This week on Blocked and Reported, Katie tells Jesse about the Lucy Letby saga and the subsequent legal battle between two Letby obsessives.
A British Nurse Was Found Guilty of Killing Seven Babies. Did She Do It? | The New Yorker
Private Eye Online | The Lessons of the Lucy Letby Case
Lucy Letby did not murder babies, claim medical experts
How Reddit armchair detectives threatened to derail Lucy Letby’s trial
Court Order Requiring Removal of Reddit Criticism of Scientist/Consultant Vacated
Hey I got my comment read by Jesse!
Unfortunately I think he and Katie might be missing the point of my and Snags’ comments that they read.
Because the emails they shared don’t really contradict our comments, even though J+K present them as if they do. My objection wasn’t that workers in classified environments should be expected to never discuss or post *anything* off topic, that would clearly be unreasonable for humans shut in a closed area. Certainly I’ve had more than a few non-work talks with my work buddies behind a secure facility door. That’s fine!
Rather, my objection is to the notion that discussions about sexual penetration, butthole zapping, and tucking your dick to pee would be considered appropriate for work by any reasonable employee. Jesse can claim it isn’t “explicit”, but that requires a weird definition of “explicit”!
One of the emails talks about some previous attempts to crack down on extraneous discussion. Again, J+K seem to interpret this as a sign that the transition talk is being unfairly singled out. I think it means the opposite - if the higher ups were going after even tame off topic posting, how could they reasonably conclude that much more clearly “not safe for work” content would be tolerated?
This is “laughably obvious example in a sexual harassment training” level stuff here people.
Yeah, if any guy started talking about his penis in work slack, there’s a very good chance he’d get reported, and would either be penalized in some way or outright fired. You can get reported for saying just about anything in the office, including the private sector. Half of the workplace stories on this podcast have been more tame than what was going on here.
Yeah, pretty disappointed to know Katie went in and downvoted my comment! As a Katie fan-girl, I guess I'll just go jump out a window now.
I think Katie was joking about downvoting your comment, but she definitely didn’t understand it.
There is, in fact, no downvote option in Substack.
Oh yeah, duh! She got me again.
Drunk posting on substack is dangerous
But did Katie know/remember that when she made the comment?
Good question. It’s exactly the kind of thing Katie is constitutionally incapable of understanding.
Yeah they totally missed the boat on that whole discussion.
Having listened to episode 250 just before listening to this one, I don't think they misunderstood what you said, but I respectfully suggest that you might be misunderstanding the crux of their concern, at least in part. The problem that K+J are highlighting has more to do with the curious importance assigned** to these conversations by Rufo, not by the government. Moreover, this is about *how* these conversations have been singled out and to what end.
Based on Katie's description of Rufo's reporting (and Jesse's dramatic readings), his goal here seems to have been the hyper-sexualization of the content of these conversations. Yeah, it's all super gross and inappropriate, no doubt, but it's not sexual in a prurient way, and it certainly isn't geared toward seeking out sexual acts, either at work or elsewhere. Nevertheless, that is the picture that Rufo wanted to paint, while the prejudicial pink-slipping of the perforated-pelvic-mounded perps on these scandalous grounds was the outcome he sought.
This is borderline sexual harassment training fodder at best. Not all references to procedures being done to naughty parts are themselves naughty. My sense is that what is bothering you and others here is the TRANS-sexual content of these conversation. Hey, it bothers me too. Can't help it! I grew up on "Dude Looks Like a Lady" and "The Crying Game"; like Popeye, I y'am what I y'am. But that doesn't mean my visceral reactions are correct. In fact, I know they're not. I wouldn't be as bothered if I overheard a coupla gals going on about how these new lululemon seams are over-accentuating their camel toe or how the solar-powered Evie pumps feel a bit "too good" sometimes.
But whether it's the unsung conveniences of vaginoplasty, randy breast pumps, or vasectomy commiseration, it all needs to be treated equally. And that goes both ways**; the government can't turn a blind eye to conversations about sex-change procedures while sidelining discussions about penis pump penny stocks or the trials and tribulations of the poofy-pudded yoga pants contingent.
(**) Pun not entirely unintended.
I agree that Rufo is the crux of their concern, but that’s part of what is bothering me and part of why I believe they are over-reading the emails as a refutation of my comment. The issue is that they actually haven’t established that these conversations had “curious importance assigned”, nor have they established that these conversations were “singled out” (well, they were singled out in the sense that they were individually highlighted. Whether they were “singled out” in the sense of being subjected to unfair treatment has not been established).
But J+K very much want it to be true that these conversations were unfairly handled, because it fits their prior that Rufo is a bad actor. So they are letting confirmation bias affect how they read evidence that provides an “out” for the trans talk (maybe lots of inappropriate conversations were going on! Yeah here’s a guy that says unspecified off topic conversations were a problem all the time, that must mean everyone was talking about their dicks!). While applying a much higher level of scrutiny to the Rufo-friendly version of events. (Ooooh his source claimed they said “gangbangs” but didn’t provide a screenshot! What absurd hearsay that no real journalist would *ever* publish (lol)).
Honestly this seems similar to the recent episode with Maurer, where they thought they had a perfect means to mock Musk, but everyone instead was like “wait they groomed and raped how many girls now?!”. This time they thought they had a great reason to rag on Rufo, but the reaction was “wait the spooks were talking about what on work chat?!”. The common thread is, in a rush to go after a favorite lolcow, they badly misjudged how glibly they could get away with covering an underlying issue they know little about, and are now doing a bit of damage control.
Your comment also reflects another problem, the insistence on downplaying the chats with euphemism rather than engaging with the actual language. Even if some references to “procedures” on “naughty parts” might be allowed to slide (and I still believe you are overestimating the degree to which they would be) we are talking about: discussing sexual pleasure from penetration, “butthole zapping”, and a feeling of “euphoria” from no longer having to tuck their dick while peeing. You can’t just justify any conversation by claiming it’s downstream of a medical procedure, therefore fair game.
I would be shocked at a work sanctioned group chat with any intimate discussion of any individual’s medical procedures, because it’s an HR nightmare - they have legal obligations regarding personal information and are on a hair trigger for anything that might threaten that.
I would appreciate if you not project on me your assumptions about my attitude re: trans people. I have no particular feelings about them working at NSA, I’m only bothered in this case by the specific individuals involved seeming to have a serious lack of appropriate boundaries regarding safe-for-work conversations. No, I would not be okay with cis-Alice posting about how great her last piss felt now that she finally got that UTI handled, nor would I be okay with straight-Bob saying that he enjoys getting pegged by his wife again now that his doc zapped the inflamed hemorrhoids off his butt hole.
IF we can establish that similarly work inappropriate conversations were allowed unchecked so long as they weren’t by trans employees, THEN we can rag on Rufo for his inconsistency. Until then all we can say is, yes these were inappropriate, yes Rufo possibly overstate what the quotes meant, and we can argue about whether firing was overkill or not I guess.
You're doubling down in your pursuit of a different debate. This IS about Rufo and it IS NOT about how the government handled these chats. They were very clear that both they and Rufo lacked the awareness necessary to comment on how this was handled _broadly_ or how these conversations stacked up to other conversations had by non-trans employees in the same or similar spaces. This was about how Rufo's manipulation of the content of these conversations was used as a basis for firing these people. That's it.
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But J+K very much want it to be true that these conversations were unfairly handled, because it fits their prior that Rufo is a bad actor.
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Katie admits to that though, so.... this isn't a revelation. And she got push back on it from Jesse, some of which *I* thought was initially unreasonable (was it? maybe a little, but not as much as I initially thought). This was a very nuanced discussion and it did not attempt to obscure Katie's underlying basis. Indeed, she went pretty deep into the origin of her bias in the lead up to her thesis.
The case that Katie very effectively makes is that Rufo's report fits his stated goal -- STATED... dude copped to this a while back -- of altering the narrative on what he regards as progressive cultural excess, be it DEI or trans ideology, neither of which is something that I champion and certainly not something that K+J support.
Again and again, this seems to coming down to is what *you* want to be true. Or maybe a fairer way to say that is that you want to presume a different set of claims against which you can more effectively deploy your preferred arguments.
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This time they thought they had a great reason to rag on Rufo, but the reaction was “wait the spooks were talking about what on work chat?!”.
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No, that was *your* reaction. Is is not THE reaction any more than mine is.
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Your comment also reflects another problem, the insistence on downplaying the chats with euphemism rather than engaging with the actual language. [...] we are talking about: discussing sexual pleasure from penetration, “butthole zapping”, and a feeling of “euphoria” from no longer having to tuck their dick while peeing. You can’t just justify any conversation by claiming it’s downstream of a medical procedure, therefore fair game.
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The euphemism at work here is not "naughty parts", it's "actual language". You are proving Katie's point be repeatedly returning to this angle which is not a complaint about the broad inappropriateness of hyper-personal medical issues -- which includes sexual function, it. just. does. -- but rather a specific objection to one particular class of inappropriate medical issues. NOBODY here is arguing that these conversations were appropriate or that NSA leadership wasn't correct to cite these conversations as abuse of government property (they seemed a bit hesitant, in fact). So what other distinction is there to make? This is Rufo's game and you seem willing and ready to play it.
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I would appreciate if you not project on me your assumptions about my attitude re: trans people
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I'm sure Katie feels the same way. And yet here we are.
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No, I would not be okay with cis-Alice posting about how great her last piss felt now that she finally got that UTI handled, nor would I be okay with straight-Bob saying that he enjoys getting pegged by his wife again now that his doc zapped the inflamed hemorrhoids off his butt hole.
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Based on how you have explained yourself up to this point, I don't think you be okay with either. But I also don't think you'd be as worked up about it. Your willingness to revise and expand the most vulgar, groomer-adjacent language found in those chats proves the point *again* that Rufo's report, as read by Jesse, purposefully missates the nature of these discussions in such a way as to skew the discussion into the specific direction of icky trans sex stuff. You don't seem capable of seeing the difference, so this likely is falling on deaf ears.
Meanwhile, more people have lost their jobs and we're basing our understanding of why this is happening on an unverifiable stream of information from DOGE itself and Enquirer-level sensationalism masquerading as brave reporting.
We have a disagreement about what “the real story” is here. J+K thinks “Rufo is a bad guy” is the real story, I (and others) think it’s “NSA spooks were using government group chats to talk about their genital surgeries in graphic detail”. It’s fine to assign a different level of importance to these things, that doesn’t mean either weighting is objectively wrong. My objection is a concern that J+K are suffering from confirmation bias because of their history with Rufo.
“Actual language” is not euphemism. It’s in the screenshots. If there is any evidence that the screenshots are not genuine, I’ve not seen it and I’ve frankly not even seen any serious discussion that doesn’t presume they are genuine. It’s as “verified” as anything in this whole discussion.
“Revise and expand” “Groomer adjacent” language? I’m just going off the screenshotted quotes, with at most a bit of artistic license in a lame attempt at humor. But butthole zapping is in the quotes! Sexual pleasure from penetration is in the quotes! Euphoric peeing after surgery is in the quotes! I’m not misstating the nature of the quotes (even if Rufo is) because I don’t need to - they are prima facie extremely inappropriate.
Your interpretation requires giving these quotes an additional level of charity and presumption of innocence because they are downstream of gender affirming surgery and therefore, in your opinion, must include sexual discussion. You seem to be asserting any graphic talk about sexual function becomes mere discussion of “personal medical issues” as long as a medical treatment was involved. You’re also baking in a presumption that other hyper-personal medical talk was allowed, without evidence.
You say that “NOBODY here is arguing that these conversations are appropriate”. Well, you certainly seem to be making an effort to minimize their inappropriateness, continually downplaying them as simple clinical discussion. “But what other distinction is there to make?” There is no distinction required, because we have no evidence that any other inappropriate medical talk existed. I am perfectly comfortable saying that anyone else using a government group chat to discuss the details of surgery or medical treatment to their sex organs should be disciplined. Or really any “hyper-personal” medical discussion, but sexual medical discussion is a special case regardless of gender identify or sexual orientation and you can’t pretend it isn’t.
The trans medical discussions are being “singled out” because they are the only similarly inappropriate conversations we know about! The only conversations of any kind we have literal screenshots of. It’s *possible* that other inappropriate talk existed, and it’s *possible* that non-trans persons similarly discussing their genitals would not be similarly disciplined, but that is pure speculation.
As is your presumption of how I’d react to such speculative scenarios, so please stop insisting you know my feelings better than I do.
Wait! Aren’t we encouraged to bring “our whole selves” to work?
But not your hole selves.
There’s a world of difference between benign off-topic small talk and graphic discussions about your nether regions.
I don’t have an issue with people commenting on the weather, recommending local pizza places, celebrating the results of a sports game, asking what’s going on with the construction across the street. Normal, inoffensive small talk.
I don’t want to think about anyone’s bodily functions at my job. If your discussions of bodily functions go beyond “I’m heading to the bathroom, could someone monitor this inbox until I get back?” and you’re not in a profession where there are actual work-related reasons to discuss bodily functions, it seems pretty straight-forwardly inappropriate.
The way I think of it is: If Lucy Letby isn’t a uniquely evil angel of death, then the British public need to confront the horrible fact that the NHS is no longer fit for purpose. That is too much for many to take. Rachel Aviv’s article was stunning. There was raw sewage backing up onto the floor of the hospital neonatal unit, for God’s sake.
The British public already knows the NHS is in shambles and dangerously broken down, because we live here and it’s our health system, and there have been plenty of high profile patient safety scandals. It’s one of the biggest political issues in the country. Your perspective is completely distorted because your knowledge of the subject comes exclusively from a single American reporter talking about a single sensational case.
What's irritating is that it's proffered as if one or the other, it's not. Both can be true at the same time. In reading the court trancripts there were untold (and some told) red flags, many whistleblowers who were ignored for years. CEO Tony Chambers stalling police and investigations, then walking scot-free of all culpability is striking enough. Also missing here is any real delve into Letby's psychological makeup; yes she looked 'normal' in her posted pics, but her stoic behaviour in court other than physically leaving her chair and desolving into (the only) emotional display of hysterical tears when the doctor she was potentially having an affair with spoke, has some bearing - this was not a stable individual.
Oh, I rolled my eyes when Katie went on about how ‘normal’ Letby seemed as though it mattered, and I have little interest in how ‘weird’ she might have seemed in court. People are terrible at ‘reading’ someone’s interior mental state from stuff like that; you might as well read her horoscope.
It's worth mentioning that Letby wasn't actually that normal - she was considered "cold" by her assessor when she was completing nursing training, and seemed to lack the ability to pick up on non-verbal signals of anxiety/distress from parents, suggesting a lack of empathy.
Agreed Her parent's actions, too, both before and after the trial are telling. My irritation with the conspiracists is not about strong feelings one way or the other regarding Letby. What inflames me are two things; the dissemination of facts and evidence. I've been listening to Maria Ressa (How to Stand Up to a Dictator), and her most vehement warning are the dangers of fracturing a shared reality. If there are no 'facts', it creates a vaccum for anything at all, and it's never good. I also detest bullies. That these poor broken people are being harassed and having to relive their worst moments is appalling. I recall the same with Nicola Bulley (if you're in the UK, you'll remember it). She fell into a river during a morning riverside walk and drowned. It was clear that that was what happened, yet all these conspiracists came out of their basements saying everything from that it was a police cover-up to her 'husband did it'. I'm surprised they didn't blame the family dog. They harassed him into hiding, this grief-stricken man. Disgusting.
