chapter eleven
CHAPTER ELEVEN. VESTED INTERESTS IN THE LUCY LETBY CASE.
There were many people and institutions who had a vested interest in convicting Lucy Letby.
The prosecution “expert” witness had a vested interest in “winning” the case and securing a conviction. In this regard, here is a quote from Private Eye Special Report – The Lessons of the Lucy Letby Case, by Doctor Phil Hammond, MD, part 12. “The prosecution has - - - “independent” experts (who) have a strong pecuniary incentive to remain useful to their police and court paymasters”.
The Crown Prosecution Service and the Police had a vested interest in securing a conviction. They would look silly if, having spent time and money on preparing and investigating the case, all that time and money was wasted. Once they had “crossed The Rubicon” they had to “go all out” to win at all costs, even if they had to hide exculpatory evidence from the jury, even if they had to engage in “dirty tricks”, and “smoke and mirrors”, and junk science, and bogus statistics. The Shakespeare (Macbeth) quote comes to mind:-
“I am in blood
Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er”.
The consultants rarely condescended to put in an appearance in the unit. In this much they were negligent, and were responsible for many of the deaths and collapses. In that case, they had a vested interest in shifting the blame for the deaths and collapses to a suitable “scapegoat”, preferably someone towards whom they already had malice, on account of her “whistle-blowing” activities. Lucy Letby was the perfect “patsy”. Apparently Doctor Brearey compiled a “drawer of doom” list of babies who died or collapsed when Lucy Letby happened to be present. Someone had to be “thrown under the bus”, and Lucy was the perfect candidate for the job.
The Hospital Management also had a vested interest in finding a “patsy”. They upgraded the unit to take extremely vulnerable infants, when they actually did not have adequate facilities to cope with them. In that case, The Hospital Management was effectively to blame for the sudden spike in deaths and collapses. Rather than accept responsibility, they needed to “shift the blame”.
However, there was also a further reason for the absolute necessity to find a “scapegoat”, and instigate a “witch hunt”. The Cheshire police were only contacted when the hospital received notification from solicitors acting for the parents that a claim for negligence was to be made on behalf of the parents. Clinical negligence solicitor Justine Jones of Slater and Gordon, Chester branch, had been instructed by the parents. Calling in the police was a response to the impending civil claim. A civil claim cannot run parallel with a related criminal investigation, so the civil claim could be delayed and deferred indefinitely, until years later, when all appeals had been exhausted. Furthermore, a serial killer on the ward would diminish the culpability of the hospital. In fact, the hospital, and also the consultants WERE culpable. There was raw sewage in the sinks and in the taps. Premature babies have poorly developed immune systems and are very vulnerable to death from bacterial infection. Furthermore, the consultants were rarely actually on the ward, as they should have been. To verify the proposed civil action against the hospital, go to the following U-Tube video:-
Lucy Letby - Why Aren't They Talking about These Things?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bcFmPFxSmQ
In case you find it hard to believe that NHS hospitals can be sued for negligence, and pay out very large sums in compensation, here are quotes from an article in The (London) Metro, February 13th, 2025, page 5 – entitled – NHS trust fined 1.6 m for 3 avoidable baby deaths. “An NHS trust has been fined £1.6 million for “avoidable failings” that led to the deaths of three babies in 2021. Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) has admitted six counts of failing to provide safe care and treatment.”
Here is a quote from a U-Tube video
Lucy Letby: What The Jury Didn't Know
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqe4dEuK128&t=601s
One of the doctors who were accusing Lucy Letby had put a breathing tube into a baby’s gullet. The baby died. (My comment:- This doctor had good reason to cooperate in finding a “scapegoat” to deflect blame for the deaths and collapses of infants on the unit.)
