Regarding retrieving notes from the bin being akin to serial killers keeping trophies. I see what you're saying that it arguably fits with a bigger picture in which she's guilty of the crimes. But given the fact that there is no concrete evidence, as you admit, the bar for circumstantial evidence to put someone away for life has to be exceedingly high. And the way you would determine her guilt or not is by reviewing the evidence against her and then comparing that to the null hypothesis that she is innocent. So yes, perhaps retrieving notes from the bin on babies she has murdered is one plausible scenario. But her morbidly retrieving notes from the bin on babies who have died in her care is just as plausible and in my opinion a lot more probable. Why? Because remember, the statistics here have been shown to be basically a red herring. So what's more likely, a serial killer murdering babies or babies dying tragically from natural causes and systemic failures and a nurse with a morbid curiosity in collecting information on them.
I suppose reasonable people can disagree, but it strikes me that when you add up the individual probabilites of any one part of Letby's behaviour all together, when you arrive at that full picture and give honest objective odds on how likely it therefore is that she's a killer, I still think it's looking significantly less probable than the other explanation. Given what we know. Serial killers are incredibly incredibly rare. And these failings that led to the deaths might be a lot more likely to have been the cause.
I'm not saying the case was solely made up of statistical or medical evidence, but when those two have been so discredited, the conviction looks unsafe. If 14 or 30 experts pop up in a few months arguing Dr Lee and co are way off, that they're absolutely adamant that air embolism and so on *were* present, at that point I think it would be up to a jury to decide which experts are more plausible and weigh all the other evidence in light of that. But I would say so far it seems pretty telling that most if not all of the experts who have spoken out after the trial have been questioning aspects of the case against her. I haven't really seen anyone coming out strongly in support of the original medical or statistical evidence. If anyone has seen anything compelling then I'm still keeping an open mind.
The thing is, Letby is convicted and in prison. The people that know she is guilty and are happy with the verdicts haven't needed to come forward because the case was done for them.
Letby is now represented by a PR firm specialising in crisis management. So they are currently bombarding the media with misinformation and articles which paint Letby as an innocent person wrongly accused and the victim of a miscarriage.
Dr Lee has already admitted that he deliberately updated his literature paper to try and have it classified as new evidence for the court of appeal. He had it published just before Christmas in the hope that it would be considered as fresh evidence. We also know from Mark McDonald, that he told Dr Lee, after his evidence was rejected at appeal, that he would need to come up with something extraordinary, which would include different explanations for all of the deaths.
Dr Lee's paper was not even original research, it was a collection of other peoples research.
So he has admitted updating it to become fresh evidence, while he is in the employ of the defence. I don't see that going down too well with he CCRC.
As for the new explanations given for the deaths. Most of what they are alleging has already been discussed and rebuked at trial. It seems these new experts have not bothered to read the evidence at trial.
For example they are saying that the root cause of baby A,s death was a blood clotting disorder passed down from the mother.
The defence tried this angle in court and the prosecution had multiple experts stating this was not the case. They actually had a blood expert prof Sally Kinsey stating that she was sure that this condition was not even passed down to the baby. This was backed by Owen Arthur's from Alder Hey. He also said that there was a line of gas in the spine which he believed was administered air.
If there is some new evidence which is meant to blow the case apart, many of us that have followed the trials from the beginning are still waiting for it?
As for reasonable doubt. The jury sat and listened to 10 months of evidence. They saw first hand every witness testimony, including Letbys 12 or so days of testimony. They listened to everything that she had to say and they concluded she was lying.
The behavioural aspect of the evidence was a large part of the evidence against Letby. Letby was unable to give satisfactory explanations for why she had the handover notes for almost every baby in the charges underneath her bed. She was unable to spell a family names which she had been FB searching for in court. Yet she had the handover sheet with the name on within arms reach. She claimed she took them inadvertently without awareness and they meant nothing.
Yet we know that she took home her first one on purpose, and it held significant value to her. She was breaking patient confidentiality rules from the moment she became a nurse. Her claims of not being aware also don't tally up with the evidence because she had to admit to taking the handovers out of her pockets everyday to launder her uniform at which point she was aware. She also could not give an explanation for why they ended up underneath her bed. She claimed she would have shredded them if she had a shredder, then it turns out she had a shredder but chose not to shred them. Then it turns out she had some stored at her parents in a box marked "keep"
Letby lied to the jury, continually and changed her story as new evidence was put to her. An innocent person does not need to do this.
So are we to believe that Letby was just a nurse with a morbid fascination with the babies? Well that's not what the evidence says. Letby was alone immediately beforehand or was administering IV meds in every death and collapse. That's some coincidence. Letby was observed to be acting unusual, by the families to the point she upset them, and invaded their personal space, whilst they were grieving.
We also know that, aswell as being alone with the babies immediately beforehand, that there are a series of unusual patterns. Unusual screams made by the children were reported on at least 5 occasions. The rash was testified about on over a dozen occasions. The lack of response to usual rusus methods and the sudden acute arrests, are also known effects to air embolism. Parents also gave detailed testimony of how they were at their babies bedsides for most of the day/night. There was never a recorded collapse when the parents were keeping watch. The pattern followed that a parent would momentarily step away, or a nurse would go on a break, Letby would be shown to have been cotside and then a collapse occurs. We know the collapses followed Letby form nights onto days. We know there was no collapses of deaths when Letby went on holiday for 2 weeks.
We know that Letbys nurse colleagues noticed the correlation between her and the first 3 deaths and told her she needed a break from it being her all the time. They also remarked that the deaths were unusual. Shortly after this time Letbys changes MO and moves onto insulin, poisoning another nurses baby to collapse when she is not in the building, thereby shifting the focus and suspicion away from herself.
We also know that Letby had only just passed her qualification to work with high dependency babies weeks before the first death. She did not have access to the IV lines before this.
We also know that Letby had a desire to work with the most poorly babies in room 1 and that she would disobey orders and force herself back into that room. She would put her own babies in jeapordy so that she could get access to babies, which she should not have been near.
From evidence, Letby could not understand why she wasn't chosen to take care of baby C for example. Yet her supervisor spoke in detail about how nurses are rotated because room 1 is a high stress environment. Letby ignores her supervisors instructions on multiple occasions and is shown to be texting cotside at baby C, minutes before the collapse.
These are just a few of my thoughts off the top of my head. But I don't think there was any doubt. Every single juror believed that Letby was a baby murderer and the evidence was tested in court. Letby may have decided not to call experts but her defense was guided by multiple experts throughout. I don't see anything in these press conferences that would impress the CCRC because none of it holds water from what I have read.
