UK - Nurse Lucy Letby Faces 22 Charges - 7 Murder/15 Attempted Murder of Babies #6

[MsBetsy]

Yes. To be honest I think she could be confused over the time because she also recalled seeing Dr Brunton there, and I think the evidence reads that he reviewed baby D after 8pm. I tend to think it was LL because she recognised the same nurse holding the phone to Dr Brunton's ear at 4am. Hopefully it will become clearer with more witnesses. Maybe we'll find out it wasn't LL holding the phone, which would change everything.

We haven't heard from the father concerning the time, have we?

 

[Dotta]

I wonder about the atmosphere in this hospital now.

The state of mind of people working there.

It must be awful to see the place of work splashed across the media in this context.

Not to mention being ready to be questioned by LE at any moment.

How do the patients feel?
Are they reassured they are "in good hands"?

I feel sympathy.

 

[Anxala]

“Mum tells jury about a time before D died when Lucy #Letby was the only nurse in the room when she and her husband went to see D. Mum says Ms Letby was “sort of hovering by the incubator but not doing much. She sort of just was watching us.”

This is interesting in the context of comments here suggesting that LL should never have left the side of babies she was assigned to and that it was unusual behaviour for her to be assisting colleagues and engaging with other infants.

Here, it sounds like her staying at the baby’s bedside is also observed as being an odd behaviour.

Perhaps an example of how, through the lens of suspicion, all actions can start to look suspicious.

A very interesting day of testimony and evidence! I wish we were getting more in-depth coverage.

^ Agree. And I think it's reasonable to wonder - with absolutely no disrespect to the poor parents - how much recollections have been subsequently influenced and informed by the knowledge that the same nurse went on to be accused of deliberately murdering their babies. The below comes across to me as a recollection informed very much by the above:

"...sort of hovering by the incubator but not doing much. She sort of just was watching us."

The 'sort of hovering' and the 'sort of just was watching us' in particular. I just don't feel that's a recollection that can be relied upon as it's (a) laden with after-the-fact subjective suspicion and (b) reeks of 'Now that I know what she's been accused of, I felt there was something very off about her at the time'.

That's not to say of course that LL is not guilty of what she's been accused of, just that I don't think these later recollections by people under such awful emotional strain at the time can add anything useful to the 'evidence of guilt' bag.

JMO of course.

 

[Dotta]

^ Agree. And I think it's reasonable to wonder - with absolutely no disrespect to the poor parents - how much recollections have been subsequently influenced and informed by the knowledge that the same nurse went on to be accused of deliberately murdering their babies. The below comes across to me as a recollection informed very much by the above:




The 'hovering' and the 'sort of just was watching us' in particular. I just don't feel that's a recollection that can be relied upon as it's (a) laden with subjective intent and (b) reeks of 'Now that I know what she's been accused of, I felt there was something off about her at the time'.

That's not to say of course that LL is not guilty of what she's been accused of, just that I don't think these recollections by people under such awful emotional strain at the time can add anything useful to the 'evidence of guilt' bag.

And JMO of course.

I consider parents' recollections as emotive.

"Your intellect may be confused but your emotions will never lie to you" (Roger Ebert)

Emotions we felt even during childhood (either positive or negative) stay with us till we die.
Emotions come first, they are released in response to specific circumstances.

"Hovering" "watching" by somebody were what they experienced and felt.

I believe these parents more than anybody else.

 

[Tortoise]

I consider parents' recollections as emotive.

"Your intellect may be confused but your emotions will never lie to you" (Roger Ebert)

Emotions we felt even during childhood (either positive or negative) stay with us till we die.
Emotions come first, they are released in response to specific circumstances.

"Hovering" "watching" by somebody were what they experienced and felt.

I believe these parents more than anybody else.

I agree.

To me it feels as if there is a weird kind of 'ownership' of, or relationship to, the babies going on in LL's mind.

The parents aren't alleging crimes against her, they are all giving very similar anecdotal evidence about feeling their most private moments with their babies were violated.

