Merged Concerns over baby killer ignored? / Nurse Lucy Letby killed babies in her care

[Orphia Nay]

I'm surprised there isn't a thread on that case.

I started one in case others are interested.

Thread 'Mother with post-partum psychosis kills her children - jury undecided on guilt'

Sep 6, 2026

Lindsay Clancy's murder case ends in a mistrial. It came after the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict as to her guilt.

Lindsay Clancy murder trial has divided US on whether she's victim or criminal

Some say the case shed light on the mental health struggles of mothers, while others argue it's no excuse for murder.

www.bbc.com

Maybe you would like to discuss this.

• Orphia Nay
• infanticide lindsay clancy mistrial murder psychosis
• Replies: 79
• Forum: Trials and Errors

 

[catsmate]

Is the Lindsay Clancy case relevant here? I don't follow this subforum closely, and read about this today.

Lindsay Clancy murder trial has divided US on whether she's victim or criminal

Some say the case shed light on the mental health struggles of mothers, while others argue it's no excuse for murder.

www.bbc.com

Mother suffering post-partum psychosis kills her children, jury can't decide if she's guilty of murder.

It has a few similarities, but what actually happened isn't disputed in the Clancyvcase, just the state of mind of the killer at the time.

 

[catsmate]

I'm surprised there isn't a thread on that case.

It hasn't been news outside USAia until the verdict. Or lack thereof.

 

[Vixen]

They need to stop doing that. After Lucia de Berk they should have learned their lesson. But in a case like Geen's, where nobody saw him harm a patient, something is necessary.

Lucia de Berk, like Clarke, had her conviction overturned as unsafe due to technical issues. That is right and proper, if a trial is found to have been conducted unfairly for a material reason, then it is correct the verdict be overturned. I make no judgment on Clarke or de Berk (I wasn't there nor at the trial so I wouldn't know) but it is better that a guilty person be found innocent in principle than an innocent one found guilty. It doesn't follow however, that, 'Because Sally, Angela and Donna were cleared because of an unsafe verdict, therefore, all women convicted of child murder have unsafe convictions'.

 

[Vixen]

Letby v Clark:
• Both involve the murder of babies.
• Both heavily involved complex and strongly disputed medical testimony.
• Both used shoddy statistics and biased interpretations presented by expert witnesses as evidence of rare clusters of infant deaths.
• Both involved withheld pathology evidence.
• Both had no "smoking gun" evidence linking the defendant directly to a physical act of harm.

Letby v Cannings:
• Both involve the murder of babies.
• Both involved a heavy reliance on contested, complex medical and scientific expert testimony.
• Both relied heavily on the the treatment of coincidence as proof that a crime had been committed.
• Both involved alternative hypotheses that were withheld from the jury by the prosecution.
• Both had no "smoking gun" evidence linking the defendant directly to a physical act of harm.

Letby v Anthony:
• Both involve the murder of babies.
• Both the prosecution's narrative alleging the statistical improbability of multiple rare events happening in proximity without foul play.
• Both cases triggered significant backlash from statisticians and medical experts who argued that the courts misinterpreted scientific data.
• Both had no "smoking gun" evidence linking the defendant directly to a physical act of harm.

Anything else I can educate you about?

You have made it up. There were no 'shoddy statistics' used in the Letby case, the police and the CPS made absolutely sure to exclude dodgy extrapolations based on probability theory.

In addition, it serves no purpose at all to compare completely unrelated murder cases with each other. Sure, compare serial killers with other serial killers (for example, Letby ~ vs~ Allitt ~ vs ~ Geen ~ vs ~ de Berk (quashed)~ vs ~ Shipman, etc.,) but really, mothers accused of the murder of their own children is not comparable with this crime.

What would it take for you to consider Letby's convictions were fair? After all, you have the confessions on the post-it notes, her lies to the police and in court, together with her declining to call any expert defence witnesses (that in itself should speak volumes to you) plus two appeals thrown out. Her barrister couldn't even get her to waive privilege until December last year, some eleven months after he posed for the cameras in front of the CCRC building waving his dead-cert sure-fire appeal for review in the air, supposedly including the exonerating reports of worldwide top experts.

But Smart Cooky knows Letby is innocent.

 

[catsmate]

Lucia de Berk, like Clarke, had her conviction overturned as unsafe due to technical issues.

No. That is utterly untrue. You are either grossly uninformed or actively lying.

In October 2008, the case was reopened by the Dutch Supreme Court, as new facts had been uncovered that undermined the previous verdicts. De Berk was freed, and her case retried; she was exonerated in April 2010.

 

[catsmate]

You have made it up.

Untrue.

There were no 'shoddy statistics' used in the Letby case, the police and the CPS made absolutely sure to exclude dodgy extrapolations based on probability theory.

Untrue, as shown in this thread.

 

[Rolfe]

Lucia de Berk, like Clarke, had her conviction overturned as unsafe due to technical issues. That is right and proper, if a trial is found to have been conducted unfairly for a material reason, then it is correct the verdict be overturned. I make no judgment on Clarke or de Berk (I wasn't there nor at the trial so I wouldn't know) but it is better that a guilty person be found innocent in principle than an innocent one found guilty. It doesn't follow however, that, 'Because Sally, Angela and Donna were cleared because of an unsafe verdict, therefore, all women convicted of child murder have unsafe convictions'.