Here is a quote from a U-Tube video:-
Police Trying To Control Narrative” Staff Could Face Manslaughter Charges In Lucy Letby Probe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89DymerjGIQ
Police have made a “huge mistake”, the lawyer for killer nurse Lucy Letby has claimed, after detectives said hospital staff could now face manslaughter charges. Mark McDonald, representing Letby, who he claims is the victim of a miscarriage of justice, said expert evidence compiled by her defence team “points the finger” in a “very different direction” from where the police are looking. Cheshire Constabulary has been carrying out an investigation into corporate manslaughter at the Countess of Chester Hospital, where Letby worked as a nurse, and on Thursday the force said the probe had widened to gross negligence manslaughter. Mark joins Mike Graham on Talk. (My comment:- Now we can see why the consultants and the hospital management are desperate to find a “scapegoat” to deflect the “blame” from themselves. )
To end this chapter, here are a few comments that accompany various U-Tube videos relating to the Lucy Letby case. I have not corrected grammar or punctuation, or spelling, but I have highlighted a few passages.
I’m a registered nurse with well over 32 years of experience. - - I’m of the persuasion that the conviction is unsafe and that the mortality data was “throttled” to omit deaths that occurred when Lucy wasn’t on duty. I believe that she has been scapegoated in order to preserve the careers of others. I won’t go into it here, but over the years, I’ve seen certain health professionals stick together and throw a nurse under the bus.
and:-
The question is not “ Is Lucy guilty ? “ ……the question is “ Who stands to gain from Lucy being found guilty? “
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It is well within the realms of possibility that Letby was scapegoated by the Trust to cover up the inadequacies of the hospital's performance. We have seen most graphically recently (the Post Office prosecutions) how low such organisations will sink to protect their reputation.
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I work as a senior NHS manager. Whilst frontline clinicians generally mean well, at a management level the NHS is a bureaucracy which is about self-preservation at all costs. First and foremost, the system cares about looking good, not doing good. I've seen more than enough shady behaviour in the NHS to believe that Lucy has treated as a convenient scapegoat.
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Was she a sacrificial lamb for the hospital administration and doctors?
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I believe she was a scape goat for a failing system. We live in very dangerous times.
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Very sick babies and possible hospital malpractice. I believe she was thrown under the bus to take away the guilt from the hospital.
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It's almost as though her own barrister didn't want her exonerated...
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My wife had a case for assault resulting in injury while on duty as a nurse against the NHS they altered documents ,threatened witnesses ,all for a proxy little case that if won may have cost them a few 1000 in compensation so I can only imagine what they would do in a case this serious.
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So… this is another example of the NHS hanging up on a single employee for the institution’s failings.
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She's been thrown under the bus, NHS/Senior Staff will never admit to THEIR mistakes, such a travesty could you imagine the amounts of compensation due if that trust was found to be in the wrong
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Either she’s guilty, or someone at the top is guilty of negligence, and they’ve thrown her to the wolves
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A lot of professional people would be afraid to stand up in court and risk their career for a defence of someone accused of such crimes. Hence no medical experts for the defence. They made sure a medical expert who presented evidence for the defence in a baby-shaking case never practiced again. It was a cautionary tale to the profession.
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I learned there were 17 deaths, and she was not present at all of them. The jury were shown the list of deaths where she was present at all of them, but they were not presented with the full list of deaths while she was working there.
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No disrepspect intended? Really? Why not? Because it increasingly looks like some serious disrespect should be intended for her defence lawyers, there are what seriously look like some glaringly questionable ellements to the prosecution case that they seemingly never challenged, they appear to have been almost entirely suppine, to have just rolled over and waived their legs in the air to anything the prosecution said or alleged.
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My niece over the years had 5 premature babies, only 2 survived. one however was given a wrong dose of medicine and the coroner was looking at murder , but settled on accidental causes.
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For those who haven't caught on yet, the hospital management and several doctors have avoided dozens of lawsuits for negligence by framing one nurse as a lone homicidal maniac. The remaining question is when will they be made to pay for their behaviour. I think one of them will break at some point and tell all in exchange for immunity.
And
No judgement either way, I havn’t researched the case but as a general point and cynically, Its a sad fact of life that the cost of sacrificing a nurse by throwing him or her to the wall would be a cheap price to pay when compared to saving the reputation of a hospital and the careers of the more senior medical staff into which hundreds of thousands of pounds have been invested in years of training and professional development. That of course would never happen would it? I do so hope that isn’t the case here and there hasn’t been a huge mis carriage of justice. Other concurrent deaths are also alarming as is the unavailability of the transcript which is clearly a matter of public interest and concern. We can all be totally confident can’t we that the pubic inquiry will discover the truth and will not be baffled and confounded by the medical jargon with which they will surely be bombarded!
