A British Nurse Was Found Guilty of Killing Seven Babies. Did She Do It?
A British Nurse Was Found Guilty of Killing Seven Babies. Did She Do It?
Colleagues reportedly called Lucy Letby an “angel of death,” and the Prime Minister condemned her. But, in the rush to judgment, serious questions about the evidence were ignored.
Letby appeared to have been a psychologically healthy and happy person. She had many close friends. Her nursing colleagues spoke highly of her care and dedication. A detective with the Cheshire police, which led the investigation, said, “This is completely unprecedented in that there doesn’t seem to be anything to say” about why Letby would kill babies. “There isn’t really anything we have found in her background that’s anything other than normal.”
Letby had worked on a struggling neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital, run by the National Health Service, in the West of England, near Wales. The case centered on a cluster of seven deaths, between June, 2015, and June, 2016. All but one of the babies were premature; three of them weighed less than three pounds. No one ever saw Letby harming a child, and the coroner did not find foul play in any of the deaths.
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This is classic muddying of a clear cut case for drama only. This was infamous in the UK for the fact that there had been so many warnings about her by senior doctors, which had not been acted on until far far too late
Did you read the full article?
I read the summary in this post, and I've read enough detailed information about this case from British news sources already
Then you should read the full article. I didn't attempt to summarize the (long) article. I just pasted a couple paragraphs from the beginning. It's pretty damning. To give a partial list:
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The hospital she worked in was understaffed and underfunded to the point that patient care suffered along several dimensions.
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The statistical likelihood of her happening to be present when the deaths occurred is not nearly as low as it would appear. Expert statsticians have weighed in with concerns.
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Their are no solid theories as to how she killed the babies. According to experts, the methods proposed by the police have major inconsistencies with the evidence available.
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Everyone she worked with, including patients, thought highly of her, her skill, and her care. The suspicion began only due to the seeming impossible coincidence of her presence at so many deaths. See point two above.
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The health system and politicians are loathe to blame underfunding and policy choices undermining hospital operations for the deaths. All the expert witnesses were from the NHS. The police case was initiated by an ambitious politician who used the case to catapult his career.
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Her defense did not call a single expert witness to the stand.
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There is no apparent motive or psychological pathologies to explain the alleged behavior.
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There are at least two documented cases of healthcare workers being wrongly convicted of murder for what turned out to be coincidental strings of natural deaths.
As you can see, there is no smoking gun, succinct argument for her innocence. Funny enough, there's no smoking gun, succinct proof of her guilt either. The evidence in her favor is subtle, but extensive. After reading the article, it's clear that unless the author is ommitting some important facts or otherwise misleading the reader, there is not nearly enough evidence to justify convicting this poor woman.
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