Allegedly -
Trying to take baby C away from his grieving parents before he'd died.
Spectating when baby D's mother came to see her for the first time in 24 hours since she'd given birth.
Inserting her own experience into the grieving mother's harrowing process of bathing her dead baby.
Evidently -
Texting about them and making Fb searches for their parents months later, which (IMO) shows she had retained a relationship to the babies, some of whom she claims not to have been involved with nursing beyond signing a prescription.

These anecdotes provide insights into the personality of the accused, IMO.

 

[Tortoise]

We haven't heard from the father concerning the time, have we?

No, only the mother.

 

[Sweeper2000]

Just been scanning through the records, apparently when LL was being questioned by police about her interactions with the mother who police state was “fobbed off” if I got that correct. In her own words the time she said “trust me I’m a nurse” to the mum her own words to the police were “I got rid of the mum”. Not something an empathetic individual says considering the circumstances.

 

[Sweeper2000]

I’ve just found a article that seems to have some details about the hospital and the maternity service there. It’s not exactly glowing but all in all it might give an insight as to what you can expect in the defences case.

Health worker is arrested on suspicion of the murder of eight babies

Police investigating the suspicious deaths of eight babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016 are searching the home of nurse Lucy Letby, pictured.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Also gives you the number of babies who unfortunately passed away over the years. I think the general expected number is about three or four but in 2015 jumped to eight. That’s a difficult number to get your head around as it’s still not too far from what is expected.

That article also mentions how a baby passed away after senior docs put a tube down the wrong hole. That seems like a basic mistake but I know nothing about that procedure. So can’t say for sure.

 

[JosieJo]

I’ve just found a article that seems to have some details about the hospital and the maternity service there. It’s not exactly glowing but all in all it might give an insight as to what you can expect in the defences case.

Health worker is arrested on suspicion of the murder of eight babies

Police investigating the suspicious deaths of eight babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016 are searching the home of nurse Lucy Letby, pictured.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Also gives you the number of babies who unfortunately passed away over the years. I think the general expected number is about three or four but in 2015 jumped to eight. That’s a difficult number to get your head around as it’s still not too far from what is expected.

That article also mentions how a baby passed away after senior docs put a tube down the wrong hole. That seems like a basic mistake but I know nothing about that procedure. So can’t say for sure.

It's double what was expected so imo very significant.
Especially as the first alleged incident wasn't until half way through the year

 

[Marantz4250b]

Wow thank you for all that hard work Tortoise! It must have taken a long time. It's very useful to see the events ordered but I've noticed that the mother allegedly wanted LL to leave the room at 7pm on 21/6 but then swipe data shows LL arriving at 7.26, if I've understood that correctly. So I'm not sure how that works?

This is exactly what I was getting at days ago when I was talking about the fallibility of eye witness evidence. Unless you have multiple people, people who don't know of the existence of other eye witnesses, recounting essentially identical facts then it needs to be treated with a very high level of skepticism. It's usually very, very unreliable. When you include the fact of it being a recollection of a highly stressful and emotional situation (which the majority of evidence which reaches court will be) then the reliability of it is even worse.

I am not in any way at all saying or implying that the mother in this case is intentionally saying stuff that isn't true but the simple fact of the matter is that her evidence cannot be true. It is a simple impossibility as Lucy Letby wasn't even in the building at the time she is referring to, let alone on duty, and that is 100% provable from the card swipe data.

 

[Sweeper2000]

It's double what was expected so imo very significant.
Especially as the first alleged incident wasn't until half way through the year

I hear yah definitely. I’m just wondering if eight is within the parameters of what I think the nhs call a never event. Something that happens but so rarely that when it does alarms ring. Some years before the figure was 1 death on the maternity ward then 2 3 4. It Fluctuates apparently but I thought this might be due to the countess transferring high risk babies to other hospitals and then that’s the one that gets the casualty figures. Is that a variable they have considered do you think? I might say that a level three hospital would sooner transfer high risk and very high risk babies to a tertiary unit.