Cards on the table, I think the Letby conviction is probably is unsafe and won’t hold up. That said, I can’t stand the online peanut gallery either, of people with no accountability or skin in the game making themselves the protagonists on the story on online fora. The establishment fucks up all the time but compared to these self-important idiots it’s a paragon of competence. If you let them try the job themselves they’d create a dumpster fire within ten minutes, which come to think of it is the exact situation currently enveloping the US government.
It will hold up. 22 babies overall and 10 months of thorough investigation - one only has to read the court transcripts. We trolled through mountains of evidence, articles, testiomonies. She's there for life. Would love to say this will highlight the importance of accountability and holding the CEO's responsible now and in future, but it won't. It infuriates the CEO got away with it, and it's the grieving parents who are the ones chased in the streets.
From my quite-distant perspective the pathological evidence of foul play just seems too muddled, with at least four different methods in the charges she was convicted of and a patchwork of different symptoms and evidence for each of them. It looks pretty consistent with a cluster of unrelated random deaths being pinned on a common cause after the fact, rather than a single person working methodically. Of course, she herself said on the stand that she agreed someone on the ward *was* poisoning babies (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/18/lucy-letby-says-poisoning-of-two-babies-with-insulin-was-not-by-her-court-hears), which was IMO a catastrophic error from the defence: if there was a killer on the ward at all, it was surely her. Her best defence was that the deaths were accidental and she seems to have thrown it away. This is just my idle speculation, I don’t expect it to convince anyone with an entrenched position on this… but if I were a betting man I know which way I’d go.
It’s like the McCann case, isn’t it? All these armchair sleuths who just KNOW there must be a conspiracy, so they tirelessly spread their half-truths as far as they can.
You nailed it with the capitalized 'KNOW'. It was the same with Jon-Benet Ramsey. I'm always nervous when armchair 'sleuths' profess to KNOW.
Exactly .
Absolutely. And some units are so much worse than others - in our local NHS trust of 2 hospitals, one of them is in special measures because of excess mortality in the maternity unit, but the other hospital unit has been held together by scaffolding for years because the victorian architecture is literally crumbling. With family & friends working in the NHS, its all too common to hear stories of severe bullying among staff, scapegoating, and poor patient care. They blame the government for staff morale being low, but its also because the NHS is a monopoly employer that just moves problem staff from one location to another, and the GMC & NMC literally take years to investigate cases of malpractice. My friend has been stalked and harassed by a nurse, as a patient, to the point they couldn't leave the house - the nurse was found guilty by the police & has a criminal record for doing it, but the NMC still hasn't struck them off after over a year because they're still investigating their own "evidence".
the thing is that unfortunately babies die on neonatal units all the time - these babies are really very sick.
But Because random does not mean uniform, it sometimes happens in a way that appears “too clustered” to our dumb ape brains. But in fact that’s just how randomness works. Flip a coin enough times and Sometimes you really do get heads 10 times in a row.
You’ll get runs of 10 heads in a row. Get 100 heads in a row, and it’s much, much more likely that you’ve got a biased coin (it’s literally a one in a nonillion chance, that’s 1 with 30 zeros after it).
Whether 7 dead babies on your watch but no one else’s is “10 heads” or “100 heads” is the question.
Again. across all the hospitals everywhere across a reasonable stretch of time it virtually is guaranteed to happen to some poor nurse. This time it was Letby.
All I’m saying is you’ve got to do the math. “It’s bound to happen sometimes” may or may not be a reasonable defense.
That’s my point. They did do the math, and the people who did the math showed it was like a 1/20 chance this could happen by chance. Which is pretty dang likely. Unfortunately the jury was not shown the correct stats, but cherry picked ones only.
I recommend reading the New Yorker article if you haven’t. It really is very good.
Where are you getting the “1/20” stat? It’s not in the New Yorker article.
I misremembered it is 1/50. The quote is about the other nurse falsely convicted, but the statistical reasons are identical:
“In the trial of the Dutch nurse, Lucia de Berk, a criminologist had calculated that there was a one-in-three-hundred-and-forty-two-million chance that the deaths were coincidental. But his methodology was faulty; when statisticians looked at the data, they found that the chances were closer to one in fifty”
I’m sorry but I don’t agree you can call that “identical”. Presumably the exact circumstances and confounders are different, which can affect the probability a lot, often orders of magnitude.
You’ve claimed that it’s a near certainty that a circumstance like Letby’s would occur by pure chance somewhere in the UK, but we simply don’t have the information to conclude that, at least in the New Yorker article. Only a reference to somewhere between 3 and 25 additional events (it’s not clear exactly how many) could potentially have been included in the chart, some number of which Letby may not have been present for. Without knowing exactly how many, it’s hard to say how likely that makes it.
Honestly the other evidence (or rather questioning of prosecution evidence) in the New Yorker article is more compelling.
There were 61 potentially concerning events originally identified during this timeframe in the neonatal ward, as I understand it. (Deaths and infants in the ward with sudden issues, etc.) They somehow narrowed that down to 25, all of which Letby was present for. It's unclear how the investigators made that determination to specifically focus only on those 25, and some statisticians have been making the argument that Letby's presence was one determining factor. If she wasn't, it's unclear what the criteria were, as some have stated that other cases bore similarity to the 25.
Not even just the UK - but in the world.
I did read the article. It left out reams of compelling evidence against Letby. It would only be considered good by someone who has no knowledge of the actual case or trial. It's that old chestnut again - articles often seem well-researched and compelling to people who don't know the subject, but seem wildly inaccurate to people who do.
What did it leave out?
ok, you asked for it, so here it is: Letby was not just convicted because of scribbled notes and statistical probability - the fact that in a hospital where 2-3 babies normally died per year, and then suddenly 4 babies collapsed and 3 died in a single month (June 2015) was rightly considered anomalous, and was therefore investigated by the hospital at the instigation of one of the doctors. The review brushed it off as coincidence, and it took over a year before the doctors went to the police with suspicions of a criminal case; thereupon the police slowly and carefully built a case against Letby, who had been by this time taken off ward duty, against the wishes of the nursing head and HR head, who fully supported her. The police were so anxious not to make any assumptions that each baby's case (both collapses and deaths) were investigated by separate teams that were forbidden to communicate until they had gathered and analysed every piece of evidence. When they finally met to compare results the similarities between cases were striking - the flitting, mottled purple/pink patches of skin discoloration (that were never seen in babies before or since, with Adams' theory about viruses found to be incorrect), the sudden collapses right after parents standing vigil went to get some sleep or food, the collapses of children who had seemed to be recovering, bizarre symptoms such as bleeding from the mouth, extreme projectile vomiting or a scream that sounded like "a noise that should not have come from a baby", anomalous air bubbles seen in the postmortem x-rays, and all collapses and deaths happening either when Letby had come on shift and was alone with a baby, or just after she had gone off shift. Letby was discovered standing over a baby with a bleeding mouth by its mother - she sent the mother away saying this was normal (it was not). One of the doctors who had suspicions about Letby was anxious upon seeing from the chart she was caring for a baby alone - he went to check that everything was alright. He found her standing motionless over the baby, watching it desaturate rapidly and not intervening. She only sprang into action after he asked her what was going on. In another incident, she told a colleague coming into the ward that one baby was pale and looked unwell, but the other nurse testified that it was too dark for Letby to have been able to see this as it was night time and the lights were off. Letby insinuated the other nurse was lying, but the court established that in fact it would have been too dark to see, so it is highly likely Letby knew the baby was pale/unwell because she had just attacked it.
Contrary to what Katie said, Letby was not normal. When she was qualifying for nursing, her assessor described her as "cold" and said she did not pick up on non-verbal signs of anxiety or distress in parents, suggesting a lack of empathy, which is unusual in paediatric nurses - warmth should be part of the job. Letby appeared animated after babies died, saying after the death of the second of two triplet babies to a colleague "you'll never guess what just happened!" you can read more about that here https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/15/lucy-letby-discussed-babies-deaths-in-excited-way-inquiry-told . One set of parents told in court about how, after their baby died, she was in the room with them as they bathed the baby for the final time, and she talked excitedly about how she had bathed their baby for the first time when it was alive. This is not normal behaviour and upset the parents a great deal. Letby also took home hundreds of confidential handover sheets from the hospital including those of babies she killed, which is illegal, and stored them under her bed. When asked why she did not shred them in court, she said she didn't have a shredder, but a working shredder was found at her home. Sheets of babies she killed were stored in a separate bag. She wrote the initials of babies she killed in her diary on the days they died. She took a picture of a sympathy card she had written for the parents of a dead baby and stored it on her phone. She searched for the parents of dead babies on Facebook and looked at their profiles on the anniversaries of the children's deaths - this was morbid behaviour, very unusual in neonatal nurses and medical professionals, who normally will want to try to forget about babies who have died. My father was a GP - when a baby in his care died, he cried and lay in bed for 3 days, for context. Letby's nursing colleagues usually took time off work after babies in their care died - Letby did not, and said she found caring for less sick babies "boring". She had glib and callous reactions to the deaths, they did not seem to affect her the way they did everyone else. She once said to a doctor about a baby who had collapsed in her care, and was being transferred to another hospital, "he's not leaving here alive, is he?" - it is perhaps hard for us to fully understand how taboo it is among medical professionals, especially those working with babies and children, to make such morbid predictions, but the doctor was sickened by the comment. She also often took it upon herself to care for sick babies that were assigned to other colleagues when she felt the babies she was looking after were not sick (ie interesting) enough. This could also have been to cover her tracks - the court also established she falsified handover notes to make it look as though other colleagues had taken over care of babies she attacked earlier than they had, presumably in order to deflect responsibility for collapses/deaths. The evidence found in her home did not just amount to her scribbled confessions, as suggested by Katie.
Letby went on holiday to Ibiza and during this time there were no deaths - immediately after her return, there were 2 deaths in quick succession, the aforementioned triplet babies. Deaths/collapses on the unit then appeared to return to more normal levels after Letby was moved from night shifts to day shifts (day shifts mean there are far fewer opportunities to be alone with a baby, as parents are awake and more staff are on duty). After she was removed from duty altogether, the deaths stopped entirely - although it should be noted that at this point, the unit was downgraded meaning it took on less sick and premature babies.
Finally, it is also noteworthy that Letby's defence lawyer Ben Myers never called a single medical expert to testify for the defence. This tends to only be the case when one can find no good evidence in support of one's client. No plausible alternative explanations for the babies' collapses and deaths were ever given by Letby's defence. In one case, Letby's counsel even admitted a baby had been deliberately harmed, but just insisted it must have been someone else. Letby's counsel also called the plumber who fixed the sewage issues, attempting to link poor plumbing to the deaths, but if you actually compare the days when he was called out with the collapses and deaths, they never line up together, and were often weeks apart. Additionally, alternative handwashing facilities not connected to the hospital's old plumbing system were available for medical staff. Antibacterial/antiviral hand gel would also always have been used as a matter of medical protocol.
I've submitted this plus more to Jesse via email and I'm hoping it will be read out as a correction in the next show.
Plus the note saying I’m evil.
I don't know what more people need - she literally wrote "i killed them on purpose" for god's sake
In the context of her therapist telling her to write down the worst darkest thoughts she’d ever had and simultaneously also writing “I didn’t kill them” etc.
I agree. You can go down some fucked up rabbit holes in your own head depending on the circumstances. But in your saner and more clear moments you understand the truth. I personally can be extremely contradictory depending on my mood and “mEnTaL hEaLtH.” But isn’t that kind of normal?
But which was which is the question in her case.
With no real understanding of this case but what has been presented here I bet my left nut she didn’t do shit.
I spent four days in a county pen without bail once. I wasn't altogether innocent. I had gotten blasted and was confronted by police outside my off-campus house at the Univ. of Maryland circa 2001. I did not handle it well. And neither did the po-po. They beat the snot of me, leaving me black and blue from head to toe. Eight months on, I got pulled over for speeding, yadda yadda... county pen.
To head off the possibility that my white ass might file a complaint, they made up five bogus assault charges -- one first degree -- and then for fun added "Attempted Escape" which is what led to the no-bail thing. Worse, I got taken in late on Thursday, which meant I wouldn't see a proper judge for four days.
One of the things I found myself thinking about quite a lot during that time was how I was going to reorient my brain to survive in case none of what followed went my way.
I wonder what I would have written down on paper if a county therapist had advised me to record as many of my thoughts as I could capture.
The judge released me on my own recog with a court date in 6 months -- still took another day to get released though. Innocent though I was, I agreed to a stet docket arrangement. Why would I do that, MoonDog! I was innocent!
Much of the opposition one finds when reasonable doubt about the correctness of a verdict emerges requires willful suspension of the ability to imagine more than one inch past one's nose.
Do you know anything about the trial apart from the latest articles and this podcast? I'd encourage you to listen to the podcast that explains every single piece of meticulously gathered evidence against her before you go endangering your left nut!
The fallacy your are exploring here is that someone cannot hold an opinion until they have consumed the same information that you have. Jesse touched on this when he noted how gender ideologues often refuse to believe any study that isn't peer reviewed to their precise specifications.
Deal with what MoonDog said. How a person goes about processing their reality is not linear and its verisimilitude is not dependent of what can be dreamt of in your philosophy.
It could be as simple as Ms. Letby figuring out how she's going to live with herself if she's found guilty.
It's not a fallacy to say that someone will have a better idea of whether the outcome of a trial was correct or not once they have listened to and processed all the evidence, plus all the arguments, counter-arguments and cross-examinations of that evidence.
Yeah, no. That “explanation” makes zero sense.
Genuine question: Do you have any experience with depression? I unfortunately do have personal experience, and depression combined with religion led to a constant state of feeling guilty for things I had zero control over, but still felt guilty about the bad outcome. So it's easy for me to see an innocent person writing about the guilt they feel, because I've done exactly the same thing.
Yes, I do. And not one depressed person I know or know of has spontaneously confessed to murder. Nor is this phenomenon documented in the DSM-5.
There is a huge gulf between feeling guilt and confessing to multiple murders you didn't commit.
It's quite a stretch to call private ramblings on a piece of personal stationary in one's own home a "spontaneous confession to murder."
It shouldn't be handwaved away; I agree. But... reading the actual piece of paper and everything on it, it seems like a gradually escalating set of ramblings from someone who feels very lost and confused. As she had literally been accused at that point by some people, to me it can all be explained readily by an implicit "apparently..."
"Apparently... I [supposedly] killed them on purpose because I'm not good enough [according to some people who are accusing me of things I didn't do]."
This doesn't seem outlandish as an explanation at all for someone feeling very depressed and falsely accused and getting thoughts out of her system. At that point, why would she act like anyone would read her random scrawlings in her own home?
Again, I'm not saying it should be completely dismissed as evidence, but it also feels like a reasonable thing to write down if she felt like she was being falsely accused -- just without a clarifying word or two because she's not writing it to explain it to someone else.
