Looks like the inquiry TORs have done both and will not revisit her guilt. Will be interesting to see how that plays out and how much evidence both used and not used in the Court case is presented by witnesses called by the inquiry.
Why should they?
There is an appeals procedure should new evidence come to light that was not available to her defence at the time of her trial.
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You are making my point for me. They won’t, the inquirey already knows what caused the death of the children, it only needs to find out why it took so long to stop her as well a give the families a voice. It’ll take a couple of years no doubt.
That all makes sense Wayne and it does seem that these procedures/protocols were not followed. I imagine it also makes it extremely difficult to identify bad actors when the whole maternity system is in such a desperate state.
In terms of LL herself my son is the crime correspondent at the Telegraph and attended the whole of the trial; he told me throughout l that it was the most difficult case to report on because the evidence was so circumstantial. None of the journalists he worked alongside could call the verdict, all felt that it could go either way.
The public inquiry is of course not about assessing her guilt but about the Trust itself - however it does seem as if the legal wheels have not finished turning and the two tracks could coincide at some point, but as others have said this may takes years.
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I’m not surprised, especially given the nature of the circumstantial evidence.
Standing back, what are the possible explanations for these deaths -
- Lucy Letby was directly responsible for them
- It wasn’t Letby but some-body else (the SODDI defence)
- It wasn’t any individual deliberately setting out to kill them but they were avoidable deaths caused by lack of clinical competence and/ or clinical oversight/ governance
- The deaths were not suspicous and fall within expected mortality within a neo-natal unit
Clearly the trial was concerned with proving the first possibility (I don’t know what type of defence was put on), and the inquiry will focus on aspects of the third. I’m assuming that there has been sufficient independent clinical investigation to discount the fourth but that’s only my assumption.
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Good summary Wayne - I’ll send that over to Will😉 As with hi fi, huge potential for confirmation bias and all the other assumptive failings in this sort of situation. IRA bombers come to mind.
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Retrial verdict from baby K.
Not followed this case at all. But did watch this the other day.
I haven’t read into all the evidence that was presented in court but it does seem to me that the notion that ‘she didn’t do it’ is largely founded on the fact that expert clinical opinion about whether the babies deaths had to be as a result of interference or could be explained away as naturally occurring mortality, appears quite divided.
However what matters is at the trial what the jury will have heard is prosecution experts suggesting quite conclusively that these deaths could not have occurred naturally.
It seemed very odd to me given there are now a multitude of different clinical opinions being voiced which suggest that the deaths fall within statistical norms, and could also be as a result of operating conditions within the ward etc, that the defence did not put any of these experts on the stand to either present another contradicting opinion, or to raise some doubt as to the validity of the prosecutions experts.
From my own experience experience, it’s a nightmare to get doctors to commit to a definitive answer when it comes to giving evidence.
I can speak to a doctor who says this is 100% the reason they died. Then you start the statement and it suddenly goes to ‘probably’ or ‘could have’
What was emphasised in the vid upthread was that it’s difficult enough to get doctors and experts to appear for the prosecution, but nigh on impossible to get them to appear for the defense.
He said this is because doctors in the past who did defend nurses accused of murder had been disowned, ostrasized and even struck off by the BMC.
In Letby’s case apparently, despite that there has been a lot of chat amongst the medical community that the evidence against her was purely anecdotal, no doctors could be persuaded to appear in her defense. 