Somebody upthread mentioned the cluster of cases at the start of the alleged attacks, it’s also a cluster of fatalities within the alleged attacks counting for five of them. that’s something noticeable I think, you would have to assume there being a reason for it, and also the period of six weeks with no attacks. Would that time period be accounted for LL being on holiday or something else that would keep her away from patients? Two of the three attacks on siblings are within the first five attacks as well but tbh I’m not going to assume a pattern amongst siblings being attacked. Strange also that a killer would start by trying to kill two babies on successive nights. Suggestive of a serious serious problem if guilty. If she was getting a high off of it it’s normally the way there is a break inbetween. That’s not fitting for a SK IMO.

I also have to mention that she actually spoke to a colleague about “three unexplained deaths”. One wouldn’t think she would try and draw attention to it if she was hiding something, isn’t it a fact that she also talked about the deaths to other colleagues? Could be feigned ofc but that’s a serious deviant if it is. I’m not actually convinced by the alleged falsified notes either, why only for child E if she did all of it? Would have to be more than one set of falsified notes to be definitely suspect, surely?

 

[Supernovae]

I hear yah definitely. I’m just wondering if eight is within the parameters of what I think the nhs call a never event. Something that happens but so rarely that when it does alarms ring. Some years before the figure was 1 death on the maternity ward then 2 3 4. It Fluctuates apparently but I thought this might be due to the countess transferring high risk babies to other hospitals and then that’s the one that gets the casualty figures. Is that a variable they have considered do you think? I might say that a level three hospital would sooner transfer high risk and very high risk babies to a tertiary unit.

I don't think the "never event" concept applies here. A never event is a specific event that should never happen if appropriate systems are in place to stop it- such as amputating the wrong limb. It doesn't apply to a particular number of deaths. Not to get too technical (and my statistical knowledge is very basic I should add), but a binary event like death/survival will be distributed according to a Poisson distribution.

Poisson distribution - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I believe I would need denominator data to calculate the Poisson probability of 8 deaths but no number ever truly reaches a probability of zero, and 8 (compared to 3) doesn't jump out to me as so shocking that it would never happen considering there are many many units operating throughout the world, and I believe Richard Gill said something similar in previous threads.

It's been noted elsewhere that a kill count would need to be Shipman-level horrifying to become obvious purely on a statistical level:

How to become a convicted serial killer (without killing anyone) – The Justice Gap

"The establishment wants the public to believe that, since the Shipman case, it is now easier to detect when a health professional kills (or sexually assaults) a patient. It’s good if the public think there will never be ‘another Shipman’ and Ben Geen and Colin Norrisbeing jailed for 30 years apiece sent out that message; as has the string of doctors convicted of sexual assault but statistics have shown that a GP would have to have a killing rate to rival Shipman’s in order to have any chance of coming to the attention of the criminal justice system."​

 

[Supernovae]

I consider parents' recollections as emotive.

"Your intellect may be confused but your emotions will never lie to you" (Roger Ebert)

Emotions we felt even during childhood (either positive or negative) stay with us till we die.
Emotions come first, they are released in response to specific circumstances.

"Hovering" "watching" by somebody were what they experienced and felt.

I believe these parents more than anybody else.

Funnily enough I only the other day (in a completely different context) happened upon the following, in the case of Gestmin V Credit Suisse, which is very relevant in this context:

The fallibility of memory in judicial processes: Lessons from the past and their modern consequences

The capability of adult and child witnesses to accurately recollect events from the past and provide reliable testimony has been hotly debated for more than 100 years. Prominent legal cases of the 1980s and 1990s sparked lengthy debates and important ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

15. An obvious difficulty which affects allegations and oral evidence based on recollection of events which occurred several years ago is the unreliability of human memory.