Ouch. You kicked yourself in the shins there. She didn't confess to murder, she played around with her thoughts on paper. And your insertion of the word "spontaneous" is outright dishonest and not a little bit devious. MANY people have confessed to murder, depressed or not, after having been brought under suspicion of a crime, to say nothing of Letby's situation which extended past booking and into the long adjudication of one's fate.
But above all, you're assigning undue importance to this evidence in a manner that inverts British law with respect to one's right to the assumption of innocence until proven guilty.
It was her fault for obeying an NHS therapist.
Listen, if I was in her position but innocent and was encouraged to write down my darkest thoughts, there's no way I'd write "I killed them on purpose". Just no way. It is a bizarre thing for an innocent person to write. My primary emotions would be anguish, rage and fear, I wouldn't be lying on paper about killing babies. And I don't think you would either.
If you were in her position but guilty, why would you write that down? And also write down that you didn’t do it?
Is your position that she was just so guilt ridden that she HAD to confess in two lines of her diary, but deny everywhere else, even in the same diary? It’s certainly not a manifesto or anything you’d expect from somebody planning or gloating about their kills.
It’s not something a sane person under investigation for murder would write. Which means it must be an insane thing to write, and we shouldn’t take it at face value in either direction.
"It’s not something a sane person under investigation for murder would write" - I agree, it's a bizarre thing for a person to do. So is murdering babies. Letby was not and is not a normal person. A great deal of her behaviour attests to that.
You're assuming it was meant as a statement of fact, rather than sort of quotation of an assertion made against her. You've never had an argument with someone where they said, "You did X." And you respond with, "Oh, I did X..." with a tone of disbelief or sarcasm?
I don't think it was sarcasm here, but reading the entire context of the note and the escalating language, is it that unreasonable to feel, "oh, apparently... I also killed them on purpose... because I'm not good enough..." etc. which is a restatement of what she felt she had been falsely accused of?
Without clarifying words or context, of course, since she's not writing out an explanation for a third party.
I'm not saying this definitely is what happened -- but it feels like it could fit into the rhetoric of the whole note and someone trying to just ramble out feelings about false accusations (yet not being careful about how they're wording it because... again, they didn't expect anyone else would ever try to read this).
I get what you're saying, but understand that I am coming from a place of having heard all the evidence presented in court, which adds important context to the whole situation. I have submitted corrections to Barpod which I hope will be read out in the next episode.
It's the most ridiculous "explanation" ever.
Some of the most fallacious arguments made in court are along the lines of "a guilty person would never do X". It's the same bankrupt thinking that allows the wokelicious to assert things like "women never lie about rape" or "gender dysphoria can only every result from one's inherent self-understood nature".
Some people feel guilty even when they're innocent. And people make false confessions for all sorts of reasons.
Yes, false confessions exist, but that doesn’t mean all confessions are false confessions.
The degree to which you find the note definitive kind of calls into question your utter certainty about the case from listening to a podcast, IMO.
Edited: Yes, I accept, of course the note is not enough on its own. The podcast I listened to was a report and discussion of each piece of evidence presented in court, with analysis from legal professionals. The case against Letby is enormous and was meticulously crafted by the police and medical experts. It was far more than just a statistical chart and a scribbled note. I've submitted a large portion of it to Barpod; hopefully it will be read out in the next episode and will clarify the situation to listeners somewhat.
Well I appreciate you pulling back on your original statement about the note.
Have you engaged with the critiques from the TriedByStats Medium posts? They certainly do not paint a picture of a “meticulous” case. Voluminous, certainly, and perhaps they simply overwhelmed the jury, but the individual pieces are circumstantial, flawed, or in the case of their key piece of evidence establishing Baby C’s cause of death, literally exculpatory.
To the point where the prosecution’s own lead expert now openly rejects the method of murder that Letby was convicted of using on 3 babies!
I don’t get the sense that the podcast you listened to addressed these more recent criticisms? Since you are casting yourself as a relative expert here I would certainly be interested in your answers for at least the TriedByStats concerns, which appear to include thorough analysis of relevant witness transcripts.
Ok, I have read the TriedByStats articles, and I'd now agree that in the cases of Baby C and Baby N the prosecution's case does appear to be dubious. There are 12 other cases though. In return I'd encourage you to listen to the original podcast and see what you think. It's available on Spotify and is very rigorous and detailed.
Now I need to stop procrastinating and get back to the work I should be doing...
If one murder and one attempted murder conviction are that dubious, and Dewi Evans was applying the same methodology to all of the indictments, why should I not also question the others (at a minumum, Evans’ own statements would seem to require throwing out all 3 NG air injection convictions)? “Number of charges” is not evidence of guilt.
This is a Gish Gallop, you know. Throw a thousand things at the wall and hope your opponent (and in this case the jury) gets so overwhelmed they just give up. Would the jury have still been convinced on those other 12 charges if they’d been exposed to the criticism of the baby C and N cases, and Evans’ subsequent disavowal of his own proposed cause of death? We’ll never know unless Letby gets a new trial.
I don’t think you mean it this way, but I pointed you to two articles and you insist I listen to over 12 hours of a podcast (which starts its description with “Lucy Letby is a child killer.” Uh, real objective there). Which is kind of my unease with this whole thing, the case seems to rest entirely on the sheer mass of otherwise low quality evidence.
Good luck with your work!
The podcast has been addressing some of them, such as Shoo Lee's press conference - I've only listened to that episode though so far which you can find here https://open.spotify.com/episode/4z8xsiXBdyQCRwnjF4lmJn
I'm uncomfortable with the idea I'm casting myself as an expert - I'm just familiar with evidence provided at trial, most of which were not mentioned here, and it galls me to see it omitted when it's important.
I will read the TriedByStats posts. I'm trying to avoid being online and listening to things that will rile me up as I'm writing a thesis for my childcare qualification at the moment - seems like it was a mistake to listen to Barpod this week 😬 but I will engage honestly with the criticism and give it the consideration it deserves.
Nope.
It’s a rambling note that says she did it, but also that she didn’t do it, and other stuff besides. There is certainly nothing that is a detailed account of her crimes or methods, which would normally be required in an admissible confession.
I guess it’s consistent with a confession maybe, but it’s also consistent with Letby’s version that she was struggling with her mental health and wrote it as a steam-of-consciousness attempt to get her feelings down on paper. Depressed and traumatized people feel guilty over stuff they aren’t actually responsible for all the time.
I’m replying to a comment that claims the note alone should be enough to convince me she’s guilty, which is a level of credulousness in the prosecution that makes me doubt their ability to judge objectively.
You usually make sense, but I'm sorry, you are way off base here. This is not how false confessions typically happen. Nor does it make any sense from a psychological or psychological treatment perspective.
Not to mention that no one is saying, Convict her based on the note! It is another piece of evidence that supports the conviction.
It’s not how “false confessions” work because it’s not how “confessions” usually work! It’s not an interrogation statement, it’s a diary from someone struggling with a stressful and traumatic job. If I should pay attention to “I killed them”, why should I ignore the parts that sound like she’s blaming her perceived inadequacies rather than taking credit for deliberate acts? You can’t cherry pick.
And I am literally responding to a poster that said “I don’t know what more people need”. How else am I supposed to interpret that other than that poster’s belief that the “confession” alone is definitive?
The thing actually is, that at the Countess babies didn't die all the time usually, and that's why people there got concerned when they started to drop like flies.
They did though. An average of 2 is still going to yield 6 sometimes. Especially because you have to consider that at SOME HOSPITAL SOMEWHERE (with similar death rates) that’s going to happen.
Again. It’s our dumb ape brains at fault here. Coincidences literally do happen; at predictable intervals.
I salute you. People generally can’t even handle discussions of overlapping distributions. This is a subset of that, where you’re basically saying “the tails exist.”
There are also going to be some neonatal units that see zero deaths, and absent any supporting evidence we can’t attribute that to a miracle working nurse that was attending to every surviving baby.
You said "babies die all the time" on these wards. But you are wrong, they don't, that's the point. Our ape brains may be dumb sometimes but if something is unusual it's worth checking out, and when it was checked out here they discovered a mountain of evidence against Letby. Listen to the podcast with all the evidence from the trial if you want to actually understand the case and not just have an opinion because you read one or two shallow, sensationalist articles.
Yeah there are sometimes weird patterns in randomness.
But if we’re flipping a coin and it’s pretty much 50/50 and then I pull out a coin and get 10 heads in a row and then we go back to the old coin and it’s back to 50/50… it’s certainly possible it’s a coincidence but the better inference is that there’s something weird with my coin.
Here the increase in deaths started when she qualified to work with infants and stopped once she was removed. Again, this isn’t open and shut proof (maybe she was really bad at her job. Maybe the extra attention fixed the problem - and they also did change the age of babies they’d take etc.) but this certainly isn’t a case where the pattern means nothing.
It is. If you have a million hospitals each with 100 nurses all acting identically over 20 years, ONE of them is all but guaranteed to get a streak this bad.
So, I did some math to get a sense of the numbers we’d be talking about here.
Let’s assume that Letby had a 1/5 chance of being on shift at any particular time (that’s about right if she worked 3 12 hour shifts a week plus some allowance for vacation, sick days, and other duties). And let’s for the moment grant the prosecution version of the case: there were exactly 24 adverse events.
The probability of Letby being on shift for all 24 events is 1/5^24, or one in 600 quadrillion. That isn’t a needle in a haystack, that is “a single cancer cell among the normal cells of 20,000 humans”. If that’s the “right” probability - she’s guilty as hell.
BUT the New Yorker article notes the “Texas sharpshooter” fallacy - it looks like the prosecution may have excluded some number of other events without a good reason for doing so, some of which Letby was not present for.
The article didn’t give an exact number, but let’s say there were 50 events total and Letby was on shift for at least 24. In that case we need to calculate a cumulative binomial probability, which you can do with a calculator like this one: https://stattrek.com/online-calculator/binomial
We input 0.2 (1/5) for the probability of success, 50 for the number of trials, and 24 for the number of successes, and the calculator gives us a cumulative probability of X >= 24 of 0.00001, or 1 in 100,000. Still very unlikely, but across large populations, 1 in 100,000 events happen all the time. Not guilty.
Where it really gets tricky is that we can’t just simplify the whole problem that way, because we have the confluence of at least 2 or 3 improbable events. First, that Letby was on shift for an unusually high number of events. Second, her hospital had an abnormally high number of deaths that year. They averaged 2 or 3 but had 8 - we’d need more data to determine how unlikely that was, and stats with small numbers are always dangerous, but naively that seems like a “high sigma”, i.e. very rare, event. Third, the deaths went back down after she left. No idea how to calculate that probability but we have an alternative explanation anyway - the unit was downgraded from level 2 to level 1 so it saw fewer challenging cases. Maybe we should ignore that.
Anyway let’s say 8 deaths is a 4 sigma high event - that would mean it happens 0.003% of the time. Multiply that by the 0.00001 binomial above and we get 1 in 30 billion and oh shit she’s guilty again.
But all of this is EXTREMELY sensitive to your assumptions and how you state the problem, so ultimately I don’t think the probabilities are all that definitive here, on their own.
The sewage issue is a red herring - children collapsing didn't even match up to the times the plumber was called to deal with problems in the hospital. This is detailed in this post https://www.reddit.com/r/lucyletby/comments/164jc43/plumbing_on_the_ward_the_plumbers_evidence_and/. Listen to the Trial of Lucy Letby podcast from start to finish, with an open mind - the case is very complex and there is an awful lot of evidence that Letby did it.
I’m not saying there’s a causal relationship between the sewage and the deaths - rather, it’s indicative of how troubled and decrepit some of these hospitals are.
Either the old plumbing was a factor in the case or it wasn't. The Countess had its structural and managerial issues but the reason people started to get worried about babies dying there was because it was very unusual for them to die at such a high rate there. As one of the consultants said - the babies they had there were born, cared for, got well and went home. Deaths were rare and tragic. So many babies dying in such a short time was really, really unlikely, and things like plumbing didn't explain it. What did explain it was the nurse who was witnessed standing over a baby bleeding from its mouth, doing nothing, or another time over another baby who was rapidly desaturating, again doing nothing, a nurse who falsified notes, who seemed animated after babies died, who took home the confidential medical papers of dead children (a huge no-no), who made bereaved parents uncomfortable with inappropriate comments, who never seemed to be affected by the deaths the way her colleagues were, and who wrote "I am evil I did this" and "I killed them on purpose because I'm not good enough" in private notes at home.
Listen to all the evidence. She did it. So did Adnan Syed and so did the guy from making a murderer, if you actually look at all the evidence and not just the stuff cherry picked to make a sensationalised headline grabber. I'm tired of journalists challenging convictions because it makes a good story, there are families here who lost beloved children. It's not a game.
SO many things were left out from this podcast, which deserved a far deeper and more honest dive - including the laughable comment by Jesse that he 'thanks god' he's not in the UK given the current shitshow the US has become. They left so very much out; how Letby stalked the parents of the babies she murdered (in the court transcripts) on facebook; how she took home (confidential) records of the vitals - bloodwork, oxygen levels, etc, of some of the babies she murdered and stored them in a pretty little flowered tote bag under her bed. How babies were found with breathing tubes dislodged that they, as preemies, could never have removed themsevles, insulin levels high enough to kill with Lucy being the only attendant. How she 'checked' on babies at night that had been removed, with good reason, from her care. This is the worst reporting I've seen either of them do, sorry guys, I generally love your work, but it is. Btw, I live in the UK, Rachel's article was NOT blocked, we could read it easily - there was a whole reddit thread disecting it. They did try to block it, not against fReE sPeEch, but to avoid prejudicing a jury - at a trial that lasted 10 months!!
Lastly, sneering at that there is 'empathy' for the musically named Lucy Letby because of her looks shows even more ignorance; of COURSE it's because she's young, pretty and blonde - the majority of those who defended her were single 'protective' middle-aged men. Same ones had zero sympathy though, for Shemima Begum. Pretty little blonde Lucy could 'never' harm a flea, right? Jesse might want to (or not) know there's a whole SPEED DATING club dedicated to 'Lucy Letby is Innocent' believers, that's how nuts these people are. I could go on and on. We studied it, hundreds of students, for an ethics and behavioural science class and let me tell you, they left no stone unturned. I feel bad for the parents of these poor babies, their lives are changed forever and this conspiratorial bullshit keeps cropping up, they get phone calls, chased in cars, all for the love of a pretty little blonde thing who yes, was convicted for 7, but harmed, that we know of, dozens, and is still under investigation for two more.
Yes, rules about what the press cannot report and what cannot be said online are there to preserve the chance for a fair trial, because journalists are not legal professionals and don't have the right to influence the jury. The rules aren't dumb, and when I look at what an insane circus high profile American trials become I can't believe anyone would think that that is a better or fairer system.
Indeed, look at the OJ and Depp v Heard trials, utterly crazy level of undue influence pushed because of the publicity.
The Amber Heard trial immediately sprang to my mind too
She definitely killed some babies.
100%.
