Nurse arrested for murdering babies

[adam cool dude]

Do you still believe all those post masters that went to prison are all still dirty thieves ? After all, there's no way the 100s of people it would require from a failing business, the police and the CPS who both review private prosecutions and the courts could all collude to wrongfully convict so many of them.

Maybe even with all this "new evidence" she still is guilty, but the suggestion that she's guilty because the British justice systems is so pure and uncorruptible isn't it.

That was a completely different scenario and not even comparable. There were holes in everything with the post office scandal from the get go. There has been absolutely zero shown that anyone else has been implicit in this case or even made a coverup frame. There would be e-mails or something else slipped. No way that amount of people could have coluded together and framed a women without anything slipping. Especially during the initial trial as the defence team would have been looking for that golden egg.

I am sure a lot of them are still working there too and I bet babies are not dying in significant numbers anymore.

 

[adam cool dude]

A defence you mean? The evidence is new to the trail.

Things is, at least one Doctor (who also gave evidence for the prosecution) was judged by his peers to have mis administered an injection on the wrong side of one of the unfortunate babies. This was after injecting air and that pushed the liver down and the injection damaged the liver and was most likely cause of death. None of that was presented at courts and as I say the Dr went on to testify against. That in itself makes the conviction unsafe IMHO.

Maybe the doctor may have made a mistake but he was completely unaware a baby murdering nurse was on the loose injecting babies with god knows what and in a normal situation what he did might have been totally safe.

If someone is brought in with poisoning or some form of overdose but you don't know what it is and you are dying the doctor will try something to save your life. He has to make that decision. That is what he gets paid for.

 

[bigmike20vt]

On the balance of probability if i have to call it i would say she is likely guilty to a point, however having read some of the follow up stuff it does sound pretty terrifying at the number of errors made and it does sound like there may be reasonable doubt in at least some of the deaths.
On one hand if i was the defence team i would rightly be all over this.... on the other hand................. I wouldnt want her within 100 yards of a child. I am glad i am not involved in the case TBH.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

IANAL, but they do seem to be somewhat on the 'pretty ******* useless' side, don't they...?

IANAL but here's my problem with it.
I do find it unbelievable that her defense did have experts but didn't call them to argue with the prosecution.
Several said if they had been called they could have have challenged the Prosecution and there could have been a different outcome.
AFAIK the Defense went for a "You prove she did it" and if the Jury only hear one side then there's only one verdict.
She could still be 100% guilty but at this point I think the new Defense Witnesses need to be heard.

 

[Feek]

Pretty sure posting a template won't get me told off

You've removed it!

I still don't doubt this conviction.

 

[ttaskmaster]

Not sure what the relevance of your point is to my comment because there is no jury to convince at the appeal hearing.

The judges serve the same purpose in such instances. Either way, it's down to the lawyers to convince them and, as per SGF's post, it seems the defence have been pretty lax in delivering.

 

[Kill_Phil]

You've removed it!

I still don't doubt this conviction.

Likewise. It's like everyone forgets shes a trained neonate nurse who would know how to try to hide her tracks/make it look as natural as as possible. Remember old harold shipman anyone?

It's why all the evidence combined needs to be looked at

 

[Felon]

The problem for me is that any barrister will always be able to assemble a bunch of experts who all say the same thing give or take.

Saying all of this stuff on TV without any cross examination, or arguments from other experts who might have a different view. Is quite different to a jury trial under oath, where things are scrutinised properly.

 

[ttaskmaster]

Likewise. It's like everyone forgets shes a trained neonate nurse who would know how to try to hide her tracks/make it look as natural as as possible.

Everyone seems to forget that there's a whole team of supervisors and administrators overseeing everyones' work, to pick up on such things.
Not to disparage nurses, but they're not trained to the same level as specialist doctors (else why would we need doctors) so the idea that the RCN is breeding criminal masterminds does not appear plausible.

It's why all the evidence combined needs to be looked at

Now that this is being done, it appears to be the very reason why so many doubts about the conviction are being raised.

 

[ubersonic]

The problem for me is that any barrister will always be able to assemble a bunch of experts who all say the same thing give or take.

I think the important difference maker here is that these aren't experts who have been hired by a barrister to support his case.

This is one of the experts cited by the prosecution, who having found out about the case after the fact has come out of retirement to say they misrepresented his work and misled the jury, then got so offended/annoyed by the misuse of his work he brought in a group of colleagues to re-evaluate the evidence. Yes they are now working with the aforementioned barrister but I believe I'm correct in saying they sought him out not the other way around. I think these facts mean their evidence should be taken with more seriousness than simply random experts hired by the defence.

Having said that I still think she probably did it, however this does kind of drive a bus through the reasonable doubt door.

 

[ubersonic]

Everyone seems to forget that there's a whole team of supervisors and administrators overseeing everyones' work, to pick up on such things.

Theoretically yes, in practice sometimes, in the hospital in question not really as the department was severely understaffed.

In fact it was brought up at the time of the trial that if she did kill that many babies it was 2-3x as many as she would have got away with on a fully staffed ward.

Not to disparage nurses, but they're not trained to the same level as specialist doctors (else why would we need doctors)

Actually you will find a lot of things commonly done by nurses which the general public would expect a doctor to do are done better than by doctors as they do them more often, to the point a consultant/specialist may often instruct a nurse to insert a tube, syringe, etc not because they are lazy but simply because they know they will do it better and usually first attempt.