The diary, in all likelihood, carried the most weight with the jury who I’d imagine saw it as a mea culpa. The rest is circumstantial
The fact that LL made that concession, under oath, is not circumstantial.
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so the fact that has been established, and ocnfirmed by LL, that 2 infants in the unit were injured by someone. the extrapolation that it was LL is conjecture unless established by other facts: i.e. circumstantial
The trial that took over 8 months, with all the evidence and testimonies, and in fairness where the jury at first didnt convict her on all counts but did find her guilty of 7, until the retrial found her guilty of more. All these gotcha type things coming out now to “prove” her innocence, surely if it was that simple, it would have been in the trials and the doubt there to find her not guilty. But she was found guilty after all of that. Absolutely there can be miscarriages of justice, but it does seem on the face of it, that a lot of info and testimony went into this case, and snippets of extracts now are being used to negate all of that process.
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Yes. Under oath, LL conceded that medical evidence indicated at least two infants had been attacked by someone in the unit.
You are being obtuse. Of course I know – meaning, I can correctly reason – the placing of her as the person who attacked those infants is circumstantially based. But the fact of those two attacks at least is not circumstantial. Which rouses a relay of implication.
As far as I can see trials of this type are notorious for producing miscarriages of justice.
Trials are for winning, not for justice.
It seems to me the trial was won based on a “gotcha”. The Guildford Four and Birmingham Six were done on gotchas. Numerous women have been done in trials like this on gotchas.
apologies if i came off as obtuse. maybe im giddy that that for a change, on this board, people can have a reasoned back and forth on a contentious/inflammatory issue.
the reason for the diary, and the excuplatory writings, ommission from the defence does raise a significant concern
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You are arguing, again, by avalanche. Meaning, you do not want to make a case.
The LL case has absolutely nothing to do with The Guildford Four or The Birmingham Six.
To be honest, comparisons with guildford 4 or birmingham 6 are not in any way related to this case, by means of time, differences in testimony and witnesses, political will, the prevailing times etc. They are very, very different, albeit you may say the end of it being a miscarriage of justice would be the only similarity.
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I agree on concerns about her defence team’s approach. And on that omission.
I suspect – and now I am speculating, fair enough – LL’s defence team felt she would not stand up to adversial questioning on those notes.
Calling David Davis thick as mince and saying that his motive for speaking on the case is to privatise the NHS is not an argument, it’s motivated reasoning.
These verdicts would not be getting the widespread questioning coverage they currently are if there weren’t serious doubts as to their safety. Most likely the conversations among clued in people behind the scenes in journalistic, healthcare, scientific, legal and even police circles are much, much more blunt as to the safety of the verdicts than what is printed in publications.
I point out the other cases to point out that miscarriages of justice can and do happen based on it being in people’s narrow self interest to bamboozle the witnesses and jury.
And on poor defence representation.
The cases which had the air embolism were cases in which the children lived and went on to be healthy children. If there was a malign motive in these cases, and my gut feeling is there wasn’t, it failed, badly.
I find it doubtful in the extreme that any mental healthcare professional told her to write that she did it and she’s evil in her diary, but maybe they did.
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Did the unusual deaths stop after she was arrested?
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Nobody who hasn’t experienced a severe mental health crisis is qualified to opine on anything a likely severely traumatised person who is having a severe mental health crisis is likely to write.
They stopped most likely because the unit stopped taking in severely ill babies.
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It was Dominic Cummings who called DD “thick as mince”. I am surprised that someone as exceptionally well informed as yourself in political terms – admirably so, in my view – did not recall this facet.
“motivated reasoning”… Jargon — bad jargon, at that. Means norhing substantial, nothing relevant.
David Davis’s political persuasion is irrelevant on this.
The Guardian, Private Eye, the New Yorker, the Irish Medical Times, John Sweeney, David Robert Grimes, they are all questioning of the verdicts too, and I somehow doubt their motive is to privatise the NHS.
There is ample scope for either malign motive or genuinely held erroneous belief on the part of many people involved in these convictions. A lot of it involves narrow self interest. Accumulations of narrow self interest on the part of different people can easily lead to a giant miscarriage of justice for a handy scapegoat.
The grauniad covered it
Also Spiked Online has an opinion article saying she’s guilty as hell.
I reference this because Spiked Online is a right wing rag.
I reference it because there is a clear effort on the part of a lot of people intent on defending the convictions at all costs that this whole issue be turned into a culture war issue. There is a clear drive to paint any questioning of the convictions as right wing conspiracy fantasism. But it isn’t, and the people spinning this narrative know it isn’t.
I could just as easily say “well Spiked Online says she’s guilty, that shows it’s the right wing headbangers who are defending these convictions.”
I don’t take Spiked Online seriously as a publication, but I am not inferring defending the convictions is a right wing hobby horse.
It’s deeply unfortunate the way some insist on turning everything into a culture war issue.
The only thing that matters is the safety or otherwise of the convictions. Serious questioning is coming from across the spectrum.
So they told her to write down how she felt, not precisely that she was responsible for the deaths. She wrote what she wrote because she was feeling the weight of what she had done maybe.
How long was she seeing the therapist? Did she write like this about other babies that have died who she’d worked with in the more distant past. I wonder had they anything to compare it to.