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 #38

[JosieJo]

The prosecution alleged Letby poisoned a bag at noon on 8th April. So how does a reading of 3.6 at 1am on 9th April support that?

She added it to a bag hung earlier

 

[WaneLyrical]

No they didn't. The bag was hung at noon on 8th April, his blood sugar stabilised by 1am the following morning, and the same bag was poisoned before 9.30am.

Poisoned before 9:30am!

But if she’d been on the night shift, they could have said she poisoned it before 9pm, when sugars dropped to 2.3 and 2.2 at 10pm. The 3.6 reading happened at midnight. But Letby wasn’t there, so those drops in blood sugar must be perfectly normal and explainable, it’s just the drop that happened at 10am the following day that must be poisoning, because Letby.

Completely ridiculous.

 

[JosieJo]

Poisoned before 9:30am!

But if she’d been on the night shift, they could have said she poisoned it before 9pm, when sugars dropped to 2.3 and 2.2 at 10pm. The 3.6 reading happened at midnight. But Letby wasn’t there, so those drops in blood sugar must be perfectly normal and explainable, it’s just the drop that happened at 10am the following day that must be poisoning, because Letby.

Completely ridiculous.

I think your missing the fact that hypoglycaemia immediately after birth is not that uncommon but rights itself easily with feed and glucose...as it did in this case ...but then suddenly dropped again some hours later and would not come back up with the usual treatment

 

[Tortoise]

Poisoned before 9:30am!

But if she’d been on the night shift, they could have said she poisoned it before 9pm, when sugars dropped to 2.3 and 2.2 at 10pm. The 3.6 reading happened at midnight. But Letby wasn’t there, so those drops in blood sugar must be perfectly normal and explainable, it’s just the drop that happened at 10am the following day that must be poisoning, because Letby.

Completely ridiculous.

I'm not following your train of thought at all.

If she'd been on the night shift... when his blood sugar actually responded appropriately to the glucose... they could have said she poisoned him then?

They sent his blood for testing that afternoon and it contained exogenous insulin. The prosecution wasn't basing its case on just low sugars.

 

[JosieJo]

There were numerous witnesses for baby L
Dr's
Nurses
Biochemist
Laboratory staff
Pharmacy technician
Neonatal nurse practitioner
Neonatal Endocrinology Consultant

 

[WaneLyrical]

I'm not following your train of thought at all.

If she'd been on the night shift... when his blood sugar actually responded appropriately to the glucose... they could have said she poisoned him then?

They sent his blood for testing that afternoon and it contained exogenous insulin. The prosecution wasn't basing its case on just low sugars.

It didn’t respond appropriately, it climbed to 5.8 then dropped down to 2.2 while Letby wasn’t there. If she’d been on shift that night, she’d have been held responsible for that.

 

[WaneLyrical]

I think your missing the fact that hypoglycaemia immediately after birth is not that uncommon but rights itself easily with feed and glucose...as it did in this case ...but then suddenly dropped again some hours later and would not come back up with the usual treatment

Usual treatment: the prosecution alleged Letby capitalised on the hypoglycaemia pathway not being followed in order to do some poisoning.

Lee is saying the whole thing can be answered by the hypoglycaemia pathway not being followed.

 

[Tortoise]

It didn’t respond appropriately, it climbed to 5.8 then dropped down to 2.2 while Letby wasn’t there. If she’d been on shift that night, she’d have been held responsible for that.

She was prosecuted based on blood analysis as well as hypoglycaemia so what's your basis for saying she'd have been held responsible?

Could you link your source for those figures please.

 

[WaneLyrical]

She was prosecuted based on blood analysis as well as hypoglycaemia so what's your basis for saying she'd have been held responsible?

Could you link your source for those figures please.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Wednesday, February 15

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

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

 

[Charlot123]

So, I watched the documentary after all.

It was mostly all stuff that has been discussed at length before. Yes, I get it, you can look at a piece of circumstantial evidence and say ...well, look here, this isn't evidence of murder... and, yes, that's true, obviously. As others have pointed out, though she wasn't convicted on just one or two pieces of evidence. She was convicted on the weight of huge numbers of pieces of evidence.

Not a single piece of "evidence" mentioned in the documentary was truly "new" evidence in the sense of it not being known about at the time of her trial. I have to say that there were some good points made in relation to the insulin evidence and the test which was used to obtain it. The general thrust was that that particular test was not good enough to be used to the criminal standard.

That is not new evidence, though, and the defence could have brought that up. If a TV company can find experts to call it into question then so could a defence barrister, especially one of the character and experience of Ben Myers.

Also, yet again, they are claiming that "bad statistics" were employed as regards the shift pattern chart. No statistical fact or meaning was ever claimed by the prosecution in relation to that chart. It was simply a chart to demonstrate coinciding events - nothing more! The jury were free to place whatever weight they chose onto it. The statistician woman also trotted out the aged ....well, they didn't include the deaths and collapses that she wasn't there for..., which is a redundant argument because the only matters at hand are the cases she's charged with! And, as before, the defence were free to challenge that piece of evidence along those lines and chose not to do so.

We don’t know what a statistician would have done. Because no one bothered to consult one.

