Lucy Letby guilty

[Sergeant Wilson]

Just now, Boo Khaki said:

Well, assuming you ignore the whole murdering babies, torturing the parents, online stalking, trophy-taking, mad scribbling, bizarre parental behaviour, the way she faced down and turned the tables on 7 consultants who saw through her at work, demanded complete exoneration and a face-to-face apology from the people who she perceived as having slighted her, but only after her father had threated to call in the GMC, aye, all perfectly normal apart from that.

Aye, but apart from that...

[SweeperDee]

Just now, Boo Khaki said:

Well, assuming you ignore the whole murdering babies, torturing the parents, online stalking, trophy-taking, mad scribbling, bizarre parental behaviour, the way she faced down and turned the tables on 7 consultants who saw through her at work, demanded complete exoneration and a face-to-face apology from the people who she perceived as having slighted her, but only after her father had threated to call in the GMC, aye, all perfectly normal apart from that.

That is only after the fact, obviously. What you describe doesn't actually fit with any sort of diagnosable disorder either, not neatly anyway. 

[SweeperDee]

3 minutes ago, Rugster said:

Just as well proper diagnoses are not done via media reports and hearsay then isn’t it?

Well, we are all speculating, I am not even attemtping to diagnose her because I don't think she is diagnosable at this time. People saying MPD, Narc Personality Disorder, Munchausen by Proxy, are the ones trying to fit her into a pigeon-hole; it's just not possible. I do think once the inquiry is finalised and made public she will be assessed as someone who has a mental illness, but until then, who knows, 

[Sergeant Wilson]

1 minute ago, SweeperDee said:

I mean, that describes a whole host of folk I personally know and work with; as far as I know they definitely wouldn't do what Letby has done. I accept what is in the public sphere just now is probably equivalent to hearsay, but as it stands that's all we can go on. I cannot accept no-one would not notice a narc type personality, nor any sort of severe mental disturbance which would present itself by harming babies, especially in that environment. 

Her behaviour was noticed and reported.

[SweeperDee]

Just now, Sergeant Wilson said:

Her behaviour was noticed and reported.

After how many years? It was only caught when records were properly looked at. Even then, some of the consultants couldn't actually believe it was her. 

[Sergeant Wilson]

Just now, SweeperDee said:

After how many years? It was only caught when records were properly looked at. Even then, some of the consultants couldn't actually believe it was her. 

The reports clearly mentioned Consultants asking for her removal in 2016.

[SweeperDee]

Just now, Sergeant Wilson said:

The reports clearly mentioned Consultants asking for her removal in 2016.

Yes, but was she doing it before 2016? Christ she was only just sentenced today, 7 years after the fact. That is a management failing of course, but the fact she managed to keep going is just astonishing. The consultants only wanted her out of the ward intially, it wasn't until later that they didn't want her back because it appeared the escalation of deaths had stopped since she was moved. 

[RH33]

8 minutes ago, SweeperDee said:

Well, we are all speculating, I am not even attemtping to diagnose her because I don't think she is diagnosable at this time. People saying MPD, Narc Personality Disorder, Munchausen by Proxy, are the ones trying to fit her into a pigeon-hole; it's just not possible. I do think once the inquiry is finalised and made public she will be assessed as someone who has a mental illness, but until then, who knows, 

But that mental illness won't be a personality disorder as they aren't.....

[Boo Khaki]

It's not 'after the fact', she was first detected behaving like this in 2015, it continued through 2016, and there's suspicion it was going on before then too.

As I said, it's entirely feasible that what actually facilitated her to indulge in egregiously aberrant behaviours was attaining her nursing qualifications, because beforehand, an overbearing family and intolerant group of peers may not have permitted her to indulge any significantly noticeable aberrant behaviours. 

Most psychopaths go undetected for years until they do something that makes people sit up and take notice. Sometimes its something as 'innocent' as being a bit overbearing at work, and they wont have necessarily shown any significantly worrying behaviours beforehand because their focus is channelled into something that doesn't cause discomfort or unease in other people. They are still psychopaths though. Letby is described as being a nerd, and a swat, spending most of her time buried in books and working towards further nursing qualifications, so it's entirely plausible her energy was entirely invested in that, until such time the opportunity to indulge some other aspect of her personality, i.e. harming people who could not resist or complain, arose. 

She's still only 33, so she was committing her crimes at 25-26, possibly for a year or two beforehand after she finished university, so it's not as if its a given she's been running around for decades exhibiting overtly psychopathic behaviour, and it's not an inordinately late age for someone to begin to display overt behaviour either.