16. While everyone knows that memory is fallible, I do not believe that the legal system has sufficiently absorbed the lessons of a century of psychological research into the nature of memory and the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. One of the most important lessons of such research is that in everyday life we are not aware of the extent to which our own and other people's memories are unreliable and believe our memories to be more faithful than they are. Two common (and related) errors are to suppose: (1) that the stronger and more vivid is our feeling or experience of recollection, the more likely the recollection is to be accurate; and (2) that the more confident another person is in their recollection, the more likely their recollection is to be accurate.

17. Underlying both these errors is a faulty model of memory as a mental record which is fixed at the time of experience of an event and then fades (more or less slowly) over time. In fact, psychological research has demonstrated that memories are fluid and malleable, being constantly rewritten whenever they are retrieved. This is true even of so-called “flashbulb” memories, that is memories of experiencing or learning of a particularly shocking or traumatic event. (The very description “flashbulb” memory is in fact misleading, reflecting as it does the misconception that memory operates like a camera or other device that makes a fixed record of an experience.) External information can intrude into a witness's memory, as can his or her own thoughts and beliefs, and both can cause dramatic changes in recollection. Events can come to be recalled as memories which did not happen at all or which happened to someone else (referred to in the literature as a failure of source memory).

18. Memory is especially unreliable when it comes to recalling past beliefs. Our memories of past beliefs are revised to make them more consistent with our present beliefs. Studies have also shown that memory is particularly vulnerable to interference and alteration when a person is presented with new information or suggestions about an event in circumstances where his or her memory of it is already weak due to the passage of time.

19. The process of civil litigation itself subjects the memories of witnesses to powerful biases. The nature of litigation is such that witnesses often have a stake in a particular version of events. This is obvious where the witness is a party or has a tie of loyalty (such as an employment relationship) to a party to the proceedings. Other, more subtle influences include allegiances created by the process of preparing a witness statement and of coming to court to give evidence for one side in the dispute. A desire to assist, or at least not to prejudice, the party who has called the witness or that party's lawyers, as well as a natural desire to give a good impression in a public forum, can be significant motivating forces.

20. Considerable interference with memory is also introduced in civil litigation by the procedure of preparing for trial. A witness is asked to make a statement, often (as in the present case) when a long time has already elapsed since the relevant events. The statement is usually drafted for the witness by a lawyer who is inevitably conscious of the significance for the issues in the case of what the witness does nor does not say. The statement is made after the witness's memory has been “refreshed” by reading documents. The documents considered often include statements of case and other argumentative material as well as documents which the witness did not see at the time or which came into existence after the events which he or she is being asked to recall. The statement may go through several iterations before it is finalised. Then, usually months later, the witness will be asked to re-read his or her statement and review documents again before giving evidence in court. The effect of this process is to establish in the mind of the witness the matters recorded in his or her own statement and other written material, whether they be true or false, and to cause the witness's memory of events to be based increasingly on this material and later interpretations of it rather than on the original experience of the events.

21. It is not uncommon (and the present case was no exception) for witnesses to be asked in cross-examination if they understand the difference between recollection and reconstruction or whether their evidence is a genuine recollection or a reconstruction of events. Such questions are misguided in at least two ways. First, they erroneously presuppose that there is a clear distinction between recollection and reconstruction, when all remembering of distant events involves reconstructive processes. Second, such questions disregard the fact that such processes are largely unconscious and that the strength, vividness and apparent authenticity of memories is not a reliable measure of their truth.

22. In the light of these considerations, the best approach for a judge to adopt in the trial of a commercial case is, in my view, to place little if any reliance at all on witnesses' recollections of what was said in meetings and conversations, and to base factual findings on inferences drawn from the documentary evidence and known or probable facts. This does not mean that oral testimony serves no useful purpose—though its utility is often disproportionate to its length. But its value lies largely, as I see it, in the opportunity which cross-examination affords to subject the documentary record to critical scrutiny and to gauge the personality, motivations and working practices of a witness, rather than in testimony of what the witness recalls of particular conversations and events. Above all, it is important to avoid the fallacy of supposing that, because a witness has confidence in his or her recollection and is honest, evidence based on that recollection provides any reliable guide to the truth.