Sally Clark's conviction was overturned because evidence came to light that her baby had died of meningitis. He wasn't shaken to death and he wasn't a cot death. This was not a technical issue.

Vixen, you said that the system works when wrongful convictions of innocent people are overturned, but here is one such case and yet you persist in maintaining that the innocent, wrongfully convicted person was still guilty.

THE BABY DIED OF MENINGITIS.

 

[Vixen]

Sally Clark's conviction was overturned because evidence came to light that her baby had died of meningitis. He wasn't shaken to death and he wasn't a cot death. This was not a technical issue.

Vixen, you said that the system works when wrongful convictions of innocent people are overturned, but here is one such case and yet you persist in maintaining that the innocent, wrongfully convicted person was still guilty.

THE BABY DIED OF MENINGITIS.

The defence argued he died of SIDS. A pathologist document came to light which hadn't been included in the files that strains of meningitis bacteria were found in Harry's body. This meant the cause of death was uncertain not that Harry did die of meningitis. That's my understanding.

 

[Mojo]

The defence argued he died of SIDS. A pathologist document came to light which hadn't been included in the files that strains of meningitis bacteria were found in Harry's body. This meant the cause of death was uncertain not that Harry did die of meningitis. That's my understanding.

There was no evidence that he was murdered (which is the point here). Or that his mother was suffering from "some kind of post-natal hormone-induced psychosis", which seems to have been something that you imagined because she was a woman accused of killing her child.

Which she didn't do, in case you had forgotten.

 

[catsmate]

The defence argued he died of SIDS. A pathologist document came to light which hadn't been included in the files that strains of meningitis bacteria were found in Harry's body. This meant the cause of death was uncertain not that Harry did die of meningitis. That's my understanding.

So you now accept you were utterly wrong? Will you be withdrawing your earlier claims?

 

[catsmate]

More prosecutorial misconduct. Medical notes on the dead babies were not given to Letby's defense, despite them being requested.

Seized maternity notes not given to Lucy Letby defence

A BBC File on 4 investigation has uncovered what one professor said was a "very surprising" omission.

www.bbc.com

 

[Vixen]

There was no evidence that he was murdered (which is the point here). Or that his mother was suffering from "some kind of post-natal hormone-induced psychosis", which seems to have been something that you imagined because she was a woman accused of killing her child.

Which she didn't do, in case you had forgotten.

The point I was making was that mothers accused of killing their own children are not comparable to health workers accused of mass harm to patients they have access to. For example, mental illness such as post-natal psychosis becomes a factor.

 

[Vixen]

So you now accept you were utterly wrong? Will you be withdrawing your earlier claims?

What are you talking about?

 

[catsmate]

What are you talking about?

So you are incapable of comprehending what you wrote?

 

[Vixen]

More prosecutorial misconduct. Medical notes on the dead babies were not given to Letby's defense, despite them being requested.

Seized maternity notes not given to Lucy Letby defence

A BBC File on 4 investigation has uncovered what one professor said was a "very surprising" omission.

www.bbc.com

Red herring. The notes for the mothers has nothing to do with the case.

 

[Vixen]

So you are incapable of comprehending what you wrote?

I am not aware I am wrong.

 

[smartcooky]

No. That is utterly untrue. You are either grossly uninformed or actively lying.

What makes you think these two are mutually exclusive?

 

[Rolfe]

The defence argued he died of SIDS. A pathologist document came to light which hadn't been included in the files that strains of meningitis bacteria were found in Harry's body. This meant the cause of death was uncertain not that Harry did die of meningitis. That's my understanding.

I have seen the lab report. Interpreting such lab reports was my job for over 35 years. That baby had meningitis. It wasn't just the bacterial isolate, there was cytological evidence of meningitis.

 

[smartcooky]

You have made it up. There were no 'shoddy statistics' used in the Letby case, the police and the CPS made absolutely sure to exclude dodgy extrapolations based on probability theory.

Wrong.

Leading statisticians have heavily criticized the shift-rota chart and data presentation used by the prosecution in the trial. These include Professor Peter Green (emeritus professor of statistics at the University of Bristol and former president of the Royal Statistical Society) and Professor Jane Hutton (distinguished statistician). They have pointed out that the chart selectively highlights times Letby was on duty during unexpected collapses or deaths while ignoring the broader context, a classic example of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy - in statistics, its called "painting around the arrow". They are also critical of the failure to run a rigorous statistical comparison of alternative explanations or natural causes, and that an independent statistical analysis originally requested from an expert was suppressed and not disclosed to the defense.

Finally, the chart, as presented at trial did not include other infant collapses and deaths that occurred during the same period when Letby was not on duty. First, other babies died under similar circumstances when Letby was not present, but they weren't in the chart, and other babies died that didn't fit the profile they were trying to create, when Letby was on duty.

This was junk statistics and a junk analysis that even year 13 high-school student could have driven a bus through.

But Smart Cooky knows Letby is innocent.

No, I don't know she is innocent, but I do think the evidence she was convicted on was faulty, and the conviction therefore unsafe.