Lucy Letby

But most people that do something dreadful tend to appear outwardly normal. When their neighbours are interviewed it's always the same comments - "he seemed fine... took the kids to the park... no trouble at all". Nobody ever says "the moment I saw him I could tell he was an axe murderer"

 

I’d be very surprised at that. They seem to be ready to stick by her forever and won’t abandon her.

 

We'll see. I found the mother's "Take me! I did it!" response very unsettling.

 

I also had doubts like Clive and Relegation Certs, maybe it's hard trying to square such a horrible crime with someone so ordinary and slightly boring looking. Beverly Allitt looked like a proper wrong un.

However, I went to the Stoke game with a mate who is pretty senior at Chester council. He said that anyone close to the case there said that people will be horrified when the detailed evidence is published.

 

Yes exactly. Same with Shipman. He was quite clearly guilty before a word had been uttered in court. But this woman? It will definitely be interesting to hear more details.

 

Judge sentences Letby to a whole life term. She’ll never leave prison.

Was the only possible conclusion.

 

Former public schoolboy the Honourable Judge Sir James Richard William Goss QC (Charterhouse school - currently £44k fees per year) decided that.

70 year old Sir Jim, who enjoys golf and skiing, is said to have a "sharp intellect" and an "acerbic wit". Most probably inherited from his father, who through an amazing coincidence was ALSO a public schoolboy high court judge.

Sir Jamie scrapes by on his modest stipend of just £200k per year from his judging (plus a further £25k to defray other essential incidental expenses such as throat sweets, bottles of water, wig and gavel repairs, energy bills, moat cleaning and duck house maintenance etc)

The best thing anyone can find to say about him is that he "doesn't suffer fools gladly" - which is rich people's code for "he's an utter cant".

Still, he's done us all proud and properly earned his corn by putting on his little wig, banging his gavel and issuing the sentence mandated by the law for someone found guilty of these offences and which everyone knew was coming anyway. So well done him!

I'd say "gissa job I could do that", but apparently the next high court vacancy is reserved for young Jimmy junior as soon as he's finished 6th form at the public school. By coincidence, he's another fine intellect, acerbic wit and no fool sufferer - just like all the Judge Gosses who have gone before him...

 

Er no... he will almost certainly have to go to the Bar first; he will do well to make judge before age 50.

While I don't necessarily dissent from the substance of this rant I am not sure it is terribly relevant to this particular case.

 

Law is p1ss easy. You know it and we all know it. Any poster on here could be a judge tomorrow if he/she were prepared to wear those silly wigs.

 

Ah, but the gavelling is hard work.

 

Plus if the instructional videos provided by the Honourable Judge Judy tell us anything, it's that you need a lot of patience and a strong shouty voice to do all that judging.

 

Some of the excerpts from the impact statements being read are absolutely heartbreaking.

 

Very sad. Lots of questions for those at the hospital to answer and lessons must be learned.

 

The correct term is gavellage.

 

He scored 2 crackers against Southampton in 1999.

 

It’s all the ‘grovelling’ at public school first that’s the real hard bit prior to being able to graduate (sic) to gavelling.

 

Hang on a minute, is she an only child? Has anyone ever met an only child that isn't a nut job?
You know who you are.

 

What I don’t understand about the view of those like Clive, who say they think she’s guilty but also doubt the strength of conviction, are you therefore saying she should have the benefit of the doubt? You think she murdered at least 6 babies, but she shouldn’t be locked up for it? You’d be happy with someone you actually think is guilty being free and able to commit the same crimes again?

 

It seems to hinge on an objection to "circumstantial evidence".

I blame police procedurals for it; they seem to have convinced the general public that circumstantial evidence is somehow weak or of little importance.

That's just not the case. Circumstantial evidence can be very strong. The fact that it requires deductive logic doesn't make it weak. Combine several forms of circumstantial evidence and you have a strong case indeed.

 

More tax payers money down the drain, we are going to have to pay for her to spend live in prison. We should just line her up against the wall and machine gun her down.

 

Not this again, **** off. And I’m not even an only child.

 

Lead poisoning getting into the wildlife food chain.

 

This is no time to be getting p!ssed.

 

Ooh, that explains a lot.

 

Teachers will tell you that it's always the only children that are the biggest weirdos.

And they should know, as only a weirdo would want to be a teacher.

 

Ah, so you favour giving her the easy way out then?

 

I can’t speak for Clive, but no. Try to follow what’s being written and not propose views others don’t have.

I have strong belief in juries, unpopular I know, but they were there for seven months and heard the evidence I wasn’t. They found her guilty. She shouldn’t be free.

Moreover, this was a high number of cases, so demolishing even one, wouldn’t demolish them all.

My concern is more with people jumping on titbits of evidence, like her ‘confession’ note to claim absolute clarity or deduce something from her expressions. I don’t think it’s problematic, in a forum like this, to ask questions or raise doubts. I wouldn’t do that in professional capacity.

I think the inquiry is really important to try to understand the timeline of failure better.

 

Well there you have the case for only children. No education system without them. You’d all have to babysit your broods all day or take them hunter-gathering with you.

The defence rests M’lud.

 

But I don’t know what Clive’s point is exactly when he himself says he thinks she’s guilty, what are they proposing exactly, other than the outcome we have? What are people with these doubts suggesting as an alternative to what has happened?

 

I'm not really proposing anything happens. I'm sure they wouldn't take any notice of me in any case!

I will be interested to see if there's an appeal though and what the outcome of that is.

 

I see very little prospect of an appeal. If there was one death, the expert, the investigation or any PM results could be challenged. There are seven deaths and seven more ‘attempted’ with different case histories. Demolishing one count would be hard enough, but 14 is very unlikely to happen.

In order to mount an appeal, the legwork required to challenge the evidence successfully would be vast. She would have to prove the variety of causes of death of the victims were wrong, again and again. She would need a squad of medical experts ready to take the stand for her.

She may be able to appeal, but won’t have the resources to do much more than rehash her defence arguments from this time around.

 

I’m an only child. You can ask me if you want, I’m staring in to your lounge currently

 

While there’s some obvious differences in the prosecution, witness reports etc, the case bears some resemblance to this one, which was also tried on circumstantial evidence

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucia_de_Berk

interestingly the statistician that helped overturn that verdict is also blogging about the Letby case

https://gill1109.com/2023/05/24/the-lucy-letby-case/?amp=1

For the record, I believe she’s guilty. I came across this on another forum and thought it’s worth sharing given some of the views above