Rex v Letby: A complex spectrum of competing hypotheses

 When, a few days ago, I began this blog I used the terms "anatomy of a miscarriage of justice" and "anatomy of a witch hunt".

It remains my view that Lucy Letby has been the subject of a miscarriage of justice and continues to be the subject of a witch hunt.

The volume of written and video material relating to the prosecution of Lucy Letby is enormous.

A substantial proportion of it is, in my view, worthless or of little evidential value.

It seems to me that to make sense of this mass of material it is appropriate to consider the prosecution of Lucy Letby as a contest among a spectrum of competing hypotheses.

At one end of the spectrum is the implicit notion that Lucy Letby not only murdered or sought to murder all the babies to which the indictment referred but may also have killed or sought to kill a substantial number of other babies both at the Countess of Chester Hospital and in Liverpool.

At the other end of the spectrum is the notion that all the deaths and collapses to which the indictment referred were fairly attributable to natural causes. 

In other words, on that hypothesis no crime took place in the Neonatal Unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital.

I take an intermediate position.

My current working hypothesis is that all seven supposed "murders" are fairly explicable as natural, if uncommon, events.

Similarly my current working hypothesis is that five of the seven supposed "attempted murders" are fairly expicable as natural, if uncommon, events.

With respect to the remaining two "attempted murders", the so-called "insulin poisonings", it is possible that crimes took place but there is fundamental doubt as to the basis for attributing guilt to Lucy Letby. 

In future posts I hope to set out the reasoning that led to my current views.