 

[BabaVanga]

This is exactly what I was getting at days ago when I was talking about the fallibility of eye witness evidence. Unless you have multiple people, people who don't know of the existence of other eye witnesses, recounting essentially identical facts then it needs to be treated with a very high level of skepticism. It's usually very, very unreliable. When you include the fact of it being a recollection of a highly stressful and emotional situation (which the majority of evidence which reaches court will be) then the reliability of it is even worse.

I am not in any way at all saying or implying that the mother in this case is intentionally saying stuff that isn't true but the simple fact of the matter is that her evidence cannot be true. It is a simple impossibility as Lucy Letby wasn't even in the building at the time she is referring to, let alone on duty, and that is 100% provable from the card swipe data.

Or maybe she was in the hospital earlier than she officially shouldve been and then swiped in officially at said time of 7.26. Maybe this is why the times have been brought up in court

 

[Trebor5591]

I am looking at this case for the first time, so forgive my asking a basic question. Has anyone explored the possible motives for nurse LL doing what she is accused of doing? Thank you!

 

[Tortoise]

I think it's quite funny that quite a few people have bemoaned the fact that there's no direct evidence of these alleged crimes, direct evidence being eye witnesses and CCTV evidence, and then in the next breath given all the reasons why eye witness evidence is unreliable and untrustworthy.

I would say (not in relation to this case but generally) that it would be very uncommon for a murderer to do the deed when anyone is looking, they aim not to be seen, so the chances of having an eye witness are remote. In this case, a full neonatal ward, I'm sure staff members were not thinking about what other staff members were doing. And what would they have seen anyway? A nurse with a syringe administering something through a line is not exactly suspicious looking or out of the ordinary. All the many trials I have followed have had convictions without eye witnesses to the murder/s.

I agree that eye witness evidence doesn't come close to the strength of a raft of circumstantial evidence. Circumstances don't just arise in an abyss, each one supports the others, viewed from every direction. I've heard it compared to the many strands which entwined together make a rope. Each strand on its own would not lead to any certainty, but together they must exclude any reasonable alternative explanation.

 

[ColourPurple]

I am looking at this case for the first time, so forgive my asking a basic question. Has anyone explored the possible motives for nurse LL doing what she is accused of doing? Thank you!

New to the case too (and haven't posted for a lonnng time) and I was assuming that any motive/reason would be the same as the Beverley Allitt case, which was attention due to Muchausen's syndrome by proxy, and that the victims were just picked at random.

However, having read about the incident where Baby D's mother had to tell LL to leave to give them some privacy, IF LL is indeed guilty, I'm wondering if rather than her hovering around as she had already decided that Baby D would be her next victim, maybe LL took offence at the mother asking her to leave and then chose to kill baby D as some kind of warped punishment to hurt her mother. And maybe that was how she chose her victims? Because of some supposed or imagined slight against her by the parents? Not sure if it was the same baby, but LL was also quoted as saying how one of the babies looked like their mother.

 

[ColourPurple]

It's double what was expected so imo very significant.
Especially as the first alleged incident wasn't until half way through the year

To jump from an average of 3 to 4 deaths per year to suddenly 3 or 4 in one month would definitely stand out, especially to those who had been working there a while.

 

[Sweeper2000]

I am looking at this case for the first time, so forgive my asking a basic question. Has anyone explored the possible motives for nurse LL doing what she is accused of doing? Thank you!

It’s looking very likely that the prosecution don’t have one. They only mentioned fb searches in the opening.

 

[ColourPurple]

Or maybe she was in the hospital earlier than she officially shouldve been and then swiped in officially at said time of 7.26. Maybe this is why the times have been brought up in court

That's what I was thinking. She could still have been in the building and not have swiped in at that point. Though that does suggest possible premeditation to cover her tracks. Most people probably wouldn't think twice about holding a hospital ward door open for a nurse to go through. On the other hand, the mother was on pain medication and could have remembered the wrong time, or remembered the time she left her ward rather than the time she arrived on the baby's ward.