The New Yorker article casts some serious doubt on the insulin theory, in my opinion (there were babies with high insulin that Letby was not present for, and these were ignored by the prosecution. The test that “proved” it had to be artificial insulin was explicitly not capable of testing for that, and this sample was never retested. Also, I think only one of the high insulin babies actually died?).
The prosecution never seemed had a clear and consistent theory of how exactly she was killing these babies. They’d pivot from theory to theory, method to method, even changing their theories after one was proven wrong (e.g. the test that *proved* Letby injured the kid, that turned out to be taken before she was on shift). No answer for clear alternative explanations - e.g. gas in a scan could easily be postmortem, the first baby that was probably injured by a tube inserted too far by a junior doctor, etc. Just a lot of “well she *could* have done this, and the baby died, so clearly that’s what happened”.
The “stalking” seems to have amounted to Letby searching their public Facebook profiles, among thousands of other Facebook searches she did.
I’ll grant the taking records home is weird, although by that point she seems to have been pretty messed up mentally from the string of deaths, whether she did it or not. Not sure why her choice of folder makes a damn bit of difference.
Anyway there’s way too much out there and I don’t intend to make myself a scholar on this case to the degree necessary to be “sure”, I just want folks to know this comment is substantially underselling the potential issues with the prosecution’s case. There are reasons other than “Letby is white” that UK public opinion swung toward her lately.
Also, sequester your damn juries, don’t threaten foreign journalists with arrest. Especially when your press was allowed to run damaging articles about Letby as soon as she was arrested anyway, prejudicing the potential jury pool from the get go. You saw the article anyway, so it’s clearly not even effective. You’re censoring the free press for no reason. Jesse is right to thank god that he lives in a country where the government doesn’t threaten, harass, and arrest him for doing his job (too bad about Bluesky though).
So tiresome when people speculate, as you've just shown here brilliantly; this is exactly why armchair 'sleths' should be banned from strongly-held opinions - it muddies both fact and evidence. Point in case; they're not 'my damned juries', I'm not British. And of course American exceptionalism rears it's ugly head, as ever - you literally have a 'president' threatening to arrest protesters, violating their first amendment rights. So what, everyone else's govt threats are pearl-clutching but your own? America has become the butt-joke of the planet alienating allies and cosying up to dictators, sit down with this shit, seriously. So which is it, either Britain has censorship in free press or they're allowed to run 'damaging articles'. If you'd actually been in the UK, you'd see they clearly print whatever the hell they want, much to the population's detriment as we saw with false claims about Brexit, you literally have no clue.
As you say, our President is violating our free speech laws. He's been complaining about these laws since before he first ran for office. He personally opposes both the spirit and letter of our first constitutional amendment.
I think you could fairly accuse an American of hypocrisy if they criticize other country's attitudes towards speech while supporting what Trump is up to (JD Vance being the poster child), but I doubt you'll find many of those people in this Substack.
THANKYOU! I found Jesse's comments, including 'what a dumb country' - which didn't seem to be a joke - actually pretty insulting. Yep, America's free speech laws are admirable and hard won. But do J and K really think that the UK restricts trial reporting because we're stupid drones who enjoy being under the thumb of big government? It may not suit their worldview, but there are what we consider good reasons to do it.
And do they really believe that UK judges and juries are idiots? This was a TEN month trial (plus the many inquiries/reports etc into Letby) during which every little detail was discussed. And, despite that, the decision might have been wrong! People may have lied or been mistaken! Letby might be innocent! But for J and K to have such a facile understanding of the trial (to assume it came down to mere statistics) suggests a very poor opinion of UK law in general. And that makes me sad.
His comments about the UK were so obviously jokes. He actually had a lot of great one-liners in this episode, like “That’s infanticide—the *worst*”
Giving Jesse the benefit of the doubt, it was probably a joke! But it didn't sound that way at all.
I mean, they have a president threatening judges, journalists and pretty much everyone else with imprisonment - someone deliberately fostering hate and fear. He's threatened to arrest and/or deport students exercising their codified rights to free speech - literally what the first amendment is all about - and (gasp) 'prohibits' them wearing masks. But yeah, every other country is the problem. What you wrote is exactly why I was incensed, 'facile' is the perfect word. Don't worry about opinions about the UK, it's not everyones, and I suspect a lot of Americans are defensive of late given the current insanity, they're going through their own growing pains being universally reviled. But yes, it makes me sad too.
Yeah there's absolutely nothing the armchair experts have posted that wasn't available to the jury, they saw all the evidence (she was defended by a KC, not some low rent solicitor) and were convinced of her guilt. Disappointing episode tbh
wow
Just like the UK court system was wrong not to be more skeptical of the importance placed on the statistical analysis of the prosecution's experts, the UK public would be wise to not overreact in another direction by declaring the NHS unfit across the board and ripe for a good DOGE'ing down.
Personal connection to this episode: my 72-year-old mum has been on the “Lucy Letby is innocent” train for years now and got permanently banned from r/LucyLetby for questioning the verdict after getting into several arguments with Gulley (FyrestarOmega). My mum rules, obviously.
Twist: your mum only knows that Letby is innocent because *she* killed those babies.
Obviously I wouldn't want to intrude on American "freedoms", but as a Canadian listener whose country seems to be in the bullseye of a new wave of American imperialism, I'm getting really sick of listening to this podcast deriding the political systems and laws of foreign nations that are far more stable and functional than America is proving itself to be.
J+K can say whatever they like, but I can't be the only one finding it off-putting in the current political climate.
Deriding laws that criminalize speech is always the correct thing to do. The United States is better than any other country on the planet on this issue. Our legal system is superior to one that jails people for being mean or for reporting on current events. The UK, Canada, et al. should continue to be ridiculed as long as they continue to enforce these indefensible authoritarian policies.
(To forestall any whataboutism: Go ahead and bash any US policy or action that violates people’s freedoms. God knows they exist. But the above is no less true.)
No country in the world, America included, has fully free speech, as that would allow threats and intimidation, etc. There is always a balance to be had. What annoys me are pompous Americans showing up to a different country, not understanding the history, cultural context, etc. and making sweeping pronouncements that they have the balance right and that if only you poor, ignorant fools would be more like us, how much better off you would be!
JD Vance can keep his asinine opinions to himself when speaking to world leaders, particularly when his motive for doing so is to intimidate other countries into changing their regulations to suit the business interests of Silicon Valley oligarchs like Zuck and Musk.
America has the fewest exceptions, which is why it’s the best country on this issue.
As for “not understanding the history,” perhaps it’s worth mentioning that the idea of free speech as we understand it was created by English and Scottish people, who I imagine would be horrified by the illiberal clowns trampling all over everything they believed in.
No “cultural context” justifies imposing a Stasi-esque regime of speech laws. This isn’t about Americans paternalistically telling others what’s good for them, it’s a simple matter of right and wrong. Freedom is right. Repression is wrong.
When you defend the unjust laws that make you less free than your American counterparts, you sound like an Afghan girl talking about how actually it’s a good thing that she’s not allowed to go to school. (You need to understand the cultural context!) It’s bizarre. If you want to hit back at chauvinistic Americans, “actually I like my lack of freedom” is a really weird way of doing it.
I'm not here to defend every instance of infringement on free speech mentioned on this show - in fact many of them are beyond the pale for my preferences. However, I can see perfectly legitimate reasons why Germany would outlaw Nazi imagery, and perfectly legitimate reasons why courts may suppress the publication of details of current trials (e.g. name of the assailant if that reveals the name of the victim, especially if the victim is a minor), etc. All of these are restrictions on free speech that I'm personally fine with. But I'm not arrogant enough to think that my personal approach is the objectively correct one.
By and large I prefer the Australian system to the American one for many reasons - but a proper constitutional protection of free speech is one thing I think we need desperately. Unfortunately there’s no appetite for it because there haven’t been any outrageous cases to provoke it, and most Australians assume we have more robust protections than we do (because there is a reasonably strong norm of free speech).
As a Brit, I couldn't agree more with our good hosts: UK laws around speech and journalistic freedom are terrible and oppressive. Americans, be happy that posting a youtube video of your dog doing a nazi salute won't result in a criminal conviction, and that anonymous complaints about offensive twitter posts won't lead to the police knocking at the door.
If Jesse were British, he'd probably be doing as much hard time as Letby based on his twitter malfeasance alone.
I only managed to read the New Yorker article after scouring the internet for crude phone pics of the magazine pages, like someone back in the Soviet days getting a hold of crumpled handwritten copies of Western literature.
Tangential question: I read UK football news, and whenever there's a case of someone doing or saying something offensive (e.g. racial epithets from the crowd, nationalist epithets from one player to another, rando on Twitter publicly attacking a player), I cannot find any press outlet reporting what the offensive thing actually was. And I do understand why, for reasons of discretion, some of the major papers would choose to leave this out. But it seems like no one reports it, not even half-censored versions. Is this a strongly adhered to journalistic convention, or would the papers be putting themselves in legal jeopardy for publishing the offensive thing?
As a Toronto-based Liverpool fan, I read such stories too and am confused. They never report what was said. And why do you never see such stories about North American sports. Are Canadian and American fans so much better behaved that they never attack players online? I see such stories from the UK and file them under, "That Would Never Happen Here."
I find it quite refreshing when they cover stories from here in the UK - I like hearing how other countries and cultures perceive events here. We can't allow the world to revolve around trump for 4 years, or we're just giving him the excess attention he craves.
I’d love to hear about literally anything besides Trump, even more diaper or pedo stories.
ABDL furry shit may be all that stands between us and complete despair.
ADBL and furry stuff makes me despair more than Trump.
So true
The reporting restrictions around this case were ridiculous. Not to mention the lack of legal recourse Letby currently has. If it takes Americans pointing that out, so be it, they’re allowed to point out the glaring flaws in the UK’s legal system despite their own country’s problems! (I am half British and not American, and I was disappointed and annoyed by the defensiveness with which many British commentators reacted to the New Yorker story.)
The reporting restrictions were only the normal reporting restrictions cases face in the uk. The babies identities were protected and opinion pieces can’t be written while the case or appeals were ongoing. There were daily blogs factually presenting every piece of evidence. I followed them really closely and tbh I’m a bit disappointed with how the evidence is presented here because there’s so much more.
I know they were the normal restrictions, that’s how British people were defending it: “oh but you Americans don’t understand, these are just the rules here!” as if the fact that the rules are bad makes it better? No, it makes it worse! My problem with the restrictions has nothing to do with the babies’ identities being known, that has no bearing on whether she’s guilty, it was the fact that until the retrial was over journalists weren’t even allowed to question whether the initial verdict was based on sound evidence.
I’ve also read and listened to a lot more about the case than was talked about in the show and I think it was a fair summary, but then I also am pretty convinced Letby is innocent.
Do you understand contempt of court laws? They’re actually in place for a really excellent reason- to make sure people get a fair trial. You know how in the US where people are tried and convicted in the court of public opinion before they even see inside a courtroom? Yeah we don’t do that here. So while a case or appeal is going on, journalists can only report facts, they can’t give opinions
I understand the rule, and I lived in the UK for 10 years as an adult. I can actually know about it and just disagree with you. In this case “the rules” meant tabloids could write 1000 articles about how she’s a monster and Private Eye could write 0 articles about how maybe the evidence that any of the babies were murdered at all was quite weak and I think that’s bad! In the US the former would still have happened but the latter would have been able to happen sooner, plus she would have far more rights to appeal than she does in the UK. A lot of things are fucked up in the US (and again, I am not American, don’t live there, and don’t particularly care about defending their legal system) but I don’t believe the UK’s legal system is objectively better than America’s.
But if you think Lucy Letby actually got a fair (re)trial as a result of the contempt of court laws, I don’t think there’s any point discussing this because we’re not going to agree on anything.
This looks to me like nationalistic defensiveness in the face of legitimate criticism and humour.
The internet is awash with Canadians who think they are the main characters in the story of America's crumbling into a political and economic hellscape.
Or perhaps Canadians are the main characters in their own story of a foreign leader who is threatening to annex them.
The world is awash with exceptionalistic, ignorant and arrogant Americans who think they can bully other nations while their bloviated idiotic man-child president cosies up to murderous dictators. Other countries, including Canada, standing up for themselves isn't the damned problem when they're literally under threat by that same political and economic hellscape that wants to economically damage it. What other fucking response to it could there possibly be?
Thanks Braveheart, but you're arguing against an entirely different observation from the one I made.
Then perhaps you should be more clear in your 'observational' output. Elmer.
Fair, and what you said ain't wrong.
“Cet animal est très méchant, Quand on l'attaque il se défend.”
As an American, I hope to hell the Canadians get to be the main characters, if it means they end up humiliating Donald Trump in his stupid crusade to start trade wars with everyone.
We definitely have a lot of problems right now, but one problem we have fortunately less of than the U.K. for sure does is judges telling reporters they can't talk about something. This episode has a great compare/contrast on that issue. The entire news industry in England was forbidden from reporting on a case of immense public interest, and an almost certainly innocent woman was given a whole life sentence to the applause of the public until the ban on reporting was lifted. Meanwhile across the pond, an internet spat wound up with a judge banning one (admittedly obsessive) person from making comments on the internet about another person (who on this subject is definitely a public figure), and a massive apparatus of speech protection jumped in to rectify that. Donald Trump is a sonofabitch, but that is true along with the fact that we've just got way better speech laws here than in the U.K.
I agree with most of what you wrote here, but just to clarify, the news industry in England were allowed to report on the case during trial, so long as they didn't report information that was excluded from the trial. Still too restrictive for my taste, but it wasn't a complete news blackout. You're absolutely right though that a lot of pro-Letby information was censored during trial on the grounds that it wasn't part of the official record.
"... Because the intelligence community is uniquely positioned to keep the president in check"
Ding ding ding, that email came from one of the #resist types that probably posted in those chat rooms, and is now out of a job.
The intelligence community, in fact, has no role in keeping any branch of the government in check. It is very specifically not included in the "Executive, judicial, legislative" system of checks and balances.
How would the Intel community, who are explicitly not decision-makers for the most part, limit any power of the government? If your answer is " Leaking to the media/congress", then you have to admit that there is no role for Intel to keep anyone in check aside from interference.
If you think it's fine for the Intel community to leak information for " the greater good", then you also believe it was fine when the FBI came out before the 2016 election to announce they were investigating Hilary, and I doubt most people now arguing in favor of the Intel community leaking liked that very much.
And as for the political leanings of the people who work in those communities, they are absolutely to the left of most people. The Intel community has been explicitly trying to recruit them for the past 10 years, but especially the last four. No one remembers the CIA's "I am a cisgender millennial with generalized anxiety disorder" recruitment ad?
It sounds silly, but when Katie and Jesse quoted this person saying “folks,” I thought: this guy’s a Dem. It just seems like a word only left-leaning people use, unless they are a southern character in a cheesy movie.
I wanted to post this as well. The IC are the opposites of a check on the executive, they are agents of the executive, with a duty to carry out the executive’s will. If they don’t like what the executive is doing, they can resign, or just passively do a bad job and hopefully be fired.
The executive isn’t a check on itself, the other two co-equal branches check it, and they all check one another.
Yeah that was a dead giveaway! Dead giveway...
