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Martin Greenwald, M.D.'s avatar

Great post. I don't know the medical details of the case, but I agree that convicting someone based partly on statistics like this is seems really bad. Weird stuff happens in medicine all the time and usually it isn't intentional wrongdoing. Statistical anomalies can be used to alert us and guide further investigation, but we ultimately need to find a real and convincing cause.

Also, generally speaking—and again I don't know all the details of the case—using something someone wrote in the context of a therapy exercise as evidence against them is shockingly inappropriate. The fact that the counselor was employed by the hospital, thus creating even more conflicts of interest, is even crazier. I'm surprised that kind of thing would be admitted in court in the first place.

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Approved Posture's avatar

I too read maybe five or six articles during 2022 and 2023 outlining her guilt and took it all at face value. The New Yorker article sowed the seeds of doubt and by now I am convinced that at very least she had an unfair trial.

The bigger issue here is the legal system in England and Wales which imposed draconian restrictions before, during, and after the trial which meant that public scrutiny of the case could only begin after her retrial concluded in May 2024. This was six years after her first arrest and four years after her charges.

Some key witnesses (and all the dead children) cannot be named because [legal reasons] while Letby herself has had the most mundane details of her personal life pored over. It’s more akin to an authoritarian state than one with a nine-century tradition of trial in open court, a presumption of innocence, and an ability to face your accusers.

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