Hi everyone, sorry this has taken me a while. I had a busy day afterwards and ended up super tired. Round up of yesterday's hearing:
Ben Myer's whole argument was that the media saturation after her initial convictions made the retrial irreparably unfair, and that Judge Goss was wrong to deny the defense's application for the whole thing to be thrown out. His arguments included:
- Horrifying evidence of media vitriol, deeply hostile to poor Lucy. This involved the use of hurty words such as "evil" "cold-blooded" "killer nurse" "manipulative" "reign of terror"...
- Even worse, there was a Loose Women segment titled "Was Lucy Letby Born Evil?"
- He bitched that the police promoted their side after convictions using emotive and prejudicial language, despite knowing that they were considering retrials.
- He bitched that the police did not attempt to control their lead witness Dr. Jayaram, who put out a huge volume of self-serving material perpetuating his own narrative and bolstering his own position.
- He bitched about Rishi Sunak commenting on the case.
- While he stated at the very beginning that Letby maintains her innocence of all convictions, it was glorious to hear him keep having to acknowledge unreservedly "the appalling nature of the crimes", "the heinous nature of the crimes is no answer to the application", "multiple convictions of the gravest of offenses" etc.
- This was because the prosecution countered that the crimes are so uniquely shocking that these reactions are the natural descriptions, which he had to agree with, and the submission was that they were arguing regardless of this.
- He said "we accept the coverage was appalling because the crimes were shocking, but it's a matter of fairness, no matter what a defendant has done".
- Even more so, Myers kept having to acknowledge that their submission does not dispute the actual truthfulness/accuracy of these "vitriolic" articles!
- He also had to admit that the media environment is one hell of a lot different for Lucy now, and in the lead up to her retrial. He focused only on the articles in the immediate aftermath of her convictions.
- At one point, the judge interrupted BM because he seemed to be insinuating that the police had said they were investigating 4000 cases. The judge corrected him that it was just going to be a review of every baby she'd ever nursed, not saying that all 4000 were potential crimes.
- This caused BM to mention the 4000 babies in the correct context several times later on, as if to make clear that he wasn't trying to insinuate otherwise. I do think he misspoke rather than trying to deliberately mislead.
- Generally, despite the farcical supporting evidence, Ben Myers was impassioned, coherent and really put his all into making this fairly weak argument sound as strong, common sense and logical as possible.
- He supported his case with reference to some other case where they got an appeal due to an unfair trial. It was all dry legalese and I struggled to follow.
- BM speaks nice and loudly which is very useful for us remote viewers. NJ on the other hand is a bit monotonous and quiet.
Nick Johnson's rebuttal:
- NJ started by saying "we've answered this already" and asking Ben Myers did he not agree to the disclosure of Letby's convictions at the start of the retrial? BM had to agree that he did.
- NJ said that Letby's previous convictions being relevant evidence for the retrial answers a whole chunk of the submission.
- The main part of NJ's verbal rebuttal was summarizing the contents of the sixty-something pieces of evidence that the defense submitted, saying that many were not vitriolic at all. Ben Myers hadn't bothered to go through them at all during this hearing.
- A lot were about the hospital management letting her get away with it, lots about her refusal to come up for sentencing, some about her grievance, some about the role of prosecution witnesses, some about there being a future inquiry.
- One was just an article entitled "Inside Lucy's Beige Home"
- He also pointed out the fade effect (as had Judge Goss, which was a small part of the reason for denying it in the first place), with the articles peaking in the days after her conviction and quickly petering out. He said today's news is tomorrow's chip paper.
- There were reporting restrictions as soon as the retrial was announced in late September 2023, then everything negative stopped.
- Magnificently, Nick Johnson referred to the New Yorker article - which was extremely pro-Letby and anti-prosecution and got a lot of traction shortly before her retrial - as proof that the media wasn't hostile or unfair to her.
- He said if anything disproves unfairness, it's David Davies using his parliamentary privilege to bring the New Yorker article up in parliament despite the reporting restrictions. It's delightfully ironic that Letbyist propaganda has directly contributed to denying her an appeal!!
- He defended Rishi Sunak commenting on the whole case, I can't remember what NJ said but I think it was to do with Letby's refusal to attend sentencing and the calls to change the law. Also that it was a case of national importance.
