Nurse murdered seven babies

[icowden]

Oh yes, wrong country. My mistake.
I was looking for a similar quote made by someone (possible Phil Hammond) in relation to other controversial cases such as the Meadows one.

Phil Hammond has definitely made the point that there is no actual check on expertise needed to be an expert.

 

[Beebo]

No grounds for appeal.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpdvl3v2x7jo
The exceptional media interest and on line “experts” are no substitute for legal experts with access to all the information.

 

[icowden]

No grounds for appeal.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpdvl3v2x7jo
The exceptional media interest and on line “experts” are no substitute for legal experts with access to all the information.

Your last line doesn't follow. The appeal was not made on the basis of new evidence or information, but on the grounds of it being unfair due to media prejudice. It failed. I believe that separately her defence team are working on an evidence based appeal on the grounds that the circumstantial evidence used was unsafe.

 

[spen666]

Your last line doesn't follow. The appeal was not made on the basis of new evidence or information, but on the grounds of it being unfair due to media prejudice. It failed. I believe that separately her defence team are working on an evidence based appeal on the grounds that the circumstantial evidence used was unsafe.

You are not quite correct re Appeal on basis of new evidence.

Letby has had her appeal to the Court of Appeal. She cannot make a new appeal to the Courg of Appeal. She should have argued new evidence as part of her appeal.

What she can do now is to ask the Criminal Cases Review Commission to review her case, and if they accept it for review, and then they subsequently decide it should be referred to the Court of Appeal, then and only then will the Court of Appeal look agai at the case.

The CCRC reject the vast majority of cases sent to them. Even those cases to do refer to the Court of Appeal are not always successful.

If the CCRC accept the case for review, it is likely to be years before they decide whether it is a case to be referred to the Court of Appeal

It's a long haul to get the case back to the Court of Appeal

 

[qigong chimp]

Those of you responsible for 'rehabilitating' spen - and you know who you are - should hang your heads in shame.

 

[qigong chimp]

And no, you don't deserve a re-trial.

 

[Bromptonaut]

No argument with what @spen666 says about today's judgement or Letby's options via the CCRC.

But I remain uneasy as to whether she was fairly convicted and hope she's not waiting as long as others have been before a remedy.

 

[Bromptonaut]

Those of you responsible for 'rehabilitating' spen - and you know who you are - should hang your heads in shame.

Eh?

 

[Regular.Cyclist]

The lead prosecution expert, Dr Dewi Evans, has allegedly altered his view about how the three of the babies died.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyv3jlzme90o

 

[icowden]

The lead prosecution expert, Dr Dewi Evans, has allegedly altered his view about how the three of the babies died.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyv3jlzme90o

According to the Eye, it's not the first time Dr Evans has been inconsistent either.
https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/lucy-letby-8.pdf

THAT Evans keeps changing his mind is no surprise; what is more surprising is that the court allowed it, particularly after appeal court judge Lord Justice Jackson had taken the unusual step of writing to Judge Goss in December 2022 to warn him of the unreliability of Evans in a previous case, and that his evidence had then been “worthless”. As Moritz and Coffey observe: “In his initial report on Baby C, Dr Evans wrote: ‘One may never know the cause of [Baby C’s] collapse. He was at great risk of unexpected collapse.’” How can a collapse be unexpected if a baby is at great risk of one? Evans struggled with pinning baby C’s death on Letby. He produced eight pre-trial reports, but only sided with Dr Bohin on death by stomach air in the witness box. Under cross examination, Evans then decided Letby may have killed Baby C twice, once by air into the stomach and again by air into the vein. Evans was accused of “theorising on the hoof” but he argued his views evolved with new information.

EVANS now says he has finished his final report on the death of baby C, just 14 months after Letby was convicted of murdering him (see last Eye). The authors are spot on when they say: “What we have is retrospective analysis – months or even years after the events – of medical records and eyewitness testimony. And that analysis boiled down to interpretative judgements made by the prosecution’s experts. So in many ways, the reliability of the evidence against Lucy Letby was ultimately a question about the reliability of the prosecution’s expert witnesses – in particular, the two paediatric experts Dewi Evans and Sandie Bohin.”

One won’t answer my questions and the other boasts to me that: “In 35 years I have never lost a murder, manslaughter or serious abuse case other than one… Losing my one case still rankles.” One has to wonder, if Evans had been working for the defence, would Letby be a free woman?

 

[Chromatic]

The lead prosecution expert, Dr Dewi Evans, has allegedly altered his view about how the three of the babies died.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyv3jlzme90o

Maybe he hasn't.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz6l0dynz7zo

 

[icowden]

Maybe he hasn't.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz6l0dynz7zo

So why won't he disclose his latest report?

n response to Dr Evans's statement, Mr McDonald said: "Dr Evans has written a new report on Baby C, 12 months after Lucy Letby was convicted, please can this be disclosed to the defence?

