Lucy Letby

[Newbie to this]

16 minutes ago, Gordon R said:

When you allege that expert witnesses don't tell the truth - that is perjury. Your many years of first hand experience don't appear to have contributed to your knowledge.

I get where you are coming from, but I'm not quite sure they are committing perjury. They are merely stating a so called 'expert' opinion. So no perjury involved. As with all so called 'experts', there is another 'expert' to disagree.

 

Obviously this is only my 'expert' opinion, and other 'experts' may disagree. 

Edited Friday at 14:13 by Newbie to this

[Vince Green]

The whole issue revolves around the competence and indeed the motivation of the so called 'expert' witness Dewy Evans. Except  he wasn't an expert.

He wasn't a Forensic Pathologist,  he never examined any of the dead babies and appears to be a very odd character.

The Police should have seen through him and realised he was a walter mitty. He is the reason the case went to court. Without his willingness to say what he did she would never have been charged 

[Scully]

On 06/03/2025 at 13:35, clangerman said:

tell that to the post office workers or are you telling me the justice system had no knowledge or suspicion hundreds of trusted people were being falsely convicted! 

Nothing is infallible, I never claimed it was. You however, are making sweeping generalisations which plainly aren’t true….as usual. Why do you do that? 
There are many examples of people being charged with a crime and then found not guilty, despite your claims in a previous post, just as there are many examples of people wrongly convicted being found innocent on appeal or following further investigation.
Until we find a system which is foolproof beyond human participation, what do you suggest we do? 
 

[Gordon R]

Quote

I get where you are coming from, but I'm not quite sure they are committing perjury. They are merely stating a so called 'expert' opinion. So no perjury involved. 

Quote

 

The duty of an expert witness is to help the court to achieve the overriding objective by giving opinion which is objective and unbiased, in relation to matters within their expertise. This is a duty that is owed to the court and overrides any obligation to the party from whom the expert is receiving instructions - see Criminal Procedure Rules 2020 Part 19. (CrimPR 19.

But the reality is very different. 

 

GHE has pointed out, rightly, that experts are obliged to give the truth, no matter who calls them as a witness. He then said that the reality is very different. That is straightforward perjury. 

[clangerman]

46 minutes ago, Scully said:

Nothing is infallible, I never claimed it was. You however, are making sweeping generalisations which plainly aren’t true….as usual. Why do you do that? 
There are many examples of people being charged with a crime and then found not guilty, despite your claims in a previous post, just as there are many examples of people wrongly convicted being found innocent on appeal or following further investigation.
Until we find a system which is foolproof beyond human participation, what do you suggest we do? 
 

I’m not talking from an arm chair it’s experience in the wild days I was guilty every single time but not convicted once all thanks to a corrupt lazy justice system which allows you to buy the sort of representation those on legal aid can only dream of 

[Scully]

2 hours ago, clangerman said:

I’m not talking from an arm chair it’s experience in the wild days I was guilty every single time but not convicted once all thanks to a corrupt lazy justice system which allows you to buy the sort of representation those on legal aid can only dream of 

‘Guilty every time, but not convicted once’! So despite all you claim ( which would render you banged up regardless! ) and as if any point needed proving….here you are, free to post on social media! Who’d have thought? 🤷‍♂️

 

 

[clangerman]

3 hours ago, Scully said:

‘Guilty every time, but not convicted once’! So despite all you claim ( which would render you banged up regardless! ) and as if any point needed proving….here you are, free to post on social media! Who’d have thought? 🤷‍♂️

 

 

it’s not what you know it’s what you can prove and rightly so! 

[zipdog]

On 06/03/2025 at 18:50, harkom said:

Perhaps the logical way to view Letby as Guilty/Not Guilty is to get  Staticians to compute/review the mortality rates of the hospital vs others, MR on Letty's unit and MR when she is on duty. I would hazard a guess that BetFred would come up with the correct answer?

That would be very interesting. When it comes to betting the bookies are normally way ahead of all public perception.

[Newbie to this]

14 hours ago, Gordon R said:

GHE has pointed out, rightly, that experts are obliged to give the truth, no matter who calls them as a witness. He then said that the reality is very different. That is straightforward perjury. 

But that 'truth' is only their 'expert' opinion.

[TIGHTCHOKE]

5 minutes ago, Newbie to this said:

But that 'truth' is only their 'expert' opinion.

And should have been challenged by her legal team.

[mel b3]

1 hour ago, TIGHTCHOKE said:

And should have been challenged by her legal team.

And that brings it back full circle , right to the crux of the matter.  She didn't have an expert legal team.

You would have thought that the judge would have stepped in , to ensure that things were carried out correctly. 

I can't even begin to imagine the suffering of those poor parents of all those babies. I can't decide if they're in purgatory or hell. 

[Scully]

9 hours ago, clangerman said:

it’s not what you know it’s what you can prove and rightly so! 

None of which supports your claim in your initial post; not even back in your ‘wild days’, as you’ve just pointed out! So which is it? You can’t have it both ways. 
I have plenty of first hand experience of corruption and bias within those who police us, but again, none of that supports what you claimed in your initial post. 

[Vince Green]

There is no legal definition of an expert witness. Ditchy could be an expert witness. Perish the thought

In the Letby case Evans contacted the police himself and offered his services and negotiated a fee.

That should have started the alarm bells ringing

[Scully]

It’s all beginning to read as if there has never been sufficient evidence to convict, but they did anyway. 
It’s an awful mess which is going to take a long time to clear up, with repercussions all round, including the parents of those who lost kids. Awful awful mess. 