Yeah, the idea that the intelligence community has some sort of authority *exceeding* that of the duly elected president is actually quite sinister. Like, you want to know why people get paranoid about the deep state, this is why.
Actually, former military guys are extremely common in the furry community, for the same reason that former military guys are very common in MtF communities. 1) It's a career path that attracts shape-rotator types, the kind of geeks who get super into online fandom and 2) the military is a draw for men who are looking to "prove" their masculinity, i.e., gay men and future MtFs; these types of men are basically the backbone of the furry community. It's not at all a coincidence that most of the guys from the Tranch were furries and former military.
I'd be willing to bet, dollars to donuts, that the incidence of veterans is higher among furries than among the general population.
So it’s like the Beatles growing beards to make up for all the floral blouses or whatever
This is going into my list of most favorite barpod comments ever.
❤️
As an aside here, recruiters seem to make a hobby of trying to pull people in as they're heading towards the offices of recruiters from other branches (where I was in Utah, they were all in a single strip mall), and when I was headed to talk with the Air Force recruiter, a Marine recruiter stepped in an gave a very masculinity-focused advertisement (be tough, get all the girls, etc).
I didn't think of myself as gay back then, but somehow that didn't particularly land for me. I joined so I could learn Chinese in a stable position that would give me time to get my feet under me and figure out what I was actually doing with my life. I imagine "proving" masculinity does hit harder for some people, but at least when it comes to Air Force intel, it's mostly just a bunch of geeks and nerds whose plan A paths fell through somewhere, with all the hobbies you'd expect from that crowd.
Interesting insight. Thanks, Trace. I have a geeky family member (he's into Star Trek, comic books, etc.) who joined the Air Force in the 80s because he was interested in engineering, but couldn't afford to go to college. He definitely falls into the former "shape rotator" category of veteran. I wouldn't say his plan A path fell through, so much as it was never presented as an option to him.
I also went to college with a gay veteran who told me he enlisted because he wanted to get away from the small town he grew up in, and like my family member, he couldn't afford college. He was very normie and conventionally masculine, though.
I get your point regarding most of the Tranch, but imagining Kev in particular in the military is *high-larious.*
Please no one ever bully Jesse out of his top of the episode stories, they are always so good. Same with Katie!!
The skiing story has me nearly in tears. Oh, Jesse.
The Adams v Gulley shitfight was absolutely classic BaRpod stuff, and I’m not at *all* shocked that it turned out Adams was insane, paranoid and violent. The thing about the pro- and anti-Letby fandoms is that they’re both composed of the same kind of mentally unwell true crime obsessives.
There was a tragic and complicated incident in my area some years ago, involving an unusually eccentric family. Someone(s) in the family were running several Facebook profiles posting prolifically, accusing various entities of culpability (note: bad idea, don't do this.) A news article mentioned the intense interest this was generating in a true crime forum, and being slightly acquainted with some of the principal characters I thought I'd check it out, and HOLY CANNOLI, the discourse was so unhinged, I could not nope out fast enough.
I'm a true crime podcasts listener, though mostly interested in cons and fraud, not violent crimes. Maybe that was why this seemed so off to me, it was mostly speculating on motive, based on...not much evidence. You don't get that with fraud, the intent is a given.
Yes, fraud is my favorite kind of true crime! Not only is it usually not violent, but parsing the manipulative strategies of the fraudster is fascinating. I also like to pretend I'm not susceptible--but we all are !
Yes, same here. Not really interested in sadists or serial killers. Any recommendations? I am enjoying Queen of the Con at the moment. Crimetown may be one of my top five of all time, along with The Dream (MLMs). I also like The Opportunist, and Criminal with Phoebe Judge. And all the Theranos, NXVIM..
I'll check out Queen of the Con and the Opportunist. Gosh--there's Bad Blood, Chameleon, Conspirituality, A Little Bit Culty (lots of MLMs), Exit Scam, The Grift, The Lazarus Heist, The Missing Cryptoqueen, Oh No Ross and Carrie, Persona: The French Deception, Ponzi Supernova, A Very British Cult--not all of these are great so YMMV!
Trust Me is my go-to for cults, I'll check out some of the others. I loved Exit Scam. I listened to much of Oh No but along with Behind the Bastards and Sawbones, I think I drifted away when it was apparent they could poke holes in the logic of everything but The One Thing. I also like Scam Goddess, occasionally. Crypto Island and WeCrashed were good.
We are certainly seeing both types of obsessives in this thread.
So, just because I randomly heard Katie discussing that trace wasn’t your typical military guy.
Mormons are on the whole a very patriotic group. It doesn’t strike me as odd at all that trace would be in the military.
Also, there's a massive amount of Mormons and ex Mormons in Intel because they're one of the few demographics where the kind of young men who would be interested in that work have no history with the devil's lettuce.
I would imagine that some have a leg up with languages after their missionary work.
The odds of a normal looking white dude that randomly speaks a language fluently that originates halfway across the planet being Mormon, or at least formerly Mormon, are hilariously high.
They generally, don’t drink, do drugs or any other risk taking activities that law enforcement and intelligence services screen out for.
Exactly! That's why there's so many of them in 3 letter agencies. This is not a criticism - they're just, in general, much less vulnerable to the usual kinds of blackmail.
Unless it’s about soaking
Very true.
Especially since he was in the Air Force. It’s the hardest to get into for a reason, most of the nerdy guys (said with love) end up there.
Air Force ROTC was huge with engineering students at my college. Definitely an overlapping demographic with furries/MTF
I'm in the UK, I've just finished listening to this, and one of the most horrifying parts of this case for me was the sentencing - a whole life order without parole, for a case based on circumstantial evidence. These "victims" were already incredibly unstable, unwell babies with a tiny chance of survival. Compare this to Axel Rudakubana, who stabbed 3 little girls to death at a dance class and critically injured many more, and had ricin in his home - he's on a long sentence but not a life order because he was 17, not 18+. On both cases, the online discussion has deliberately been targeted and stifled by the British state, blaming "prejudicial" reporting, even though some aspects brought out in online discussion forums have been proven to be true. And in both cases, it is the British state defending massive mistakes and underfunding in state organisations - the National Health Service, and counter-terrorism police & MI5.
Nadine, listen to the Trial of Lucy Letby podcast with every piece of evidence against her. You will understand why the whole life order was imposed. There are miscarriages of justice in the British legal system - this is not one of them.
That's your opinion. I'd rather listen to the opinions of the panel of experts in their field who have said this could be an unsafe conviction. A whole life order is completely unnecessary - I could understand not being allowed to practice medicine again due to a breakdown in trust, if the conviction is overturned, but the whole life order has been misused, she's not an imminent danger to the wider public.
There were many experts called in the trial itself - neonatologists, haematologists, paediatric endocrinologists, forensic pathologists. Most of Lee's explanations for the deaths were already discussed in court and ruled out as implausible. The only single piece of new evidence he offered was his own insistence that skin discoloration is not seen in venous air embolisms - but he left out an example that should have been in his review, from a study by Prof Johan Smith, an expert in the field, who described exactly that in a case of venous embolism.
Even if I agreed with you over the verdict, I still think the Whole Life Order is cruel and unnecessary punishment. There are rapists and paedophiles who have been given suspended sentences with no jail time, and really violent homicides including those linked to organised crime that still didn't get a WLO. Its inconsistent and based on public outcry rather than justice being served.
Agree, sentencing often seems senseless in the UK. I think the remedy is to properly issue murderers, rapists and paedophiles with long custodial sentences though, not to let a baby killer off with a lenient sentence. But we can agree to disagree and I appreciate your good faith response :)
You too! :-)
I was excoriated here for musing on the purely circumstantial conviction of Alex Murdaugh, to the point where I was pedantically explained-to what circumstantial evidence is. Yeah I know what it is, it’s just remarkable, ok? Rant over; good points.
The backstory from Trace’s source makes the intelligence chat pervs even less sympathetic… fuck these entitled bastards.
You have a point.
I’ll be honest, I don’t have much patience for Americans and free speech defenders (which I would generally count myself as) condemning our court reporting rules. Everyone kind of seems to know that sensationalist trial-by-tabloid is a bad thing, so forcing the media to report responsibly in ways that won’t prejudice the jury (and lead to high profile trials collapsing) is completely reasonable. It’s also a fundamentally self-limiting restriction: the trial *will* end, at which point everyone can say what they like. Enough of the dudgeon when some American publication horns in on a British case and tries to tell everyone what the jury should be finding while the trial’s ongoing.
Nonsense, and in this particular case, utterly ridiculous. The British press has spent years publishing articles on the Letby case, all of them freely available to the British public, right now, a google search away. Of course, it's mostly articles painting Letby as a villain, offering information much of which we now know to be misleading or illegitimate. It's funny how a ban only came for an article that posed a serious challenge to prosecutor's case against her.
No, the appeal trial completed and the restrictions lifted, because they only apply during a trial. That’s an essential part of how they work; how do you not understand that?
Edit: just remembered, it wasn’t an appeal trial, it was a separate trial for one of the murder charges that had been broken out from the main set for some reason.
As I say above, reporting during the trial is a public benefit (I'd go as far as to say a right), of dubious net cost to the proceedings (the intent is to protect the jury from prejudice, I would say they simply freeze in time any existing prejudice), and a fiction to enforce in any case.
It was retried because the jurors couldn't come to agreement in the first trial. There were several counts where they didn't agree, but the prosecution decided to retry only one of them.
Also, actually think this through, would you, assuming everything you say is true. All those articles biased against Letby in the press weren’t biased because of court reporting restrictions, but because the press saw it as good business to demonise her. Removing the reporting restrictions removes them for everyone: you don’t just get Rachel Aviv riding in on a white horse to silence everyone with the truth, you get every single tabloid free to rake up all the muck they can find with their own ‘independent investigation’ and then spray it across the headlines. Is this making the problem you identify better, or worse?
To be fair, the idea of reporting restrictions seems reasonable. I would argue that they aren't as beneficial as they seem and for that reason shouldn't weigh against the public good of press freedom and access to information. In this specific case, the media has already painted an unremittingly damning image of Letby. Any jury has already been prejudiced, realistically the only effect of new reporting could be to make it less negative (that turned out to be true). One could think of the opposite scenario, but that just argues that the net cost or benefit of retrictions are zero. Not worth the cost to the public right to information. There will be shady tabloids, there will also be investigative journalism that can do nothing but aid the course of justice.
And in an age of nearly unlimited access to information anywhere in the world, the idea of blocking all information is a fiction. I'd rather have all of the press reporting, not just a selection of foreign sources. Let the crown sequester the jury if they think it's so important rather than try to quarantine the rest of the world.
But it’s not really “quarantine” of information, reporting of active trials still occurs, it’s that the reporting has to be limited to what’s being discussed in court in front of the jury. There’s sometimes additional reporting restrictions enforced during cases - for example if a defendant is to stand trial again for a different crime. And the press is entitled to appeal against reporting restrictions during a court case.
I’m a former newspaper reporter - to get a journalism qualification in the UK you need to know the law around court reporting - and how to appeal against it. In the main I support our contempt of court laws, generally the public’s desire for tittle tattle doesn’t override the need for a fair justice system.
Are you calling the New Yorker piece "tittle tattle"? That's my point, it's not just tabloids, it's also important journalism, and the timely communication of information often matters. The contribution to society of press freedom isn't just titillation.
It’s rather hard to draft reporting restrictions that only apply to ‘tittle tattle’ and not good, responsible journalism, and all the benefits of press freedom can be enjoyed in full once the trial is over: the only demand of the reporting restrictions is that while the case is being decided in court, the press stick to reporting the case put before the jury, rather than effectively trying to decide the case themselves in the public media. It’s not a particularly onerous requirement, it certainly hasn’t suppressed scrutiny of the Letby case, and again I think if the rules were laxer the results would be *far* worse for Letby than the current system.
But that’s exactly my issue, the tabloid muckraking was all allowed prior to the trial, and it was mostly more good-faith stuff that actually got squashed by the reporting restrictions.
Show me an example of the tabloid muck-raking you mean, then, because they’re strictly bound by the same rules as Rachel Aviv. Which is why they sensationalise the case as has been put before the jury, whereas Aviv effectively constructed her own epic case for the defence outside of court procedure and rules. The tabloids are certainly not allowed to consult medical experts to provide interpretations of evidence the way Aviv did.
The New Yorker article mentions that multiple outlets published reporting on the case right after she was arrested and again after she was released on bail. These included quotes from e.g. other patients from Countess. Perhaps it was wrong of me to call these muckraking, but it’s unclear to me why these *wouldn’t* be prejudicial to a possible jury pool while Aviv’s article *was*.
Fortunately we have a body of law clearly setting out what you can and can’t report about in an ongoing trial, and if the New Yorker had cared about following it it could have done everything the tabloids are allowed to. Instead it chose to ignore British law and publish material which would be considered prejudicial while the trial was ongoing, and so was banned in Britain, only for the duration of the trial. Even as a pretty strident free speech defender I think this is reasonable.
If your body of law says reporting about a case before the first trial is not prejudicial, but reporting about the case after the first trial before a retrial of one of the counts in the first trial IS prejudicial, then your body of law is an ass.
Also the NY print edition with the article was not apparently suppressed, not to mention the trivial ability to access outside reporting via VPN and Reddit, so the enforcement is impotent and arbitrary anyway.
Presuming US reporters should follow UK law for an American publication is the height of arrogance, let alone actually threatening journalists outside your jurisdiction. Perhaps those resources could be better used catching child rapists and trying alleged baby murderers in less than a decade.
I’ve engaged in good faith so far but this level of weird American seething doesn’t really merit more than a chuckle, tbh.
This whole thread is weird UK seething about “how dare Jesse question our glorious UK legal system”, I figured a bit of tongue-partially-in-cheek turnabout was fair play.
EDIT: and I acknowledge I’m being a bit unfair to you by conflating you with the more blatantly sneery UK posters elsewhere in this episode thread.
Wouldn't it make much more sense to sequester the jury rather than restrict speech/press for an entire country?
Sequester a jury for ten months? Then if a tiny bit of information gets to them during the sequester period, the whole trial is put at risk?
As others have pointed out, reporting restrictions are temporary, from charge to sentencing/acquittal. There could be a case for changing these if the British press could behave themselves- but it’s notoriously bad for printing whatever the fuck it likes before charges are brought (there was a famous case a few years ago where a young woman was murdered and the press went all out on her “weirdo” landlord, accusing him of her murder and destroying him publicly. Then it turned out she was murdered by her neighbor.)
Sequestering a jury for 10 months is unreasonable, but restricting the press for the same 10 months is fine?
Yes? You’re talking about putting twelve random members of the public in confinement for ten months, unable to go home and see their families. Or what do you think ‘sequestering’ means? Of *course* that’s far more disruptive than restricting (not banning!) how the press reports the story.
That's fine to have that opinion, but then don't complain when your country's commitment to free press is criticized.
Imprisoning members of the public at random for months on end: the superior, freedom, respecting choice.
As opposed to jailing journalists for reporting on the public interest? Yep. Especially when that didn’t even work, given that apparently everyone in the UK who cared to was able to find foreign reporting.
