But the New Yorker & Guardian article do make the case for her convictions to be pretty ropey.
The Trial of Lucy Letby
- Thread starter Magnus McGinty
- Start date
lazythursday
Averagely-Known Member
There are a worrying number of people with expertise in health systems, medical statistics etc who are concerned about the possibility of a miscarriage of justice. It's certainly not all cranks and armchair detectives, on this occasion.
editor
hiraethified
Yet two separate juries have now found her guilty on all counts.
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
Given the number of people convicted compared to the number of false convictions, yes it is pretty rare.
Plumdaff
joy in people
For fairly obvious reasons we tend to focus on those wrongfully convicted of the most serious crimes facing the severest penalties. It stands to reason that there must be wrongful convictions for more minor crimes but we don't hear about them because they don't gain media or other traction, or the penalty is minimal so people accept it etc. Think of the Post Office Scandal, there are likely to be others who faced short or suspended prison sentences or fines who were never able to prove their innocence.
As well as a great many 'bang to rights' of course.
SpookyFrank
A cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel
Were any of them on the jury and heard all the evidence?
Thaw
Aye like, so it is.
The recent articles are setting out the case for the defence so since I haven't read the years worth of stuff in the papers this is a summary of the prosecution case. The last 2 are what seem to be criticised now but they haven't covered the medical records being falsified or her social media.
Key evidence in the prosecution case
Key evidence in the prosecution case
- Medical records – these were crucial to establish the condition of the babies when they were attacked. When some babies recovered, the speed of their recovery was too sudden to be seen as a natural occurrence. Several medical documents featured falsified notes made by Letby to hide her involvement. She amended timings on several documents in an attempt to distance herself from incidents where babies had suddenly become severely unwell.
- Text messages and social media activity – these were an important part of the case as they coincided with the attacks happening on the neonatal Unit. They were dated and timed, sometimes they were similar to a live blogging of events. They also explained how Letby deceived her colleagues into believing that these inexplicable collapses were simply a natural worsening of children’s underlying conditions. They also revealed an intrusive curiosity about the parents of babies she had harmed.
- Staff rotas – we were able to show the jury that Letby was the one common denominator in the series of deaths and sudden collapses on the neonatal unit. We were also able to show the jury that many of the earlier incidents occurred overnight, but when Letby was put onto day shifts, the collapses and deaths began occurring in the day. We were able to corroborate this further using Letby’s personal diary in which she had noted her shift patterns.
- Handwritten notes and diaries – many handwritten notes were discovered by police during their investigation. They included phrases such as: “I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them”; “I am evil I did this”; and “today is your birthday and you are not here and I am so sorry for that”. These notes gave an insight into her mindset following her attacks.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I don't have an opinion either way on this particular case, but in the case of Sally Clark, the problem in the trial was expert testimony, which the jury believed because Roy Meadows was the expert and said it was certain she was guilty.
*Sadly there weren't any statistics-minded people on that particular jury to call Meadows' numbers out as bullshit (and Sally Clark's lawyer failed to challenge them). Some really incredibly stupid claims by 'experts' can and do pass unchallenged in courts.
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freshapple
Active Member
The second trial used her guilty verdict from the first evidence that she was predisposed to kill didn’t it?
So they are correlated, not independent data points.
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
That's certainly true, the number will be higher than we know. But I still think the number of wrongfull convictions is pretty small compared to the overall total. Although I think that is mainly because most crimes are pretty simple and a lot of criminals pretty dumb.
Mainly I was annoyed at the idea that a dozen or so cases from multiple countries proved wrongful convictions weren't rare.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
It would have been better to have kept that list to just the UK really, but 11 out of 13 of dylans' examples are from the UK.
And those are just cases where a miscarriage of justice has subsequently been discovered (and by no means all of them - Robert Brown is another, 25 years in prison and innocent, Sam Hallam another, 7 years in prison). How many more go undiscovered? I would not be at all confident that anything like half of all miscarriages of justice are subsequently discovered.
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Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
I'm an entirely passive observer of this trial, having just seen TV reports and read the basic reports. To me it seemed like there was overwhelming evidence of guilt, in as much as it can be be overwhelming in the absence of CCTV or direct forensics. I'm in the same territory still, but the stuff in the Guardian just reopens the 'reasonable doubt' issue for me. Doesn't overturn her conviction, just begs a few questions about whether there are grounds for an appeal.
ElizabethofYork
Old Crone
I agree about the 'Beyond Reasonable Doubt' question. When there is reasonable doubt, the verdict has to be unsafe.