But, I assume, asked for the lists of the other staff (doctors and trainees) on call, went to the adjacent labor and delivery unit to compare the perinatal mortality there, tried to look at some factors that had changed. Looked at the shift sheets from other years. Explored, instead of looking for witches and killers on the unit.

Here is a good example: living next to airport correlates with higher rate of heart attacks. There have been many articles online.

Is it only aircraft noise? (they are doing something about it). Or, after all, the land around the airports is cheaper and maybe, people living there shop at cheaper stores or don’t tend to take such a good care of their health? Drink more? Probably, all of these factors are at play and then some, but this is why statisticians are invited! To look at different factors.

As I am typing it, I am thinking that the land around the graveyards should be cheaper, too. On the one hand, people living around the graveyards are a good comparison group. On the other, it is interesting to see if “evidence of some untoward events” will be found there and find correlation with the eating and exercise habits as opposed to “ghosts”.

There are interesting stories in the press about different cluster cases of events in hospitals. Some of them may end up in new discoveries and some, nothing. But, no one studies it in a homebred way.

 

[JosieJo]

Usual treatment: the prosecution alleged Letby capitalised on the hypoglycaemia pathway not being followed in order to do some poisoning.

Lee is saying the whole thing can be answered by the hypoglycaemia pathway not being followed.

The deviation from the hypoglycaemia pathway was tested in court when the Neonatal practitioner justified the prescription so I'm not sure how he thinks that's relevant

 

[Tortoise]

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Wednesday, February 15

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

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

Thanks, I'd forgotten we had all the readings in the electronic evidence.

The contrast is that the low blood sugars on the 8th didn't persist and did respond to the glucose. There were no concerns for the rest of the shift after midnight.

 

[Charlot123]

Poisoned before 9:30am!

But if she’d been on the night shift, they could have said she poisoned it before 9pm, when sugars dropped to 2.3 and 2.2 at 10pm. The 3.6 reading happened at midnight. But Letby wasn’t there, so those drops in blood sugar must be perfectly normal and explainable, it’s just the drop that happened at 10am the following day that must be poisoning, because Letby.

Completely ridiculous.

The main thing is, no one has any objective connection between LL and the bag. For all I know, it could be LL, Dr. Breary, Dr. Choco or a sleepy pharmacist.

Most likely, it is no one as a New Zealand articles indicate that insulin levels in preemies are very peculiar. I am trying to find a list of articles.

But, here we deviate very far from the facts. The facts are: there is no proven connection between LL and that bag. The rest is fantasy. That the police, the court and the trial expert believed it is unthinkable.

 

[May72031]

That the police, the court and the trial expert believed it is unthinkable.

It was unthinkable to you. Not the police, the court, the trial expert, and most of us here at Websleuths.

 

[MrsAddick]

The main thing is, no one has any objective connection between LL and the bag. For all I know, it could be LL, Dr. Breary, Dr. Choco or a sleepy pharmacist.

Most likely, it is no one as a New Zealand articles indicate that insulin levels in preemies are very peculiar. I am trying to find a list of articles.

But, here we deviate very far from the facts. The facts are: there is no proven connection between LL and that bag. The rest is fantasy. That the police, the court and the trial expert believed it is unthinkable.

No one caught Charles Cullen spiking IV bags with insulin either…

Charles Cullen - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[JosieJo]

The main thing is, no one has any objective connection between LL and the bag. For all I know, it could be LL, Dr. Breary, Dr. Choco or a sleepy pharmacist.

Most likely, it is no one as a New Zealand articles indicate that insulin levels in preemies are very peculiar. I am trying to find a list of articles.

But, here we deviate very far from the facts. The facts are: there is no proven connection between LL and that bag. The rest is fantasy. That the police, the court and the trial expert believed it is unthinkable.

What sort of link would you want ?

 

[WaneLyrical]

Thanks, I'd forgotten we had all the readings in the electronic evidence.

The contrast is that the low blood sugars on the 8th didn't persist and did respond to the glucose. There were no concerns for the rest of the shift after midnight.

But they seemed to flip flop all over the place. They started a 10% infusion when the sugars were 1.9 (set up by Letby, but not yet poisoned) and then we have the following readings over the next 12 hours:
2.5
5.8
3.3
2.3
2.2
3.6

I can only see we have the midnight reading of 3.6, then a 10am reading of 1.9, so not sure what the picture was during those ten hours, I might have missed something.

The hypoglycaemia didn’t resolve until the infusion was increased to 15%, and then it consistently stayed above the 2.6 for the remaining duration of 15% infusion (looks like at least another day).

Lee is saying this is normal, that the 10% and the 12.5% was simply insufficient to meet the infant’s needs, and they should have acted faster.

Furthermore, Lee said the potassium level was normal (insulin decreases potassium) and the c-peptide reading was normal for that cohort (20-45 percentile).

 

[Parker Knoll]

Talking of graveyards ….. I wonder who bought a house overlooking the children’s cemetery ?
Oh yeah.
Her.

 

[Bekind89]

Talking of graveyards ….. I wonder who bought a house overlooking the children’s cemetery ?
Oh yeah.
Her.

I wasn't aware of this. How creepy and morbid, considering what she has been convicted of.

 

[WaneLyrical]

I wasn't aware of this. How creepy and morbid, considering what she has been convicted of.

I remember it was throughly discussed during the trial, second only to the shredder