"This issue of reliability of any prosecution medical expert is now a matter for the Court of Appeal and Criminal Cases Review Commissions but certainly the disclosure of this new report may help them in deciding this question."

And from the EYE:

Unfortunately, Unmasking Lucy Letby: The Untold Story of the Killer Nurse – as seen on BBC Panorama – is already out of date, as it fails to mention that on 3 August, in a signed statement to Channel 5, Dr Evans withdrew his opinion that air or fluid injected down the nasogastric tube could kill (Eyes passim). This alone could be enough to warrant a retrial, given the jury was repeatedly told how deadly it was. He also told the jury it was a “clinically proven mechanism”. He then told the Daily Mail that injecting air in the stomach was “utterly bizarre” and something he’d never heard of before. And he told the New Yorker: “There are no published papers regarding a phenomenon of this nature that I know of.” So about as far from “clinically proven” as you could get. More hot air?

THE book goes into impressive detail about how convinced during the trial the prosecution experts Dr Evans and Dr Sandie Bohin were that babies died by air in the stomach, backed up by pathologist Dr Andreas Marnerides and radiologist Owen Arthurs. The jury didn’t seem to mind that Letby wasn’t even on duty when Baby I and Baby C were found to have an unusual amount of air in the stomach. The authors conclude: “Either the prosecution experts had misinterpreted two ‘stomach air’ events as ‘suspicious’ when in fact they were innocent, or alternatively, someone other than Letby was pumping air into babies’ stomachs.” Elsewhere they observe: “Do the ‘stomach air’ cases amount to a smoking gun? Dewi Evans and Sandie Bohin believe they do.” Well, they did until Evans changed his mind, too late to make it into the book or the trial.

 

[Ian H]

Complex cases like this one, with evidence from 'expert' witnesses which has, more or less, to be taken on trust by your average lay-person, must test the limits of the jury system. Not that I can easily think of a better alternative.

 

[icowden]

Complex cases like this one, with evidence from 'expert' witnesses which has, more or less, to be taken on trust by your average lay-person, must test the limits of the jury system. Not that I can easily think of a better alternative.

One that I have seen mentioned a few times is that instead of appointing experts for the defence and experts for the prosecution, that all expert evidence required is agreed and is then independent. I can't remember which countries do this, but there are a few. It reduces the cost of obtaining expert reports and removes any pressure on the expert to come down on one side or the other with their opinion.

The other element is requiring experts to actually be working experts and not retired Consultants looking to boost their holiday funds. Dr Hammond (for the Eye) recommends that

. It should be mandatory for the jury to hear expert witnesses from both sides or – better still – it should be a duty of, say, the Royal Colleges and Royal Statistical Society to provide a team of the best, current expert witnesses on behalf of the court, not paid or employed by one side or the other. This is vital for justice to be done and to be seen being done.

He also points out that:-

… One of the experts had retired from clinical practice in neonatal intensive care in 2007 and the other in 2009 – that is 15 years and 13 years respectively before the start of the trial.

He even makes clear that Dr Evans expertise had flaws:-

Letby and her defence even accepted that there had been a poisoner at work on the ward, but that it wasn’t her. That single exchange might well have sunk her. Neither knew about definitive insulin tests, and they weren’t alone. As Dr Evans told MD: “I didn’t even know that there was more than one way of measuring insulin until I read the comments from Wayne Jones. Alan Wayne Jones, a professor of toxicology, is adamant that the immunoassay method used to measure insulin is insuffcient to accurately determine the level in a criminal trial, because of the risk of false results. Other experts have explained how false results using this test are even more common in neonates.

And concludes:-

MD still can’t find a neonatal expert, forensic pathologist, clinical scientist or radiologist prepared to privately or publicly support the diagnoses of murder and attempted murder. On 14 October, MD emailed Evans’s fellow expert witnesses – paediatrician Dr Sandie Bohin, radiologist Prof Owen Arthurs and pathologist Dr Andreas Marnerides – asking if they too are following Evans’ lead in disowning the death of three of the babies by air forced down the nasogastric tube. Thus far, none has answered. Meanwhile, the parents of the babies who died or were harmed at the hospital are waking up to the possibility that some babies might have died from clinical negligence rather than deliberate harm. How unlucky is that, unless you’re a lawyer

So in many ways, the reliability of the evidence against Lucy Letby was ultimately a question about the reliability of the prosecution’s expert witnesses – in particular, the two paediatric experts Dewi Evans and Sandie Bohin.” One won’t answer my questions and the other boasts to me that: “In 35 years I have never lost a murder, manslaughter or serious abuse case other than one… Losing my one case still rankles.” One has to wonder, if Evans had been working for the defence, would Letby be a free woman?

 

[C R]

Evans' boast alone should disqualify them from ever being allowed to give expert evidence to any court.