Neonatal Nurse Lucy Letby killed babies in her care
This thread is to do with the criminology of the case. Issues about how and why the NHS failed to prevent the crimes is discussed here:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=367787
So, the sentencing of neonatal Nurse Lucy Letby, convicted of seven charges of murder and a further six of attempted murder is scheduled to happen tomorrow, Monday (21 August 2023). The only possible sentence according to statute is a whole life tariff, although it is possible Letby’s silk, Ben Myers KC, will argue mitigation such as diminished responsibility and the judge might defer sentencing for ‘further reports’. There is some outrage that convicted defendant has been allowed to refuse to turn up to face the music to hear her sentence and the impact statements of the victims. Some of the attempted murder charges overlap with the murder charges (for example, you can be guilty of both if they are on separate occasions). There were two verdicts of ‘Not Guilty’.
More details of the verdicts and charges can be found here on the Crown Prosecution Service webpage:
https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/luc...ound guilty of,six counts of attempted murder.
Where the eleven-man jury failed to reach a 10-1 verdict (whether of guilty or not guilty), this resulted in a hung jury and these were six of them. One includes Child K, which is the point Dr Jayaram, who gave testimony, and was one of the ‘gang of four’ doctors who pressed for Letby to be removed from the neonatal unit became convinced of her malevolence. Dr Jayaram testified he saw Letby standing by Baby K’s cot doing nothing despite K being in a state of collapse. The pathologist reported that K’s liver showed injuries consistent with those of someone having been in a serious car accident.
Thus the judge, Justice James Goss, will also have to decide whether to let CPS know whether they can have another 28 days to bring the six hung verdicts back for a new trial or whether to just ‘keep them on file’. Given that police are now reviewing 4,000 other cases, including Letby’s time in 2012 at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, these might well be tried again.
Justice Goss of the Kings Bench has a reputation as a hardline judge, thus his remarks in sentencing are likely to be vituperative and utterly eviscerating, given Letby’s refusal to attend*. Although, bear in mind judges are also supposed to exhibit mercy.
Why did she do it?
IMV – my observation only – Letby shows a peculiarly childlike aspect to her personality. Her ability to disassociate implies to me an early childhood trauma. Not saying it is anything like child abuse but her father seems a strong domineering figure in her life, even turning up to her grievance hearing at the hospital to provide a witness statement, whilst Lucy sat impassively. The father received an apology from the doctors who complained about his daughter as well as Letby herself. The father was present at her home the morning she was arrested, having stayed overnight after returning from holiday in Devon. In her twenties, Letby still holidayed with her parents, John and Susan, three times a year. After her arrest and police search he tidied up her bedroom. He had designed the duvet cover embossed with the words, ‘Sweet Dreams’.
During police interviews and the trial itself, Letby appeared disassociated from the accusations, remaining calm and collected. The only time she showed any emotion was when from behind a screen she head the voice of the registrar on whom she had crush, the prosecutor, silk Nick Johnson KC claimed, to give evidence against her, whereupon she tried to flee in tears and had to be persuaded back. She claimed not to know what ‘in commando’ meant. She claimed the married registrar was ‘just a friend’, as though she needed to keep up an air of girlish innocence. This is what makes me consider a halted point in her childhood psychology. Some psychologists believe that certain psychopaths became such because of arrested psychological development in childhood. For example, Mary Bell, a child killer aged 12, who showed no remorse, had been used by her prostitute mother for use by clients whilst still a toddler. One of the boys in the James Bulger murder came from a background of dire poverty and incest. Obviously, Letby is middle class and has devoted parents. But her strange lack of emotion and childishness, together with an ability to dissociate from unpleasant circumstance such as a stressful court room hearing leads me to suspect an arrested childhood development. An abused child will bear the pain by means of placing their mind and emotions elsewhere, as it were, for example seeing themselves floating above their body or outside of it. With Letby, this appears to involve an overbearing father, not dissimilar to writer Sylvia’s Plath’s predicament, who as you know, had a Daddy Complex resulting in a persistent impulse to commit suicide and eventually did so. In one of her scribbled notes, left for the police to find, Letby writes, ‘I do not deserve Mum and Dad’.
It is possible her parents realised Letby’s lack of empathy at an early age, hence all the girly décor with motivating slogans such as ‘sparkle’ and encouraging a career in care, with her father overseeing her career advancement. That is not to say he has done anything wrong and it might be the first time the parents have even become fully aware of what their daughter had got up to with her 'caring' qualifications and vocation.
*Although there is no effective way of enforcing attendance given the sentence is ‘Life’ already.