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Thaw
Aye like, so it is.
What did you feel/think was so overwhelming at the time? (I didn't really pay much attention during the trial apart from the weird notebooks and the general idea that she was creepy)
editor
hiraethified
But the jury would have been instructed to only find her guilty in the second trial if they were sure of her guilt beyond reasonable doubt. And they clearly were, unless you know better.
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
Suppose the notebooks, shift patterns and the other circumstantial stuff.
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
See the difference is you are actually arguing a point here, not just putting up a list of 11 wrongfully convictions from the hundreds of thousands of convictions there would have been over the same time period and saying that proves it's really common. When in fact it shows the exact opposite, if you take just that data.
I've tried looked for some figures but can only find this is which is old and from the US. It gives an estimate of 4.1%, which I think is both rare and appallingly high.
I'm not convinced by the number though, it is based on the number of death row exonerations and I don't think you can extrapolate from that to crimes in general
editor
hiraethified
This gives some insights although I imagine the vast majority of the appeals will be for relatively minor offences.
More in-depth reporting here:
CCRC Annual Report - Criminal Cases Review Commission
2021/22 Annual Report for the CCRC - the body that investigates miscarriages of justice in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
ccrc.gov.uk
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
You won't discover the failure rate of the system by examining the system's appeals process, though. That just shows how many decisions get overturned on appeal. How many times does an innocent person not appeal and how may times does an appeal by an innocent person fail?
freshapple
Active Member
I absolutely don’t know better.
But from what I can see the issue is, as you are demonstrating, that people don’t understand statistics that well & there may be valid concerns about convictions that seem to be largely reliant on circumstantial evidence and stats.
editor
hiraethified
But you can't make that the sole basis for questioning the outcome of this individual case.
That's what conspiracy theorists do: "Country X did a false flag operation 55 years ago therefore it's highly likely that (insert latest incident here) is also a false flag."
Proof is what's needed, and tons of it, and so far two juries have found absolutely nothing to support claims of Letby's supposed innocence,
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
Circumstantial evidence is regarded as more sound than witness evidence, pretty much the same as direct evidence. If the evidence against her is mostly that, then she's done for.
From the article, the evidence against her is being claimed to be a combination of claims about how she did it that are seemingly weak at best, combined with claims about the statistical chance of her being consistently in the wrong place at the wrong time, which are wildly misrepresented. Do you know of any circumstantial evidence presented beyond that?
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
I know fuck all about it tbh. Just when people go on about circumstantial evidence being weak, that's not true, is all, it's not. You're the maths bod, what's the chances of someone who works 40 out of 168 hours a week being there so many times when it babies die/nearly die compared to not? Maybe she was just unlucky, and doubly unlucky to have written what she wrote, other than that though I know jack and am open to be educated on this one.
In a small unit? It could be surprisingly high, given that the factors that feed the calculation are not independent from each other. And bear in mind that even if the odds are 1/100 of it happening over the course of a year, that still means that over 100 such units, we would expect one of them to produce this coincidence every year. If they are 1/10,000 and there are 1000 neonatal units then this kind of coincidence will happen once every ten years. That’s a lot of times! The point being that the probability that she did it are not the same as the 1 - probability that it was a coincidence for a single circumstance. You have to look at the probability that she did it given that we already know that the event happened and that there are a lot of neonatal units, and that massively changes the calculation.
Doing the numbers the way round they are being presented here is like looking at a lottery winner and saying that the odds of them winning were so astronomical — 100 million to one — that the only reasonable conclusion is that they already knew the numbers in advance.
What shit did she write about people who didn’t lose a baby? Maybe she just liked writing shit about people. In which case, it adds nothing to the probability calculation.
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
Has there been any modelling on any other nurses in that unit that come close to her figures, that you're aware of?
It wouldn’t make any difference. For every lottery winner, there are 99,999,999 lottery losers. That still doesn’t mean that the lottery winner knew the numbers in advance. It just means that if you have enough people, one of them will eventually get the right numbers. Maybe Letby was the one who eventually ended up with the six numbers and the powerball.
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
If someone wins the lottery multiple times the lottery commission will raise an eyebrow though.
That’s not even close to what has happened here. Not in probability but, crucially, also not in the nature of the probabilistic calculation.
Look, the governing body of professional statisticians has specifically issued guidance that people should not use this kind of calculation to convict suspects. Why do you think that is? It’s not because statisticians don’t understand circumstantial evidence.
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
Like I said, I don't really have an idea. Do you think the juries in both trials got it wrong?
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