UK - Healthcare worker arrested on suspicion of murder/attempted murder of a number of babies, 2018

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The lack of information and the repetitiveness of the reporting on this case is maddeningly frustrating!

It amazes me how papers like the Mail manage to produce so many words to report that someone confirmed their name and that the court discussed some legal issues that they can't tell us about!
 
Phoenix Lazarus said:
It's been nearly three years since Letby was first arrested. We've now got just over four months till the trial starts.
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It's actually almost four years since she was first arrested, I think? I'm sure her first arrest was 4th July 2018. Police investigations started about a year prior, I think.
 
From above link

"Nick Johnson, QC, said the prosecution was offering no evidence on one of the counts of murder during a hearing at Manchester Crown Court."

Sounds as if new evidence has come to light on this one baby. Awful for the parents to have to be put through that
 
JosieJo said:
From above link

"Nick Johnson, QC, said the prosecution was offering no evidence on one of the counts of murder during a hearing at Manchester Crown Court."

Sounds as if new evidence has come to light on this one baby. Awful for the parents to have to be put through that
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Claire.Belle said:
Lucy Letby: Nurse accused of baby murders cleared of one charge

Lucy Letby: Nurse accused of baby murders cleared of one charge
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"The prosecution offered no evidence" it says.
Oh my. That seems very slapdash and odd to have no evidence she had murdered this one baby.

It makes me wonder what other evidence the prosecution has for her guilt on murder of the other babies and how credible (or not) it is.

I wonder if she may be found not guilty of any more of the murders, or perhaps even all of them...?
 
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It's obviously impossible to know why the change in status of the charge prior to full trial.
My thoughts would be that initially the cps must have had evidence to charge.
I'd imagine a case like this where many cases would have been reviewed to physically search for foul play that may not have been initially obvious is more difficult.
I'd imagine one or two "more obvious" cases led to numerous reviews.
It may be that the defence found evidence to clearly dispute initial evidence presented by the CPS leaving no evidence for the prosecution to present at trial.
I feel for the parents having the additional distress.
 
JosieJo said:
From above link

"Nick Johnson, QC, said the prosecution was offering no evidence on one of the counts of murder during a hearing at Manchester Crown Court."

Sounds as if new evidence has come to light on this one baby. Awful for the parents to have to be put through that
Click to expand...

Can't believe I've missed this! I really should pay more attention.

I don't see that "new" evidence has come to light. The prosecution has said it isn't offering any evidence so, essentially, they are saying that whatever "evidence" they thought they had isn't evidence at all - or, at best, is so weak it doesn't meet the prosecution threshold.
 
Marantz4250b said:
Can't believe I've missed this! I really should pay more attention.

I don't see that "new" evidence has come to light. The prosecution has said it isn't offering any evidence so, essentially, they are saying that whatever "evidence" they thought they had isn't evidence at all - or, at best, is so weak it doesn't meet the prosecution threshold.
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Presumably for her to be charged with this particular babies murder it must have met the threshold at some point .. something must have come to light to change that for this particular death
 
annpats said:
"The prosecution offered no evidence" it says.
Oh my. That seems very slapdash and odd to have no evidence she had murdered this one baby.

It makes me wonder what other evidence the prosecution has for her guilt on murder of the other babies and how credible (or not) it is.

I wonder if she may be found not guilty of any more of the murders, or perhaps even all of them...?
Click to expand...
One has to accept the possibility that, yes, they may have got this whole thing wrong and it's all going to fall apart for the prosecution. As has been mentioned on here, and elsewhere, many, many times - these types of cases, which rely heavily on highly circumstantial and extremely specialist medical evidence seem to have more than their fair share of miscarriages of justice. There have been several mentioned on here.

Perhaps a large part of the "evidence" they put forward in some of the cases related to shift patterns and hers corresponding with deaths when she was on shift? As we have mentioned though, some statistician wrote a paper linked to here along the lines of the fact that due to the way in which nurses shifts work and the times of day that people in hospital die the majority of nurses will have patients die when they are on shift rather than when they aren't. People would assume that about the same number of patients will die when a nurse is off-shift then when they are are on but that isn't actually the case.

This is all speculation, of course, and maybe they just got something wrong in this one particular case. Doesn't look good for the prosecution though.
 
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JosieJo said:
Presumably for her to be charged with this particular babies murder it must have met the threshold at some point .. something must have come to light to change that for this particular death
Click to expand...
This is very true. It doesn't mean that "new" evidence has come to light to contradict the existing evidence put forward. It may be that the existing evidence has been shown to be incorrect, if you see what I mean.
 
JosieJo said:
It's obviously impossible to know why the change in status of the charge prior to full trial.
My thoughts would be that initially the cps must have had evidence to charge.
I'd imagine a case like this where many cases would have been reviewed to physically search for foul play that may not have been initially obvious is more difficult.
I'd imagine one or two "more obvious" cases led to numerous reviews.
It may be that the defence found evidence to clearly dispute initial evidence presented by the CPS leaving no evidence for the prosecution to present at trial.
I feel for the parents having the additional distress.
Click to expand...
 
Marantz4250b said:
Can't believe I've missed this! I really should pay more attention.

I don't see that "new" evidence has come to light. The prosecution has said it isn't offering any evidence so, essentially, they are saying that whatever "evidence" they thought they had isn't evidence at all - or, at best, is so weak it doesn't meet the prosecution threshold.
Click to expand...

I was reminded of the Lucia de Berk case, where the prosecution and the court made use of the so called chain-link evidence:


Lucia de Berk - Wikipedia

Chain-link proof​

Of the seven murders and three attempted murders finally attributed to de Berk by the court, the court considered two of them to be proven by medical evidence. According to the court, de Berk had poisoned these two patients. The court then applied a so-called chaining-evidence argument. This means that if the several attempted or actual murders have already been established beyond reasonable doubt, then much weaker evidence than normal is sufficient to establish that a subsequent eight "suspicious incidents" are murders or attempted murders carried out by the same defendant.

BBM

Since we don't know the details of the charges, it is hard to say how 'evidence that isn't evidence at all' would play out in this case, but if the prosecutor is relying on chain-link proof, then omitting one case from the list is interesting to say the least.
 
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