If Aviv had new information or evidence, she should have submitted it to Letby's defence counsel. Journalists are not legal professionals and the rules are there to ensure a fair trial by preventing jurors from being prejudiced.
Maybe not have trials last 10 months?
Not always possible, which baby murdered (or attempted) out of the 17 should not have been thoroughly investigated?
No because you can have media coverage before a case goes to trial.
It's so quintessentially British to be all atwitter when Americans comment on British news while themselves enjoying the British pastime of obsessively following and critiquing American news. You people are exhausting.
Lucy Letby is what you get when you take a toxic workforce culture (that particular hospital) and infuse it with life or death stakes and the prestige of physicians. If the statistical argument doesn’t hold water (and apparently it doesn’t), all you’re left with evidence-wise is “Letby was sometimes annoying to work with due to being a bit extra, and this annoyed one doctor so much that he felt comfortable accusing her of murder”.
Having listened to basically every bit of court evidence that was given, this is absolutely not what happened. Letby was well-liked by her colleagues in general. There is a lot of evidence against her, and if you listen to the full podcast about the trial you will get a much clearer picture of what actually happened.
I haven’t listened to the podcast, while the trial was going on I couldn’t really face engaging with it, but I’m a Private Eye subscriber and Phil Hammond is increasingly convinced this is a unsafe conviction at best and a gross miscarriage of justice at worst. Why do you think he, and what appears to be a growing number of neonatologists, are disregarding the evidence that she did it? What they’ve been saying is shocking if true, yet I don’t actually know what the evidence is that she did anything? It can’t just be the spreadsheet of deaths and the scribbled “confession”?
Firstly, I would encourage you to listen to the podcast about the trial if you want to actually understand the case properly. But what do I think about recent developments? Well, first of all I think that Dr Lee is an opportunist who has seen a chance to promote his own image using a famous case - on this podcast we hear about grifters who behave like this all the time, many of whom are high profile, many of whom are doctors (paediatric gender medicine anyone?) it shouldn't surprise us that there might be a doctor who would do this. There are multiple holes in his argument - there are in fact cases of injected air embolisms causing skin mottling, one of which from a south african case he (deliberately?) left out of his clinical review and one that happened to one of Beverly Allitt's victims, a nurse who also killed by injecting air. He also gave dubious alternative explanations for the deaths - he attributed one death to an undetected bacterial infection, but such infections get progressively worse - the baby in question waa transferred to a different hospital for a few days where it improved, then on being returned to the Countess immediately collapsed again and died when Letby came on shift. The liver injury in one of the babies that he attributed to a doctor inserting a cannula was stated by a forensic expert to have been caused by physical abuse, the liver was ruptured to the extent that it could not have been accidental. The police investigation, unlike Lee, consulted not just neonatal specialists, but endocrinologists, haematologists, forensic experts etc. Dr Lee just convinced a handful of his acquaintances about the air embolism evidence, and he does of course sound convincing in his press conference, which I've listened to, so I can imagine why. Plus everyone loves a good story about a miscarriage of justice and nobody wants to believe that a nurse is a baby killer. But he has not just left out important clinical evidence, he has also ignored the mountain of circumstantial evidence against Letby. She falsified notes to make it look like someone else was on duty when a baby collapsed. She took home and stored confidential clinical notes about babies she killed (which is illegal). She seemed to know a baby she had just been with was pale and looked unwell although the colleague she was with said the room was too dark to see if that were the case. She was found standing over a baby bleeding from its mouth by the mother, doing nothing to help, she sent the mother away. She was found by a doctor standing over a rapidly desaturating baby again doing absolutely nothing, until he asked her what was happening. She behaved inappropriately around bereaved parents, she was chatty and animated after babies died, she stalked the parents of dead babies on facebook, she was never affected by the deaths like her colleagues were and refused to take time off like they did when babies died. The police were so anxious not to draw false conclusions that they had separate teams investigate every collapse and death without communicating at all until they were all finished with their investigations - when they finally all met up, the similarities in each case were astounding. Babies didn't just die, they had shocking, unexplainable collapses right after she started shift. The babies had never-before-seen symptoms like the bright pink skin mottling (if not caused by air embolisms, then what was causing these?) or screaming in the most horrendous way in the case of one baby, a sound that "should not have come out of a baby", or bleeding mouths. Letby went on holiday for a week - no deaths. She came back and the deaths began again immediately. Dr Lee has so little respect for the British judicial system that he thought just because the skin mottling was in question Letby should immediately leave jail. He's an arrogant crank, I don't put any stock at all in what he has to say.
It irritates me profoundly to see such a meticulously built case ignored in favour of sensationalism and what is essentially, just another good story. It's not a good story for the families of these babies, it is their lives. If people are going to report on this they should do their due diligence and understand the case. It's just basic respect for the families and for due process.
It’s really discouraging that all of this was left out of this episode.
It is, because K & J have just taken Aviv's article at face value, although it left out gigantic parts of the prosecution's case, and not bothered to understand the case in its entirety at all. Their angle is supposed to be cleaning up internet bullshit and not adding to it. I guess the main angle of the story is about the internet feud between two obsessive, troubled women, neither of whom are reliable voices, but the case the police brought was full of reliable evidence and it was made to sound in this episode as though there was basically none.
Probably why I was angry with it, because it's not usually a 'skim' thing with either. I know Jesse didn't investigate himself, but I've defended both of them (to the point of being on some sort of list on Bluesky - which is hilarious) enough that it's disheartening to have half-truths put out. There's enough of that going around.
A lot of this is just another way of framing what actually has been said. She “didn’t take time off” is actually one of the arguments Aviv puts forth for why Letby was accused: she was a new young career-oriented nurse in a taxed environment who worked any and every shift available to her. Also “she wasn’t affected” could be countered by the fact that she “stalked” the parents on FB and brought home records: she was arguably obsessed and upset that kids died on her watch.
Aviv's article is full of the sort of speculation a journalist might make who has no knowledge of how medical professionals conduct themselves, and who is looking to put a new spin on old evidence in order to raise her own profile. Letby was offered paid leave to recover from deaths; she didn't take it, though her colleagues did. She also found caring for less sick babies she was assigned "boring". You can read plenty about her glib and callous behaviour here, and the excited, gossipy way she discussed babies' deaths https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/15/lucy-letby-discussed-babies-deaths-in-excited-way-inquiry-told. It was simply not normal for medical professionals to be unaffected by deaths - for context, my father was a GP and a stoical man; when a baby under his care died, he lay in bed crying for 3 days. The last thing he wanted was to ever be reminded of the deaths of children in his care, it would have made his job impossible. Letby on one occasion stayed in the room where recently bereaved parents were bathing their dead child - she prattled on about how she had given the baby its first bath when it was alive, greatly upsetting the parents. She seemed animated after babies died on several occasions. You could say "oh well we all react differently to death" but actually we mostly don't, and her behaviour was very unusual for a neonatal nurse, and the police always consider bizarre reactions to death when they are investigating murder cases - it's one of the best indicators that someone should be looked into.
I appreciate your engaging in good faith and with so much background knowledge on this. I admit I don’t think anecdotally odd-seeming reactions are a smoking gun, however neither do I think arguments I know of to the contrary strongly point otherwise. I still think the case deserves further scrutiny.
First, sorry for replying to you in particular, when I mean to be replying to this thread in general.
Second, I didn't follow this case at all while it happened, but I'm perplexed why everyone can have such strong views about guilt vs. innocence, whether justice was done, etc., all while citing *podcasts* and *articles* as definitive repositories of evidence. We're 10,000s of words into a debate here, and no one has linked to or excerpted from a complete trial transcript? If that the trial itself isn't the authoritative reference for evidence that informs your opinion on this case, either (a) the 10 month trial was a travesty of justice, or (b) people here aren't really interested in whether justice was done, they're just interested in outrage-otaining themselves.
Thank you for detailing all of this so comprehensively and accessibly. A lot of people are being misled into thinking she is or might be innocent by the poor quality media coverage.
my other comment:
"nobodys directly called her annoying, but the subtext of the description of her behaviours (being overly emotional, relying on colleagues for a lot of emotional support, just generally being 'extra' with colleagues and patients) makes me think she'd come across that way. the fact that these behaviours are noted during the trial mean they caught ppl's attention"
Where did you get the impression Letby was annoying to work with? I’ll admit I’m not as knowledgeable on the subject as many but I did read The New Yorker article mentioned in the episode.
nobodys directly called her annoying, but the subtext of the description of her behaviours (being overly emotional, relying on colleagues for a lot of emotional support, just generally being 'extra' with colleagues and patients) makes me think she'd come across that way. the fact that these behaviours are noted during the trial mean they caught ppl's attention
Please don't rely on your own impressions. Letby was extremely well-liked by her colleagues, both doctors and nurses. It's driving me crazy to see people here draw conclusions based on gut feelings. I know the case, I listened to the podcast that reported on every minute of trial proceedings. Read my comment upthread if you want to understand more, I replied to a user called Kezziah, I have included a lot of the evidence against her, though there's many more that I left out because so much evidence against her exists.
Having covered court cases for years here in the UK, it’s wild that you guys think being able to prejudice a jury is the preferable option. Anyway, just for future reference Simon and Sacha Baron Cohen aren't brothers, they’re cousins.
Little explanation on why we have reporting restrictions ‘contempt of
Court’
Hint: to help avoid juries being influenced by gossip/rumour etc so that the defendant has a trial that’s as fair as possible.
If later on, a defendant’s lawyers can show irregularities with that trial or produce new evidence then they argue in court (not Reddit) that it’s an unsafe conviction.
It’s called the Rule of Law. Used to be quite popular
Considering tabloids were running articles demonizing her as soon as she was arrested, and UKians were accessing foreign reporting throughout the trial, doesn’t seem like it works too well.
Once someone is charged, the reporting restrictions come into play.
That gives a fair amount of time for tabloid comment & reporting to die down before the trial starts.
Of course, it’s not perfect: but the aim is to produce as fair a trial as is possible and to keep juries’ minds focused on the evidence they hear in court.
To remind them to base their verdicts on that, rather than on what Jill0783 says on Reddit
The idea that only stories *during* the trial can influence a jury seems profoundly naive, and destined to do what we see here - mostly protect the prosecution from criticism of their evidence until the trial is over and it’s not “news” anymore.
Besides, the NY piece was about the trial that had already concluded, and was only suppressed because of another *upcoming* trial for one of the attempted murder charges that the prosecution was allowed to split off and retry. Seems pretty biased toward the prosecutor.
FACT CHECK: Jesus is older than Chester's founding.
Better known to us Rome-thinkers as Deva Victrix.
Colonizer!
I wondered about that ha
That sounded off.
It’s not terribly far off, but it’s still off if you’re counting the stones the Romans left behind.
Guys. Do you realise Richard Gill was tweeting that the parents of these babies were drug addicts during the trial? This doesn’t appear to have any basis in fact and Gill doesn’t have any additional information about the victims that’s not public. I have no doubt he in the past has been an influential statistician but this case seems to have unhinged him. I’m not getting this from Reddit because I tried to stay away from the Reddit and tattle pages. What I did was read the daily blogs from the local newspaper and Judith Moritz on twitter. I initially believed she was innocent and being railroaded. The evidence changed my mind. There was a lot of it. I encountered Gill on twitter and his behaviour was genuinely awful. He harassed the defence daily and THATS what seemed to lead to his warning from police. Worth noting Moritz and the Daily Mail journalists who covered the case in court daily via podcast, believe she’s guilty as do I. I hate the Mail but it’s a very good award winning podcast. Her current KC seems to be an ambulance chaser who has made claims already debunked and tried to force his way into the inquiry on the hospital, which apparently traumatised the parents. That said, miscarriages of justice do happen and I’m waiting for the current new evidence to be tested in court where I’m open to changing my mind.
More about Gill:
- he has said online he thinks several serial killer nurses are probably innocent (Beverly Allitt, who confessed, Ben Geen and Victorino Chua, against both of whom the evidence was pretty conclusive)
- he has done a podcast with known British crackpot conspiracy theorist Kate Shemirani (she is an antivaxxer, Covid and 5G conspiracy theorist who has worked with David Icke and whose own son calls "dangerous)
- he has claimed online that NHS doctors routinely euthanise premature babies - he also has claimed that Lucy Letby witnessed consultant paediatrician Dr John Gibbs murder a baby in this way
- he tried to insert himself into the trial by reaching out to Letby's parents, for whatever reason (probably that he's a crackpot) they seem to have rebuffed him
- he "joked" about turning up to court with an AK47 to threaten Dr Jayaram
So... he seems like a nice, stable individual and definitely the type of person we should consider a voice of reason in this case!
Katie should open a merch store to sell Lunch Club merch.
Not sure why they haven't thought to open a merch store before 🤔
Her legacy can be thousands and thousands of lunch clubs!
ALSO - the comments for this episode on the blockedandrepport subreddit is FILLED with long winded retorts by an /r/lucyletby poster by the name of /u/Sempere. If anyone engages with the central thrust of the episode, ie maybe Lucy Letby wasn’t given the fairest trial, she launches into a copy pasted screed about the NYT article being bad faith
It’s very interesting to see the phenomena the episode is about play out in its comment section
Also happening in this very comment section!
Oh dear oh dear--I had listened to the podcast The Trial of Lucy Letby--which covered the trial over the months--and by the end I thought Letby was guilty. But if the insulin evidence and the air embolism evidence falls apart, then maybe she's not?
I am feeling so manipulatable these days--flipflopping based on the latest podcast I've heard (The Prosecutors podcast has convinced me that Adnan Syed is guilty but I used to think he was not guilty). Perhaps I should stop listening to any true crime podcasts? Perhaps I shouldn't get involved in thinking about these cases?
I can see how people get obsessed to the point of insanity. This Reddit story should warn us all!
I think it's OK to just not know.
There are quite a few issues where a previously firm position falls apart on contact with somebody more informed, but the new position only lasts until you meet an expert with even more knowledge.
Rogue expert witnesses can be a real problem. You can find examples of witnesses being 100% convinced when something is X in one case, and ~X in another case, and then surprise them with the fact that two cases are the same ones.
If the expert witness says there was a murder based on evidence before Letby showed up, that alone should get the conviction tossed out. You don't double-guess "well maybe the jury would've convicted on the other things." You keep prosecutors in-line by making sure that whole cases gets tossed if they forge *anything*.
The air embolism evidence doesn't fall apart - Dr Lee (deliberately?) omitted a case from his review where the same skin discolouration was observed in a baby who had suffered a venous air embolism. The study can be found online, it's by Prof Johan Smith who is an expert in the field.
Regarding the insulin, yes preterm babies can have low blood sugar, but why should it remain so low even after the baby was given dextrose for hours via an IV line? And why should we consider Geoff Chase's opinion more highly than Peter Hindmarsh's? He's a professor of bioengineering, not a paediatric endocrinologist like Prof Hindmarsh. Which do you think would have a clearer idea of what sort of insulin levels should be present in a preterm baby?
