaths.

 

[annpats]

I wonder how much will be disproving other theories such as poor practice and training etc.

Failing any concrete evidence for LL killing all of the 8 deceased babies, I think that will be the crux of the case.

 

[ZaZara]

I can't claim much credit for finding that, it was just on some random twitter feed which came up via a Google search. I don't even have a Twitter account. Credit goes to whoever posted it to Twitter.

Love your avatar btw, Uranium Glass?

You are not going to believe this, but the material is called Lucite....

Lucite Frog, by Abraham Palatnik

 

[Marantz4250b]

You are not going to believe this, but the material is called Lucite....

Lucite Frog, by Abraham Palatnik

Hahaha....no way!

In the spirit of weird stuff.....and at the risk of sounding like some massive, rampant conspira-loon....I've just put LL's old address in Chester (the one the police searched back in 2018) into Google maps and the house directly across the street and about two or three houses up from it is completely blurred out from Street View. The whole building, totally. I can't claim to use GM a great deal but I can't ever recall seeing an entire building blurred out. Why would that be necessary?

It'll be totally unrelated, I'm sure, but everything that comes to light about this is just that bit stranger than the last!

 

[annpats]

I've just put LL's old address in Chester (the one the police searched back in 2018) into Google maps and the house directly across the street and about two or three houses up from it is completely blurred out from Street View. The whole building, totally. I can't claim to use GM a great deal but I can't ever recall seeing an entire building blurred out. Why would that be necessary?

You can request to Google to have your house blurred out Google Streetview on privacy grounds.
A colleague of mine has done it. He and his family are big local business people. He's also running for local councillor.
I suppose it stops nosey people, although I personally think it's a bit OTT.
But nice to know it is an option.

 

[Marantz4250b]

You can request to Google to have your house blurred out Google Streetview on privacy grounds.
A colleague of mine has done it. He and his family are big local business people. He's also running for local councillor.
I suppose it stops nosey people, although I personally think it's a bit OTT.
But nice to know it is an option.

I had no idea you were able to do that!

 

[ZaZara]

Hahaha....no way!

In the spirit of weird stuff.....and at the risk of sounding like some massive, rampant conspira-loon....I've just put LL's old address in Chester (the one the police searched back in 2018) into Google maps and the house directly across the street and about two or three houses up from it is completely blurred out from Street View. The whole building, totally. I can't claim to use GM a great deal but I can't ever recall seeing an entire building blurred out. Why would that be necessary?

It'll be totally unrelated, I'm sure, but everything that comes to light about this is just that bit stranger than the last!

Okay, so here's your homework for today.

Make a statistic analysis of the probabilty that a forum member with a 'Lucite' avatar is interested in a case about a suspect named Lucy.

Of course this is nonsense. Perhaps you can build a model that indicates a correlation, but correlation is not causation and neither is it in this case. No way did my avatar cause me to become interested in the arrest of Nurse Lucy. In fact, if and when you present your model, I'll be especially interested to see if you included the fact that I had a different avatar when the news about this case broke and I posted for the first time.

It is no different for a statistical analysis of cases of suspected murders. There are so many factors that might play a role, and they may not be what they seem at first sight. The blog was great reading, because the author debunks a lot of them.
IMO what I think happens is that the 'experts' built a seemingly convincing story / model to prove guilt. There is bias to begin with. The doubts about these models are reasonable, and many judges fail to see that.

Makes one wonder why the practice persists.

 

[Marantz4250b]

Okay, so here's your homework for today.

Make a statistic analysis of the probabilty that a forum member with a 'Lucite' avatar is interested in a case about a suspect named Lucy.

Of course this is nonsense. Perhaps you can build a model that indicates a correlation, but correlation is not causation and neither is it in this case. No way did my avatar cause me to become interested in the arrest of Nurse Lucy. In fact, if and when you present your model, I'll be especially interested to see if you included the fact that I had a different avatar when the news about this case broke and I posted for the first time.

It is no different for a statistical analysis of cases of suspected murders. There are so many factors that might play a role, and they may not be what they seem at first sight. The blog was great reading, because the author debunks a lot of them.
IMO what I think happens is that the 'experts' built a seemingly convincing story / model to prove guilt. There is bias to begin with. The doubts about these models are reasonable, and many judges fail to see that.

Makes one wonder why the practice persists.

These are all excellent points! It is not a simple area and when the press pipes up with ...cos deaths rose a bit.... that will be taken by a lot of people as being code for "she must be guilty". The whole issue surrounding shift patterns against deaths (if it even plays a part, but I bet it will) is that it's potentially a very, very complicated area. It took me a couple of times of reading that part about "statistically, most nurses will experience more deaths on their ward when on shift than off because more of them are onshift when people die" before it dropped as to what they were going on about. It would be quite a thing to have to sit on a jury all day for six months being continually bombarded with information like that.

I certainly think you're correct about what the initial experts were trying to do - consciously or not. The issue with testimony like this is that you need similar experts to refute it and such people I'd guess are somewhat thin on the ground. In the closing part of that paper he says (which I think you quoted) something to the effect of "I hope I don't end up working a Lucy Letby's case". I wonder whether it might an idea for her defence people to give him a call anyway rather than needing him for an appeal?

 

[Jules2021]

Are the press going to be reporting on the trial from the start or do we hear nothing at all until it's finished and she's been found guilty or not guilty? First major trial I'll be following so excuse the ignorance.

 

[Sarahlou]

Are the press going to be reporting on the trial from the start or do we hear nothing at all until it's finished and she's been found guilty or not guilty? First major trial I'll be following so excuse the ignorance.

They will report throughout the trial

 

[Jules2021]

^^ Thanks!

 

[Kemug]

If Lucy isn't already crazy, she probably will be by the time this is all over.

 

[Bakers]

That daily rate is for loss of earnings, it wouldn't be paid to someone who is retired for example.

Wow really so would the likes of the retired get any allowance apart from food allowance ?

 

[annpats]

Wow really so would the likes of the retired get any allowance apart from food allowance ?

No, I don't think so.

Jury service doesn't pay you, it only compensates you for loss of earnings. So, if you're unemployed, or retired, there's nothing to compensate.

 

[Ruby12345]

If it were something as simple as he 'just being on shift' when the deaths happened, then it wouldn't even have got to trial, because that is only circumstantial evidence, and not solid proof. Whatever they've got on her has to be forensic evidence.

Happened to Rebecca Leighton - arrested and jailed solely based on her shift pattern.

 

[ChatteringBirds]

We don't know what the proposed method is yet, but IMO they are going to have to show it couldn't have been sabotage/ framing by a colleague, someone else who had access to whatever means they are proposing.
I am not saying I believe that happened, but if I were on the jury, I'd have to be confident it couldn't have. JMO.

 

[Bakers]

We don't know what the proposed method is yet, but IMO they are going to have to show it couldn't have been sabotage/ framing by a colleague, someone else who had access to whatever means they are proposing.
I am not saying I believe that happened, but if I were on the jury, I'd have to be confident it couldn't have. JMO.

They won't have to show it wasn't framing by others, her guilt is what they need to show

 

[ChatteringBirds]

They won't have to show it wasn't framing by others, her guilt is what they need to show

Right her guilt, but there was discussion of cases that have tried show guilt by use of statistics, etc. And I'm agreeing that's not enough.