Are you familiar with Dr Jim Fallon?

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/outintheopen/impostors-1.4695876/how-a-psychiatry-professor-accidentally-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-1.4705718

[Sergeant Wilson]

3 minutes ago, SweeperDee said:

Yes, but was she doing it before 2016? Christ she was only just sentenced today, 7 years after the fact. That is a management failing of course, but the fact she managed to keep going is just astonishing. The consultants only wanted her out of the ward intially, it wasn't until later that they didn't want her back because it appeared the escalation of deaths had stopped since she was moved. 

She was reported twice in 2015 as well.

 

[Salt n Vinegar]

22 minutes ago, SweeperDee said:

All we have are media reports, I have mentioned previously that the police will have tonnes of evidence that will get analysed and when she does go under psychiatric investigation, she might well have various illnesses/disorders, but as it stands from everything available to the public, she is an outlier. 

If "mad as a box of frogs" isn't a technical diagnosis, it damn well ought to be.

[Boo Khaki]

1 minute ago, RH33 said:

But that mental illness won't be a personality disorder as they aren't.....

Perfectly possible for people to experience both PD and mental illnesses concurrently. The latter is often comorbid.

The reason the DSM describes PD as "diagnosed by mental health professionals" is because it invariably falls under the remit of Psychiatry because they are the best equipped and qualified to diagnose. It's also why it's Psychiatry that invariably oversees treatment and therapy. Psychiatry oversees far more than just Mental Illness, and it's not the case that all of the things that fall under the auspices of Psychiatric medicine are Mental Illnesses.

[Sergeant Wilson]

1 minute ago, Salt n Vinegar said:

If "mad as a box of frogs" isn't a technical diagnosis, it damn well ought to be.

It is, it's not as bas as nutty as a fruitcake though.

[Jamie_B]

Offering no mitigation after a trial - especially a murder trial where a life sentence is inevitable - is pretty standard. If you’ve flat out denied the charges your lawyer can’t then stand up and say “she only did X because of Y” or try to contextualise the circumstances of the crimes. In this case in particular the whole life order was the only realistic outcome so even trying to argue for a lesser punishment part on a life sentence would have been a waste of time. Lawyers act on the instruction of their client so if Letby said not to advance anything at all for her that’s what they’d do.

As far as forcing people into court to hear their sentence, that is populist bollocks that politicians should know better than to bang on about. I’d respectfully suggest anyone who seriously proposes it has never spent much of any time in a criminal court. People disrupt proceedings from the dock from time to time and in a particularly anxious case like this an outburst from the dock wouldn’t help one bit. And that’s before you get to the practicalities of physically manhandling someone into court.

The private firms who operate court custody services on the cheap can barely get people into court with one custody officer attached to them. They don’t have the manpower or resources for their current workload - never mind committing six people to wrestle someone into the dock who doesn’t want to be there. In Letby’s case it may not have been difficult but it will be of no surprise to anyone that most accused people appearing from custody aren’t relatively small women.

Your average custody officer is on a very low salary and asking them to put themselves at risk to satisfy the rage of idiot politicians is nonsense and would inevitably end up in someone getting hurt and claiming a fortune in a legal case down the line.

[Rugster]

3 minutes ago, Jamie_Beatson said:

Offering no mitigation after a trial - especially a murder trial where a life sentence is inevitable - is pretty standard. If you’ve flat out denied the charges your lawyer can’t then stand up and say “she only did X because of Y” or try to contextualise the circumstances of the crimes. In this case in particular the whole life order was the only realistic outcome so even trying to argue for a lesser punishment part on a life sentence would have been a waste of time. Lawyers act on the instruction of their client so if Letby said not to advance anything at all for her that’s what they’d do.

As far as forcing people into court to hear their sentence, that is populist bollocks that politicians should know better than to bang on about. I’d respectfully suggest anyone who seriously proposes it has never spent much of any time in a criminal court. People disrupt proceedings from the dock from time to time and in a particularly anxious case like this an outburst from the dock wouldn’t help one bit. And that’s before you get to the practicalities of physically manhandling someone into court.

The private firms who operate court custody services on the cheap can barely get people into court with one custody officer attached to them. They don’t have the manpower or resources for their current workload - never mind committing six people to wrestle someone into the dock who doesn’t want to be there. In Letby’s case it may not have been difficult but it will be of no surprise to anyone that most accused people appearing from custody aren’t relatively small women.

