Free Mothers Who Murder by Xanthe Mallett

Following this appeal and Sally’s subsequent release, the British Attorney-General ordered a review of all similar cases involving Professor Meadow in which his evidence helped secure a conviction. Further to this, an expert committee was formed, under House of Lords peer Helena Kennedy QC, to consider how cases of SIDS should be investigated in the future. All this was too late for Sally Clark, who died of acute alcohol poisoning at her home in March 2007. For her family, the price could not have been higher. Clark’s case has been described as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in modern British legal history.
    The statistical method outlined above was not appropriate in Sally Clark’s case, and it was not suitable in Kathleen Folbigg’s either. Brian Doyle, Kathleen’s defence counsel, countered this approach, telling the court the deaths were coincidental, and that every child had been ill at some point prior to their deaths. After hearing all the submissions, Magistrate Richard Wakely refused bail and ordered Folbigg to be held in custody to await trial.
    THE ALTERNATIVE SUSPECT: THE CHILDREN’S MEDICAL CONDITIONS
    At trial, it was recognised that there were only two real possibilities to consider. The first was that the children all died as a result of natural causes. It could be that each child died of different causes, or the same cause, and if the latter was the case then perhaps an underlying congenital abnormality or predisposition to health problems was the root problem. If this were the case, then a plausible alternative explanation would have to be made to account for Kathleen’s diary entries, as they would certainly be used in evidence against Folbigg at trial. The second alternative was that Kathleen had intentionally smothered her children, leading to cerebral hypoxia (where the brain is completely starved of oxygen). It was recognised that the cause of death for two of the children – Caleb and Sarah – was initially ascribed to SIDS, meaning that the post-mortems in their cases were not as exhaustive as they would have been had foul play been suspected. It is not possible, unless the bodies remain available, to then go back and collect further samples and run additional tests to check for other possible causes of death.
    We have already discredited the Crown’s flawed statistical argument that the likelihood of the children dying of natural causes was one in a trillion. Although this argument did not make it to trial as the presiding judge recognised the flaws and deemed it inadmissible at the pre-trial stage, it concerns me that a forensic pathologist was applying Meadow’s logic. By the time Kathleen Folbigg went to trial, Meadow’s whole philosophy had been widely discredited, and Sally Clark won her second appeal, with the judgement passed down on 11 April 2003, during Folbigg’s trial.
    Among the potential causes of death for Kathleen’s children, in Caleb’s case it is possible that he died as a result of his having a lazy larynx, a condition that generally resolves itself by the child’s first birthday. Although normally not serious, this condition can contribute to other health problems, including chest infections and in rare cases children will have significant life-threatening airway obstruction. Due to problems while feeding, children suffering from this condition may struggle to gain weight. Although there is no one specific gene related to developing a lazy larynx, it may be hereditary. Patrick was diagnosed with epilepsy, a condition that cannot be ruled out as having contributed to his death.
    Sarah’s post-mortem showed signs of petechiae, or little haemorrhages, on her lungs, heart and thymus, and there was some suggestion that this could have been caused by Kathleen intentionally smothering her. However, I found a 2011 research paper 13 that looked at just this kind of trauma in 484 cases of deceased infants, divided by cause of death: 1) sudden infant death