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I've always had my doubts about the case, as it seems like they wanted to find a scapegoat to cover up the deficiencies in the unit that we're now starting to hear more about, and she fitted the bill. It's not the first time something like this has happened, and it probably won't be the last.
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Retired NHS Consultant (and worked in NHS hospitals for almost 40 years), I've been unhappy about LL's conviction from the get-go. It's just TOO similar to the case of Dutch paediatric nurse Lucia de Berk (see Wikipedia). One thing being downplayed is the 'hospital politics' aspect here. Inter-professional relations in British hospitals have never been very warm but, trust me, as the NHS falls apart, as work becomes tougher and more and more stressful, as patients grow more and more angry and dissatisfied, the blame and rage and burnout is just dreadful. Everybody literally hates and despises everyone else - the consultants hate the nurses and vice versa, the junior doctors hate the consultants AND the nurses; the admin drones hate everyone on the clinical side, EVERYONE hates hospital managers. Did you honestly believe it was all one big happy family? It's not. It's a swamp of fear, loathing, anger and paranoia. Why does this matter? Because the politics meant that so much was riding - for the factions and tribes concerned - on the outcome of Letby's trial. Because the hospital managers were made to appear dishonest, incompetent and criminally arrogant for dismissing concerns (mainly from the consultants) about LL, the nursing management hierarchy seemed manipulative, devious and partisan and some people were even beginning to wonder who was going to end in jail like Ms L. I'm quite sure that at least some of the consultants thought they'd really stuck it to the enemy. There will be HUGE desire to re-open the horrific Countess of Chester can of worms again - and equally huge desire to ensure that it doesn't happen. The opportunities for a dispassionate re-evaluation of the facts don't seem great.
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As a retired nurse, I can state that there is often a reflexive impulse to blame the easiest target. This is extremely destructive to one's sense of self-worth and makes a person question EVERYTHING about their practice. I've seen numerous clinicians driven out of the profession they love because of such behaviour.
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Was Lucy Letby the original Whistleblower? The 2016 CQC Inspection Report revealed many issues on the Neonatal Ward.
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This kind of has the appearance of a witch hunt, with others pinning the guilt and blame on what they perceived as a soft touch, they bullied and gaslighted her into submission and then worked the system against her, which is very worrying because this has been done to many other individuals in many other industries, I have witnessed this being done to an employee less than a year ago in a local factory, Supervisors and management completely destroyed the blokes mind and then discarded him as if he was at fault.
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That Indian Dr put her in the s(expletive deleted|) because he had been complained about several times and the hospital itself was one more complaint from being closed down She was a scapegoat
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My wife worked in the NHS as a registrar in obstetrics and gynaecology. Many times she was bullied by consultants with massive egos who thought they were above god. On many occasions she was instructed to carry out hysterectomys when it was clearly not necessary. When challenged about this the mainly male consultants forcibly bullied her to just do what you are told to do. These patients were the consultants private patients for which they were being paid extra during their NHS contract. The amount of bullying in the NHS is breathtaking and Lucy Letby has been framed.
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I've had personal experience of the NHS ganging up on me to cover up their negligence resulting in the death of my 16yr old son. With the exception of two doctors, every other staff member lied about what happened and they disappeared the cctv footage that would have proved what happened. I feel sick about this case, I don't think she did any of this
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I've witnessed many a nurse being thrown to the wolves when it was really the doctor who was the captain of the ship and responsible. Nurses are viewed as expendable and it has to stop.
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7 Drs all from the same hospital that the numbers of deaths were way above what they should have been … that’s not good evidence that’s a scapegoat to get the attention off themselves! Drs always stick together and blame mostly nurses especially for not picking up if a dr below consultant level makes an error essentially in highly specialized areas . I’ve witnessed it happening countless times but not at the level one single nurse was set on like a Salem witch hunt !