- NJ and BM agreed somewhat congenially that it's the norm nowadays for police to comment emotively following convictions, and that it didn't used to be a thing.
- NJ referred back to BM's cited case, and said that the grounds for an unfair trial were very high. Since BM has already acknowledged that it was a "delicate balancing act" for Judge Goss to decide, that stops it getting off the ground because it needs to be demonstrably wrong.
- He took a bit less time than Ben Myers which had me worried, but obviously it was a weak enough argument that he didn't need to bother.
Lucy:
Looked dog rough, like in the retrial. Hollow under eyes,
large jowly cheeks, and her pout has become very downturned like a bulldog. She looked much worse in reality than the court sketch. The artist didn't capture the grieving-bulldog-chewing-a-wasp look at all.
She's cut her hair all the way back to shoulder length - a bad decision as the long hair was youthful and flattering and actually rather nice. She's too haggard for those frumpy mid-length cuts now. Also it was tied up in a high ponytail (like in the famous nurse publicity photo) which does her forehead and face shapes no favours at all. The ponytail was messy as well, which is unnecessary for someone with such shiny hair.
I don't understand why she's so insistent on looking like
tit when she's bothering to wear smart clothes and has naturally nice hair. I thought it was a dark teal wrap around top at first but it was actually a cowl-neck. It was ok.
She's not chubby any more (like during the last leave to appeal in April) and was about the usual size that she was prior to prison. The double chin was still present but a tiny bit reduced. Her hair isn't dyed, the lighting in the room just made it look dark. She was in the same Bronzefield room as during the spring hearing, and I wondered back then if her hair was dyed, but seeing it in real life two months later showed it wasn't. It's very light brown.
She was blinking extremely slowly and looked bored, tired, depressed and disinterested. She often looked downwards. She sometimes did closed mouth disguised yawns. I didn't hear her speak at the beginning (she would have confirmed her name and that she could hear), I think the audio wasn't working for viewers at that point.
She didn't react to the judgement. She occasionally wriggled her mouth and nose from side to side like it was itchy, but other than that, only had one solitary facial expression the whole time: this was when Nick Johnson said something about that she had had nine months to get medical experts to disprove her 14 convictions, but she didn't. This caused an immediate look of annoyance and disagreement on her face, which lasted about 1-2 seconds before fading to blank. I'm not sure if she quickly controlled herself, or if her emotions really are that sparse and fleeting.
She did speak very briefly at the end after the judgement, answering "Yes" when the French court clerk asked "Mees Letby, can you hear me?", and after a little delay, quietly replying "ok" when the clerk said her counsel would be talking to her after the hearing. She sounded unusually quiet and subdued. She usually speaks stridently and with great confidence, even just for one word answers.
She always looks like she's lost in her own world, but she did look like that during the last leave to appeal and she actually wasn't at all: when her attention was called she didn't snap out of anything and had actually been listening intently the whole time. They didn't talk to her during this hearing, so no proof, but I assume the same and this is just the way she always appears.
When the judgement was being read out, there was a loud alarm and robot voice warning something like "This is the incident room. A fire has been found in east wing. Be ready for evacuation". Lucy was very interested when this first happened! She was looking intently at her screen, with her big downward sloping eyes like a South Park character's. Probably hoping for some live entertainment.
The judge tried to speak through it, saying that it wasn't in that part of the building, but gave up trying to talk over it in the end. The voice and alarm came back a couple of times, with the final one saying the fire had been dealt with and the incident was over. Lucy lost interest after the first time.
Miscellaneous
- The deadline to apply was actually 4pm the previous day, but the clerk replied at 7:15am saying if I filled the form in quickly he would ask the judge anyway to see what he said. I was approved!
- I joined the video call very early as I didn't trust that I'd been given the correct time. I was treated to a riveting half an hour of the court staff trying to figure out how to to set it all up properly.
- They were confused at my presence on the call and asked each other "who's (name)?"
- They then asked if I could hear them, I replied in the chat that I could, and they seemed very relieved.
- During the break the court staff were gossiping without realising they needed to turn their audio off. Sadly the sound quality wasn't good enough for me to really make out what they were saying, but I think they were talking about the case, and witching about the observer who accidentally turned their camera on.