Syed is guilty and so is Letby. The insulin and air embolism evidence won't fall apart - the supposed panel of "experts" that has recently been assembled in her defence (and that they made a big show of at the press conference) didn't include a single pathologist or a single obstetrician, whereas the experts called during her prosecution were from right across the board of all relevant fields.
Let me guess, the misspelled Cambridge college was Gonville and Caius?
Also, minor correction: Simon Baron-Cohen is Sacha’s cousin, not brother.
An excellent episode. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from listening over the years, it’s that the internet is the perfect environment for intelligent, mentally ill individuals to thrive. I wonder what they did before.
I’m fascinated by the psychology of why certain people get the urge to insert themselves in these ways into high profile stories. I’ve noticed that any discussion of the Letby case on Twitter immediately gets the attention of a couple of accounts who are completely convinced of her guilt and which seem to post on very little else.
A lot of the behavior described in this episode reminded me of the way some people responded to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. I once worked with someone who was utterly obsessed with the case, had a blog and had associations with others who ended up being convicted of harassing her parents. I wonder if there’s an overlap between the online commentators in both cases?
Get the feeling a lot of UK Barpodders are glancing at each other and giving it 😬 round about now.
I saw the topic and I'm hesitant to listen in case it enrages me too much!
Katie and Jesse need to get Helen Lewis (or another reputable Brit) to fact check their episodes on UK stories.
great idea!
Helen Lewis hosts the Private Eye podcast Page 93 where they regularly talk about this with an expert journalist.
What a wild ride. Classic BARpod!
With regard to the Sarrita Adams side of the story, I kept thinking about how schizophrenia has an age of onset of late 20s to early 30s in women (versus men where it tends to show up in their teens to early 20s)…right about the time someone would be completing a PhD. It’s crazy to get that far and then not complete because you failed to submit corrections. Unless I misunderstood, that would indicate to me she defended already too.
In a general sense, since I already feel a bit guilty about speculating as a have above, high intelligence and an ability to express oneself intelligently can really mask mental illness, in the same way high social skills can sometimes mask early dementia. It’s obviously a huge advantage to be extremely smart, but it also prevents people from being able to be identified as really needing help sometimes. Then the internet comes along and just feeds all of the worst parts of the mental illness too. Very sad stuff.
Yeah, that's the subtext I'm also getting from Katie's discussion with the statistician - some kind of severe mental illness. Late 20s is also a common time for bipolar 1 to fully show itself.
The fact she did get that far in her PhD studies strongly suggests that she wasn't as ill at the time as she later became. Just very sad.
Guessing this is the investigative story that Katie mentioned working on a couple months ago - well done, Katie! Like Jesse’s story about the Alzheimer’s fraud, very interesting internet bullshit spinoff of the larger narrative.
Very intrigued by this poker game of canceled/heterdox figures mentioned by Jesse.
It is the subject of an upcoming novella I’m writing, I’ve decided.
Man, Fuck This Game
I think it’ll line up well next to my other book, Nunchuck Substacker.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_Story
Excellent. I’ll just run a find and replace on some names and will be mostly done.
I teach statistics, and I'm loving the "bad stats" angle Katie's been taking on the podcast lately. As soon as she began describing the "deaths that couldn't have been a coincidence" type evidence my brain went straight to Sally Clark. Another UK case where the Royal Statistical Society got involved due to the prosecution's extremely bad use of statistics. I tell that story to my students.
There's a certain kind of invalid probabilistic reasoning used commonly enough in criminal prosecution that we call it "the prosecutor's fallacy" (its less exciting name is "the baserate fallacy"). The Clark case was egregious: she had two infant children die of SIDS, and prosecution's main argument was "that is too unlikely to happen by chance". And the problem with such an argument is that it subjects only one of the two competing explanations to a probability calculation: the probability of two infants from the same mother dying of SIDS. This was the defense's explanation, and it is indeed a priori improbable (though not as improbable as the prosecution claimed; their expert made a major mathematical error). But the prosecution's explanation - that a mother murdered both her children - is *also* a priori improbable! If you want to play the probability-of-a-theory game, you can't just calculate the probability of your evidence under one of the competing theories. You have to do it under both. What are the chances of two SIDS deaths from the same mother *relative to* the chances that a mother murders her children?
Sounds like the same thing is going on here. You can't get the probability of Letby's guilt or innocence from only the probability of X out of N infant deaths occuring during the same nurse's shifts. And while I completely agree with those here who've pointed out that, given enough time and enough hospitals and enough sick infants, seemingly "impossible coincidences" aren't so impossible at all, even adjusting for this doesn't get you there. No - if you want the probability that Letby killed a bunch of babies, you also need the prior probability of a nurse killing a bunch of babies! I don't know how to come up with this; sounds hard. But them's the breaks. You either make that part of the calculation, or you ignore a posteriori probabilistic evidence.
(Nerdier version: to get the probability of "she killed the babies" from the probability of "this many babies dying from not-murder during the same nurse's shifts", you gotta use Bayes' Rule)
I know nothing about this case beyond what's in this podcast, so I'm not expressing an opinion on Letby's guilt or innocence. But I know statistics and probability, and my best advice is do not trust your gut instincts when it comes to probability. Human brains aren't wired for it.
Sorry, but this case has become catnip for everyone with a passing familiarity with Bayes' theorem, and quite wrongly. Unlike the Sally Clark and Lucia de Berk cases, the prosecution in Letby didn't rely on any statistical evidence. Not once did they say 'the odds of this happening by chance are X to one'. The height of the so-called statistical evidence was the chart above. The chart shows that Letby had the opportunity to commit all the crimes she was accused of. That's all it shows.
Considering the prosecution seems to lack any actual evidence *proving* any of the babies died of unnatural causes (rather than possibly plausible theories of air embolism, shifted breathing tubes, and insulin injections), let alone any witness or physical evidence of Letby actually doing those things, it’s disingenuous to argue that the correlation argument is merely establishing opportunity.
Hell, “Letby was around for all the deaths” was the only reason anyone started investigating her in the first place.
The prosecution called half a dozen expert witnesses. That is evidence whether you like it or not. Other experts have disagreed with the prosecution's experts, which is not that unusual, but their evidence hasn't been tested in court (with the exception of Dr Lee, who gave evidence in the Court of Appeal). The mystery in this case is why Letby chose not to call her medical experts. Unless she waives privilege, we will never know, but the natural inference is that their evidence was unhelpful.
Their main expert Dewi Evans inserted himself into the case “after reading about it in the news”. Now, after evidence shows that a scan “proving” Baby C was killed by air in the nasogastric tube was taken before Letby would have had access to that baby, he’s changed his story and now doesn’t believe any of the babies were killed that way, despite his testimony helping to convict Letby of 3 murders by that method.
Lee literally wrote the paper the prosecution used to claim murder by air embolism, and he disagrees with the prosecution’s conclusions - seems we should favor his opinion. He wrote a follow up paper in 2024 reviewing 117 other cases of death by air embolism, none of which had the skin discoloration the prosecution claimed was proof of venous air embolism. In a battle of experts, I see no reason we shouldn’t take his side as definitive since the other experts are just interpreting his research.
Lee was not allowed to be called in the 2024 appeal because he wasn’t called in the original case - but that shouldn’t be that much of a surprise since he lived in Canada and hadn’t heard about the case until afterward due to the media blackout. EDIT: I should have said his evidence was not deemed “new” enough to grant an appeal, on the logic that the defense could theoretically have called him in as an expert but didn’t. You say it was “tested in court”, but it doesn’t sound like the court ruled him “wrong”?
So of the 7 murders, 3 are by a method even the prosecutors lead expert now thinks is bullshit and the others all rely on a paper that the paper’s own author says was badly misused.
And of course there is a third group of experts, namely the pathologists who originally ruled all the deaths natural.
Being in trial doesn’t automatically make an expert smarter, and here it really looks like the constraints of the trial resulted in a cherry picked group of experts all biased toward the murder theory rather than a truly objective assessment of the evidence.
Don’t just say “the trial is right because it’s a trial”. That’s a tautology. Tell me why I should ignore Shoo Lee’s expert panel that ruled all the deaths natural and all the original pathologists who said the same.
I just read the "triedbystats" blog posts about baby's C and N. Unless the author is leaving out some massive other pieces of evidence... wow. Just, wow. I'm now surprised this jury acquitted her on *any* charges, given they found these persuasive.
Thanks, I'm not familiar with the court record and it's good to hear they didn't come up with some invalid number.
From reading just this comments section, it seems some of the arguments for her guilt that are popular with the public still involve questionable probabilistic reasoning. And if it's true that other deaths which did not occur during her shifts were excluded from that chart, I'd still say it conveys a misleading statistical claim. But I agree with you that it doesn't involve Bayes' Rule.
One of the disadvantages of the English system is that we'll never know whether the jury thought Letby's presence at the material times couldn't be explained by coincidence alone. All we can say is that stats weren't part of the prosecution case, and people like Gill have fallen prey to 'when all you have is a hammer...' syndrome.
I have reservations about the verdict and frankly I don't trust anyone who doesn't. But the sceptics don't pay nearly enough attention to the fact that Letby was on the stand for a long time and got caught in a lot of weird lies. The expert evidence would never have been enough if the jury believed her. Either she's guilty or she's a very strange person who's been desperately unlucky.
Among her weird lies: she told police she didn't know what an air embolism was or how they worked. In fact she completed a training course about putting in IV lines that contained specific information about the dangers of air embolisms just 2 weeks before the first baby collapsed on her watch in June 2015.
Another weird lie: she took home hundred of confidential handover sheets from the hospital, which is illegal. When asked why she didn't destroy the documents, she told police she didn't have a shredder - but a working shredder was found at her house.
I know nothing about this case other than listening to the podcast. But.. over the years I've listened to several books about memory, cognitive science, and I've learned that sometimes we organize and fit facts in our head to fit a theory, even without any biased intent, without even being aware that we are doing it. Sort of like the cognitive equivalent of a visual illusion -- in a visual illusion we know are eyes are misleading us, but we can't help but see what actually is NOT there.
To address the two weird lies you mentioned. Again, I have no knowledge either way. But I can easily imagine haven taken a course in college, or received some work training, which I have completely forgotten about since, and would "truthfully" claim to never learned about something, even though I had.
On the shredder. I would distinguish between finding a "working shredder" in someone's house ... without additional facts about how often, how recent, how frequently it is used ... versus if she stated she did not have a shredder when it was something she used regularly every month after paying bills, etc . Maybe she owned one, did not use it very often, and under the stress of police interrogation, did not remember that she owned one.
But the whole point is that it's crucial for nurses who put in IV lines to know about air embolisms as they can easily happen and can be fatal. Any nurse who is regularly putting in IV lines as Letby was should know exactly what they are. It isn't some obscure bit of info one forgets, it's a daily part of the job.
Thank you for your reply. Also, last night, long after I had posted my above comment, I went back through this thread and read all of the comments and replies you have posted here. You have included many good facts and points I did not know about the case until reading your comments. So thank you for doing that, despite some likely frustration with the rest of us who know much less. You and other(s) have also mentioned other podcasts or blogs / substacks with more and better info about the Letby case.
You wrote that you sent some of these points directly to the show or hosts. In the next episode, I do hope they at least acknowledge some of the points you and a couple other people here in the comments have made. Regards.
Thanks, I appreciate your response greatly :)
That first one doesn't sound weird at all to me, isn't the relevant time period the one between when she took the training and when the police asked her that question? And wasn't that a much greater period of time?
Also, nurses get lots of training that contains lots of information. Just how much emphasis was placed on "here's how air embolisms work"? How much emphasis was placed on the term "air embolism", as opposed to the practical details of what a nurse needs to do (or not do) in order to prevent them?
No, because she had to learn about air embolisms as part of training about putting in IV lines, which is something she would have done regularly as part of her job in the neonatal ward. It was a piece of information she would have had to know, to keep ever-present in mind, in order to safely treat these babies. It would be very weird for her not to know what they were.
Fully agree regarding this weakness of the jury system. My partner is a nurse and a true crime fan, and this has led me to get suspicious (perhaps to a fault) when I see the some of the arguments in favor of guilt that I'm reading in these comments. Stuff like "she's not acting how I imagine I would act if I was falsely accused of that" makes my blood boil. As though we can just thought-experiment our way into understanding the full range of likely reactions to being a nurse who has witnessed a bunch of infants' deaths. Juries aren't supposed to do this but of course they do.
I also took a look at those supposedly confessional personal notes and my knee-jerk reaction is they look exculpatory to me. I'll admit that's a knee-jerk reaction. When I hear that there's tons of strong evidence for her guilt and this a piece of it, I wonder if the rest is similarly weak. Again, a knee-jerk reaction that I've developed over time from seeing how obscenely overconfident so many people allow themselve to become when presented with ambigious evidence + a story that titilates the imagination.
So that's my bias :) But I don't have informed opinion about the rest of the evidence, and I appreciate your clarifications on the statistical element.
My knee jerk reaction is the same. There is a *lot* of evidence, but all of it seems circumstantial and relatively low quality on examination. Which, combined with the vast number of charges, makes me concerned this was the legal system version of a Gish Gallop. Would any of the individual murder cases have been persuasive without the evidence of all the cases?
Yeah, the two counts covered here suggest a shockingly low standard of evidence being applied in practice, regardless of what the standard is supposed to be on paper:
https://medium.com/@triedbystats
I do not accept the "lots of low quality evidence = a little bit of high quality evidence" insinuation that's been put forth by some. And, admittedly, this comes from my experience as a statistician. Treating a mountain of evidence in which each individual piece is flimsy like the aggregate is strong is what got us the replication crisis in social psychology.
That something as grotesquely unpersuasive as "Letby looked at the Facebook profiles of the dead infants' parents" has made it onto the supposedly huge mountain of evidence against her... this does not fill me with confidence regarding the rest of it.
Oof, both those seem utterly terrible and the result of fundamentally broken evidence (an x-ray from the day before Letby had access to the baby in the case of C, and mixing up “IN” and “OUT” door swipe data completely altering the timeline of N, when the timeline is a key element of the prosecution case).
The most disturbing thing though is the description of Evans’ role, which, if true, kinda damns the whole thing. First, all of the “experts” are downstream of him, not providing independent analysis but basically just agreeing that his theories are plausible. Second, he really seems to be trolling through the data to find adverse events that occurred while Letby was on shift, ignoring any that happened when she wasn’t, then coming up with whatever theory sticks that could make Letby responsible.
Seriously, the evidence for Baby N, which resulted in a conviction, seems to be: Evans decided that 30 minutes of crying and an oxygen desaturation could *only* be caused by an intentional act of harm, and because Letby was working that night, it *must* have been her, even though there is no direct evidence she interacted with that baby.
I’d really like one of the podcast-listening experts in this thread to tell me what I am missing.
My impression is the same at this point. There's a world of difference between having other medical experts review the evidence in a blinded manner (as Evans claims he initially was) and having other medical experts affirm that Evans' theories are within the realm of possibility.
And, even taking as true that Evans initially reviewed the evidence blinded to whether Letby was present (a claim I'm not sure I believe), that blinding didn't last long, did it? A lot of the circumstantial evidence was constructed after is was known whether Letby was present.