[mel b3]

4 minutes ago, Scully said:

It’s all beginning to read as if there has never been sufficient evidence to convict, but they did anyway. 
It’s an awful mess which is going to take a long time to clear up, with repercussions all round, including the parents of those who lost kids. Awful awful mess. 

Exactly this.

[GHE]

The whole situation is far too complicated for any lay person, and for most lawyers, to even begin to understand.

These trials were unique, 10 months, and the decision had to be made by a jury of ordinary people . . .

Very technical evidence. It’s hard enough to form any opinion of technical evidence at the best of times, and impossible to remember the details at the end of such a long trial, so juries tend to go with whoever’s evidence they remember, and with whoever impressed them, rather than what they actually said.  

There’s now a move to do away with juries for all except the most serious cases (like this one) and doing away with them would shorten criminal trials dramatically, and reduce the very long waiting times for cases to get to Court, and reduce costs to a fraction, which would suit the government.

The thinking behind this is that a judge takes detailed notes of the evidence that matters, and has a complete understanding of what’s relevant and what isn’t. Juries don’t do that. That idea makes sense, but we had a similar system for a while in Northern Ireland (because of terrorist interference with juries) and they were called Diplock Courts, and although now very rarely used, they still exist, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplock_court

The most famous case, heard without a jury in N.I., was R-v-Clegg. Cpl Clegg was in charge of a road block,  a man in a stolen car drove straight at them instead of stopping, Clegg assumed that it was a terrorist act and opened fire, which he and his men were entitled to do, because at that point he was clearly acting in self-defence. But the car kept going and the soldiers were then in no personal danger. But Clegg fired an extra shot, when the car had got through the road block and so after the danger had passed, and killed the passenger. He was convicted of murder.  If there had been a jury then they probably would have found him not guilty, because they would have been ordinary people who understood the danger from terrorists and probably would have thought “Well, technically he made a mistake, but what would I have done in the same situation?”. But the decision was made by a High Court Judge who (rightly) ignored all of the emotion, the adrenalin rush etc and whose understanding would be far less than that of a jury, because he lived in an entirely different world. The law said that Clegg went from acting lawfully to committing murder in a split second.

So, jury trials in complex cases don’t work, but the alternative can be even worse.

Technically, expert witnesses can commit perjury, but getting evidence for a conviction would be almost impossible, because they are only giving their professional opinion, and nobody can say whether they were lying or had simply got it wrong. Witnesses of fact are different, if someone says, for example, “Mr Smith and I spent the whole night together so he could not have been there” and it can be proved that this is a lie, she can be convicted of perjury.

As I’ve pointed out before, there’s a very real risk that expert witnesses can be partisan, representing the interests of the party that pays them and forgetting their responsibility to the Court. The way around this is simple – the Courts should hire and pay the experts, not the prosecution or defence, but that doesn’t happen.

I had a case recently where the other side had an expert witness who basically wasn’t a real expert in this particular field, I was able to prove this and I completely demolished him, but I was just lucky. Normally, all that can be achieved is an admission that there could be a very faint possibility that an alternative explanation might exist, nobody in a Court ever admits that their evidence is false, that only happens in the movies.

The only thing that’s clear to me in the Letby case is that the system was against her and she was massively disadvantaged.

[harkom]

18 minutes ago, GHE said:

there’s a very real risk that expert witnesses can be partisan, representing the interests of the party that pays them

and doubtless the judge(s) who passed unduly severe sentences on "protesters" (aka Far Right Rioters etc) were not showing partisan action compared to the "commuting" of the sentence imposed on a violent thug (guilty) MP,.... and the list goes on ...better not mention the R word here?

[GHE]

3 hours ago, Vince Green said:

There is no legal definition of an expert witness. Ditchy could be an expert witness. Perish the thought

In the Letby case Evans contacted the police himself and offered his services and negotiated a fee.

That should have started the alarm bells ringing

That's ptetty much right, although there was a bit of a change in January.

"An expert witness is defined as a witness who provides to the court a statement of opinion on any admissible matter calling for expertise and who is qualified to give such an opinion."

Qualification can include practical experience. On that basis, I could claim to be an expert on shooting shotguns, and I can truthfully claim to have an enormous level of experience at missing English Sporting clays.

But, if the other side, which has deep pockets, can call a highly-qualified physicist who can explain all the technicalities, such as velocity, noise, pellet drop over distance, recoil and anything else that can possibly be calculated, even though he has never actually seen a shotgun let alone fired one, who do you think the Court would believe?

[Vince Green]

Just now, GHE said:

That's ptetty much right, although there was a bit of a change in January.

"An expert witness is defined as a witness who provides to the court a statement of opinion on any admissible matter calling for expertise and who is qualified to give such an opinion."

Qualification can include practical experience. On that basis, I could claim to be an expert on shooting shotguns, and I can truthfully claim to have an enormous level of experience at missing English Sporting clays.

But, if the other side, which has deep pockets, can call a highly-qualified physicist who can explain all the technicalities, such as velocity, noise, pellet drop over distance, recoil and anything else that can possibly be calculated, even though he has never actually seen a shotgun let alone fired one, who do you think the Court would believe?

The jury system is fraught with inconsistency.  Not so much twelve good men and true as a random selection of odd bods and misfits with all sorts of pre conceived notions and prejudice who probably haven't got a clue what is going on.

Some jurors will believe everything the police say 100%. The bloke sitting next them will always side with defendant.

It's so random but the prosecution always has the upper hand. No smoke without fire etc