Your average custody officer is on a very low salary and asking them to put themselves at risk to satisfy the rage of idiot politicians is nonsense and would inevitably end up in someone getting hurt and claiming a fortune in a legal case down the line.

Your last point is one that was well made by Thomas Ross KC on radio Scotland tonight. Asking the very lowest paid members of court staff to be responsible for safely but forcefully bringing someone to the dock against their will is tantamount to disaster. 

Edited August 21, 2023 by Rugster

[Ludo*1]

Horrific. It's just one I can't get my head around. I can just about wrap my head around why some people commit some absolutely deplorable and disgusting criminal acts, but I just can't understand a motive for this.

Can't imagine the suffering the parents of these babies have went through.

I've no doubt she has done this, don't get me wrong, but what was the concrete evidence? I've only read about her unhinged post it notes, complaints from members of staff and the fact she was at work when these babies died, but was there anything more 'concrete' or was it just a build up of these various factors pointing to her guilt?

Just fucking horrific.

[Boo Khaki]

Although I am against the idea of forcibly depositing the convicted in court for the purpose of sentencing, I can almost get behind it if it's at the discretion of the victims families, and the judge, but even then I think it's completely unworkable in practice. 

Assuming a family member wishes to read out an impact statement with the convicted present, the judge discourages it but ultimately defers to the family wish, what then happens when the convicted quite placidly makes their way to the court, but then proceeds to mock, laugh, sneer, taunt, shout out about how much they relished torturing and killing the victim, etc etc.

No doubt there would be outrage, but whose fault is that? Who pays the inevitable demand for compensation due to added trauma and so on?

If you willingly give the worst and most disturbed a platform, you need to be fully aware of the potential consequences, and I honestly don't believe the folk with the real vindictive hard-on for this have thought it through. 

What if it's a case like Letby's with multiple victims and multiple families? Do you play up and down the stairs depending on who wants her there and who doesn't? The families are going to have to be in and out of the court too. What if they mock the first family? Can the second then opt out? Does the judge put the kybosh on it?

It's typical reactionary populist nonsense. 

[Boo Khaki]

5 minutes ago, Ludo*1 said:

I've no doubt she has done this, don't get me wrong, but what was the concrete evidence? I've only read about her unhinged post it notes, complaints from members of staff and the fact she was at work when these babies died, but was there anything more 'concrete' or was it just a build up of these various factors pointing to her guilt?

Just fucking horrific.

Nearest thing to a 'smoking gun' is the insulin. None of the babies on the ward were being treated with insulin at that time, so there was no reason at all for it to be present, and as it's kept in a cupboard, there was no reasonable explanation for why it might have been accidentally administered. It wasn't  injected, it was placed in solution in the fluid bags, so it was placed there intentionally by someone intending to harm babies who had no need for it. 

[Bigmouth Strikes Again]

Just strap her onto a a sack barrow/same kind of thing Lecter was on, and wheel her into court. You will listen to the horror, then the sentence, then you will be wheeled out, downstairs.

Don't see the problem, nobody would be injured.

Thank you.

[carpetmonster]

11 minutes ago, Boo Khaki said:

Although I am against the idea of forcibly depositing the convicted in court for the purpose of sentencing, I can almost get behind it if it's at the discretion of the victims families, and the judge, but even then I think it's completely unworkable in practice. 

Assuming a family member wishes to read out an impact statement with the convicted present, the judge discourages it but ultimately defers to the family wish, what then happens when the convicted quite placidly makes their way to the court, but then proceeds to mock, laugh, sneer, taunt, shout out about how much they relished torturing and killing the victim, etc etc.

No doubt there would be outrage, but whose fault is that? Who pays the inevitable demand for compensation due to added trauma and so on?

If you willingly give the worst and most disturbed a platform, you need to be fully aware of the potential consequences, and I honestly don't believe the folk with the real vindictive hard-on for this have thought it through. 

What if it's a case like Letby's with multiple victims and multiple families? Do you play up and down the stairs depending on who wants her there and who doesn't? The families are going to have to be in and out of the court too. What if they mock the first family? Can the second then opt out? Does the judge put the kybosh on it?

It's typical reactionary populist nonsense. 

School shooter TJ Lane being perhaps the worst example of this:

At one point, Lane, wearing his "killer" shirt, swiveled around in his chair toward the gallery where his own family members and those of the slain teenagers were sitting and spoke suddenly, surprising even his lawyer.

"The hand that pulls the trigger that killed your sons now masturbates to the memory," he said, then he cursed at and raised his middle finger toward the victims' relatives.

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/19/ohio-school-shooting-chardon/1999369/