After a really dreadful article in the MAIL - badly written and full of guesswork - condemning Letby, the following, admittedly anonymous, post by an ex midwife at Letby's hospital was sent to me by a top journalist also investigating the case. Interesting.

Anonymous post from ex midwife at COCH.
"I worked at CoCH during this time period as a midwife. Here are some questions I have about the doctors' conducts.
Firstly, they claim they had suspicions of LL, but management "didn't listen" and only scheduled a meeting for three months' time after a concern was raised. Dr Harvey had a open door policy and states that at no time did anyone approach him about their concerns. Instead the consultants waited 3 months for that meeting. If you seriously thought someone was harming babies, deliberately or through incompetence, would you consider waiting 3 months to discuss the matter? Or would you purposefully go and confront management? Babies were dying, you thought that someone was deliberately harming them, would you just sit on it? Or would you raise merry hell about it?
The idea that it was difficult to raise concerns about a colleague - I don't believe that. In 2016 two band 5 midwives were sacked for a drugs error that they should never have been in the position to make. There was no harm caused.
In 2018 the Head of Midwifery was immediately suspended following an allegation of assault against a pregnant colleague made to the police.
There was no report made to the NMC. For those unaware, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) is the regulatory body that all nurses and midwives must be registered with while employed in the UK. The NMC has the power to invoke practice restrictions and suspensions on all registrants and run investigations. The NMC runs on the basis of guilty until proven innocent, and anyone can report any concerns about a registrant; colleague, patient or member of the general public. Given the seriousness of the concerns, the NMC would have suspended LL's registration until any investigation was completed. This would have been within a week. No one reported LL to the NMC.
Breary said he was worried about being bullied if he pushed concerns harder. Ignoring the conclusion that this leads to that he would put his own professional comfort above lives of babies, Breary should know all about bullying; he is a bully. I have seen him have F1s and F2s in tears over the phone, I witnessed him shouting at a woman when she dared to ask him a question.
The investigation into the increased deaths stated that consultants were absent from the NICU because they were "often on the postnatal ward." I never saw these consultants on the PN ward. Getting a reg to attend a suspected poorly baby was difficult enough.
I have worked in a few different hospitals during my career, but conditions at CoCH were the worst. Inductions of labour were started and then delayed frequently. Labouring women did not have a bathroom in labour rooms, and either had to walk down the corridor to go for a wee or were brought a bed pan; labour room doors were kept open so women were sitting peeing with nothing more than a curtain between them and strangers - can you make yourself wee in those circumstances? Bereavement care was terrible; women were told if they wanted pictures of their baby who had passed they could take them on their phones and get them printed at Asda. I've never worked anywhere else who had that attitude. When a camera and photo printer was bought for the Bereavement suite by a kind person (not me, but I know who it was and I was very grateful) it never reached the ward. And the one thing that really irritated me and demonstrated the attitude towards patients and women, but sounds like such a silly, tiny thing: they used cheap margarine instead of butter for the post-birth toast.
I don't believe LL deliberately set out to harm babies. I was prepared to consider incompetence or some sort of typhoid Mary situation, but the prosecution case hasn't even convinced me of anything like that. All through the trial I was waiting for the prosecution to present one piece of indefensible evidence, I'm still waiting."

I say this case should have a thorough investigation.

My friend who is an NHS nurse thinks likewise.

She's almost certainly a scapegoat victim. Poor girl.

hedda wrote:
I say this case should have a thorough investigation.

My friend who is an NHS nurse thinks likewise.

I agree. But the problem is what you investigate?

She was unsuccessful on appeal because her team was not allowed to introduce scientists/experts to refute the prosecutions2 expert witnesses. This was because the defence could have done so at the initial trial, but did not do so.

An appeal must be based on the original trial material and/or process, which must be deemed at fault.

I don't think anything as complex as this (evidentially) should be left to a jury. It is not with certain fraud/money trials which are deemed too specialist.

The people who dealt with this - from Police to jury were simply not qualified to do so. Cases like this need some kind of specialist independent medical/scientific panel review to establish what the case to answer, in the first place, could reasonably be said to be.

To leave a case as complex as this to an adversarial system of trial is barmy...

She's as guilty as sin.

Carl wrote:
She's as guilty as sin.

She may be Carl but to anyone thoughtful about the subject, this is not the point.

I do not know enough to make a judgement either way. That is the problem with humanity (and the system) today. Superficial opinions from uninformed observers whose only source of information is the media.