I’m not sure I find it particularly persuasive that she got weird and contradicted herself after being on the stand for 17 DAYS after being in jail for two years(!) and under formal investigation for seven years(!). At some point going insane is a sane response…
This was during the initial police interviews, not on the stand
Since you and Jon mentioned Sally Clark case; and at the top of episode post, there is already a link to Jesse's Lucia de Berk case. If anyone wants to read more, here is wikipedia page for Sally Clark case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Clark
It does sound like the inappropriate pseudo slack channel users pushed their luck and forgot they could only do that because under the Biden administration nobody wanted to be the one to pull the plug on them.
I know there’s only so much you can discuss in an hour or so episode but it was frustrating that Rachel Aviv’s misunderstanding in the New Yorker article about the statistical evidence used in the trial and to create the case against Letby was glossed over in the pod. It is also not analogous to the Lucia de Beck case. Christopher Snowden discusses this in detail on his Substack (https://snowdon.substack.com/p/lucy-letby-and-the-texas-sharpshooter). Extract below:
“When Dewi Evans first identified suspicious collapses and deaths by looking at the medical records, he did so without knowing who was on duty. Each suspicious incident was then handed to a different detective to investigate in isolation. According to Detective Superintendent Paul Hughes, who allocated the cases, it was only when the detectives returned to discuss their cases with each other that the similarities emerged, not least the constant presence of Nurse Letby. What possible motive could the police have to frame an innocent woman anyway?
It is the unexplained and unexpected nature of so many of the collapses and deaths that set them apart from the handful of deaths that the doctors expected to see each year.”
Does anyone else think it's interesting how hard the hosts of this podcast, everyone mentioned in this episode and the posters on this thread are working to keep the Countess of Chester herself from becoming a suspect in this case?
I mean, lovely old bird but she really shouldn't be running a hospital.
Kate Middleton is the Countess of Chester (or at least Prince William is the Earl of Chester, goes along with his Prince of Wales title. For whatever reason while the wife of a Baron is a Baroness and the wife of a Duke is a Duchess the wife of an Earl is a Countess).
This is one of my favourite linguistic facts!
“Earl” was the Anglo-Saxon name for the rank which was called “Count” in France. After the Norman Conquest, when the Norman nobility started consolidating power in England, the Counts would try to call themselves “Count” and all the English peasants would snigger because “count” sounded like a rude word in Anglo-Saxon (I’m sure you can guess). So they adopted the Anglo-Saxon name Earl instead, but kept “Countess” as it didn’t have the same issue.
J’accuse, Kate!
I’m really puzzled at this episode because you guys do know that Lucy Letby was not convicted on the basis of statistics right? I’m just really confused why you don’t seem to know that.
Very interesting episode. Vintage BARPod.
This Dewi Evans guy, the expert witness, is an interesting character (by the way, his name is pronounced DEH-wee). I was aware of him well before the Letby case due to him trying unsuccessfully to become chairman of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, in 2019 (he lost decisively). He basically ran a single-issue populist campaign to reinstate the membership of a Welsh Parliament member who'd been suspended for all sorts of allegations and for generally being a nightmare to work with, but who was also pretty openly trying to take over the party. https://nation.cymru/news/plaid-cymru-chair-alun-ffred-dewi-evans/
Not that this in itself casts doubt on his contribution to the case. I'm just enjoying the novelty of Welsh politics and the BARPod cinematic universe very gently brushing against each other.
This type of episode is exactly why I pay for BARPod. A+++.
Funny that the actual story was itself compelling, and then the internet bullshit offshoot shot out into space.
With a story already off the charts in terms of bizareness and tragedy, Katie and Jesse manage to take it to completely new dimensions of bizareness and tragedy. Respect.
I’ve got to say, Richard Gill sounds like a person of great kindness and integrity.
All the people in this story need Jesus.
Katie and Jessie both seemed pretty credulous about the “innocent woman convicted by statistical fallacy” narrative but I think it’s worth engaging with the prosecutions full case. A lot of circumstantial evidence, like her suspicious “gaslighting” behavior and the totally unexplained “natural” deaths (with lots of medical professionals testifying that deaths looked suspicious), that could support the verdict. Indeed, many cases must be built on circumstantial evidence where direct evidence is not available.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/08/30/the-case-against-lucy-letby/#google_vignette
I'm I crazy for thinking they dismissed the whole "confession note" thing a little too hastily? I get someone sitting in an interrogation room for hours on end being grilled by police, eventually cracking, and admitting to a crime you didn't commit. There is plenty of evidence that this happens. But why if someone asks you to write down your feelings at home would you write, "I am evil I did this”; “I killed them on purpose because I am not good enough to care for them and I am a horrible evil person”
Katie explains to Jesse that she also wrote, "I did nothing wrong." And he's just like, "oh, ok, makes sense." Plenty of criminals think they did nothing wrong. There might be some messed up reason someone would do this, but I also can't really fault a jury for considering it.
If you google those notes, you'll see a ton of stuff scribbled. Taken in aggregate, it fits her story well: she did this as a way of processing her intense emotions. Emotions that came from being present for many infant deaths and then being suspended from her job and learning it was because some other people thought she killed those babies intentionally. That will break a person.
If you've never done this kind of "processing through writing" thing before, I can see how it seems strange. But a lot of people do it. A lot of therapists recommend it. Writing down your raw thoughts and emotions in the moment is a tool for dealing with them.
Most of what she wrote was along the lines of "am I a bad nurse? did I do something wrong? what do other people think of me? why is this happening to me?" Those are all perfectly understandable, given the circumstances.
In fact, they seem much more consistent with her *not* having intentionally killed a bunch of infants, especially in the very calculating manner she's alleged to have done it, which required premeditation and manipulation and deception of her co-workers. Does a methodical murderer then scribble a confession along with a ton of other scattered thoughts that are the opposite of a confession, and then put them in a folder and leave them under her bed for a couple of years?
I don't think she'd have been a methodological murderer, just potentially a crazy, crime-of-opportunity murderer. I see what you are saying, and maybe her defense had an expert who explained this and how it worked--I don't really know how the British legal system works. I did read a couple articles and saw copies of the pages. If you're right about the general tenor of her writings, then you've made a better case than the articles I read. It is clear that it wasn't coherent.
Just want to say being late is a psy-op and being on time is based AF
Generally agree but do not apply this logic to Mexican kids’ birthday parties unless you want to be the one gringo there awkwardly hanging out with abuela for 45 minutes.
Abuela rules I bet
She’s fun. Doesn’t speak much English but loves watching toddler run around and teaching her simple Spanish words. Makes a mean pork chile (and laughs because my wife loves it hot and her daughter only likes it ultra mild).
Next time we’ll make sure to check that the guest of honor is at least awake from her nap before timing our departure.
Based and punctuality-pilled.
Crazy episode. Good real world and online bullshit elements.
I did not go to Cambridge and have no Phd, but I taught English in China and I had to show the CCP my bachelor's diploma. Not my transcript, my diploma. Since I had lost the one they gave me and getting a new one was expensive and took a long time, I asked a friend to photoshop me one. It looked pretty good. Got me a Chinese passport.
Few people in the UK media are daring to criticise Letby's defence. A lot of articles go out of their way to defend some of his actions, such as not calling an expert witness to refute Dewi Evans testimony. Or for some bizarre reason allowing notes written by Letby on the advice of a psychologist to be admitted into evidence without context. To what extend he was even consulting with Letby about her own defence is debatable.
Media outlets are very careful not to annoy the legal profession. In 2020 when a UK barrister was taking work in Hong Kong prosecuting pro democracy protestors on behalf of the CCP it was barely reported on, eventually the Guardian wrote a carefully worded article. However they were an exception.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/15/british-qc-prosecuting-activists-in-hong-kong-fought-to-be-allowed-to-take-case
Lawyers in the UK are often less interested in zealously defending the interests of their clients than they are maintaining relationships with fellow lawyers, cps, courts and to a lesser extent the police. There is a tradition of putting on a bit of 'theatre' loud proclemations in court which look and sound great but don't really inconvenience anyone that matters.
The post masters scandal is another example multiple criminal trials, and not one defence barrister identified the obvious flaws in the prosectuion. They simply pocketed their 'fees' and did their performance in court.
Jesus, where to start with this ...
1. The defence instructed medical experts. Letby herself decided not to call them. It's impossible to know why unless she waives privilege, but the most likely reason is that their evidence wasn't helpful.
2. The defence didn't get to decide whether the notes were admissible. They plainly were admissible under the law of evidence. The defence sought to contextualise them just as you suggest, but it appears the jury didn't buy it.
3. Perry's behaviour in HK was widely reported and widely criticised in the legal press and on Legal Twitter.
4. Some defence lawyers did challenge the Horizon system and, if it hadn't been for their efforts, the scandal may never have come to light. Horizon was a cover-up on a grand scale by a well-resourced emanation of the state. It's a fantasy to imagine that legal aid lawyers could and should have unravelled it by themselves.
This was one of the best barpod episodes in recent memory, if not ever. More like this please!
The "protect the children" online communities have always been particularly loony, from either side of the political spectrum. (Think of "Pizzagate" or the "Podesta Pool" folks or the people obsessed with Epstein.) So when a story involving children overlaps with the "True Crime" community, you'll get an explosive combination of over-zealous people.
I'm a bit late to the party here but I'm afraid the ‘new evidence’ that's been presented in recent months in Letby’s defence is neither new, nor is it compelling. Most of it was in fact addressed in the original trial. The only new development of any consequence is the fresh questions over the cause of death of one of the seven babies she murdered. Incidentally, Letby was found to have falsified records to make it appear that babies’ conditions had deteriorated to justify the interventions she deployed in order to harm them (and presumably to try and cover her tracks), so that's partly why the deaths and other incidents weren't immediately identified as suspicious when they happened, but questions had been raised about her performance a long time before she was formally accused of any wrongdoing. A doctor asked that she be suspended and/or barred from working in that ward (I forget which) because they were concerned that she was harming patients, and they were later forced to apologise to Letby (!) The failure to successfully identify what Letby was doing at an earlier stage and deal with it before she could harm any other babies is itself a massive scandal and is currently the subject of a public inquiry (see the Thirwall Inquiry). If the hospital trust was attempting to divert attention from its own shortcomings by scapegoating a nurse, it's done a really crap job.
It's telling that Letby's lawyers chose not to rely on many of the other seemingly obvious arguments now being presented in her defence in court. If there was compelling medical evidence that would cast doubt over Letby murdering or hurting these babies, why would her lawyers not call upon a medical expert to testify as much in court? Either they're profoundly terrible at their jobs, or they were perfectly aware that these claims were either irrelevant, easily debunked or actively harmful to their client's defence. Also, Letby's conviction didn't hang on statistical evidence - I don't know where this claim comes from? But it needs to go away.
This one wasn't up to your usual standards, at least not on the Letby side. Internet bullshit side was entertaining as always.
I actually think this reflects poorly on FIRE and Adam. This is a classic case where Gulley should have funded her own case. Adams may be wrong and mentally ill, but Gulley is a bully and a waste of FIRE donor money.
This is exactly the kind of case FIRE is for. Without a hearing, Adams obtained a restraining order ordering someone not to make any social media posts about her. If free speech is only for good people then there isn't free speech at all.
To quote A Man for All Seasons:
William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”
Yup. The process is more important than the wackjob being represented by FIRE. it's exactly the kind of case they should take up.
Nah. Fighting for the right to harass and Internet stalk a mentally ill woman serves nothing. FIRE chooses its cases. Gulley can file a motion to quash with her own money.
But without process, who decides what is legitimate vs stalking?
The courts, through Gulley's lawyers paid by her own funds.
The population of people whose free speech rights get violated is full of assholes and lunatics. Greg Lukianoff has been saying this from the very start: defending free speech means defending people who have done and said socially objectionable things. FIRE often pick high-profile cases, where there's some very public dispute, so that they can make a similarly high-profile, public show of defending speech rights.
I can see the case against this: choosing sympathetic people is good for the cause; choosing unsympathetic people is bad for the cause. But my understanding is that FIRE consider "awful people have rights, too" to be an important message, one that's worth putting resources into. And I agree with them; it is with people like Gulley when 1A rights are at the greatest risk, because even people who would normally support those rights will look at her and say "she's awful, she deserves it".
It was low profile though.
That's not what the case was. That's an intentionally incorrect and inflammatory framing of the actual case.
No it's not. It's literally choosing to defend a lunatic in pursuit of free speech goals writ large. It's a choice.
Did Katie go a bit weird when she turned on Jesse for mentioning he'd written about Lucia de Berk on his substack? 'I'm going to delete this. This is not about you, this is about us' Wtf.
It's a joke... the article is linked.
To be fair, I had to check myself. Somehow that one seemed more genuinely mean than her usual schtick.
Bigger loser than the one who shows up exactly on time? The one who shows up early!
I had a friend who did this so predictably that if I was hosting a dinner or party, I’d plan a task to keep him busy when he arrived. It eased the awkwardness and made my prep easier too!
Finally listened, good reminder stay off Reddit
Whether one believes Letby is guilty or not (I personally believe that there’s enough reasonable doubt that she shouldn’t be in prison), operating a forum where you obsessively hate on an incarcerated stranger has to be one of the saddest ways to waste your time in the modern era.
lies, damned lies, and statistics
I can't stop laughing at Jesse saying "that's awesome". I need help
Did someone say, "the Intel Community is uniquely positioned to keep any president in check?" Uh, sorry, no.
The "Intel Community" is unelected. There are two branches of government that keep the Executive in check--the Legislative and the Judicial. There is no "Intel Community" tasked with "keeping the president in check." This is unconstitutional nonsense. I'm sorry to be harsh, but the idea that unelected (and sometimes unaccountable--at least to the voters) employees of Executive branch agencies are expected to put their personal beliefs over the policies of the ELECTED officials is contrary to republican government. If you disagree, just try swapping the parties: Are you ok with unelected bureaucrats from the other party keeping YOUR president "in check?"
We have had similar cases in Australia. E.g. Kathleen Folbigg spent 20 years in jail before she was pardoned by the Governor of NSW and released in 2023 after a long campaign by her supporters that she had been wrongly convicted of murdering her 4 infant children. The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal quashed her convictions a few months later, on the basis there was reasonable doubt of her guilt owing to 90 prominent scientists and doctors who claimed research published in 2020 meant that all 4 infants could be explained by a rare genetic condition.
"Such a dumb country. Just overall." Sigh.
A pretty depressing episode. This is Internet craziness, but not the fun kind.
There is a current case of a nurse allegedly abusing newborns in a Virginia NICU that this reminded me of: https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/erin-strotman-bond-feb-12-2025
Is there a reason that the BARPod reddit wasn't mentioned in housekeeping or did yall just forget?
I wonder if she leaned into defending the nurse because nobody was there to defend her when her ex husband was beating her up (allegedly.) Like a projection of the justice she was denied while being kicked while she was down dealing with mental illness. Then that Amy chick comes along and kicks her. Weird. (I’m one class short of my bachelor’s degree but I still have the license plate cover and wear the hoodie. 😏)
If anyone is interested in some history of this then I recommend looking at the Taylor Sisters case in 1992. I am amazed it hasn't become a podcast.