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 January 25, 2005: The Federal government
released the
first national examination of the reasons for so many wrongful
convictions in Canada. This should be required reading for every prosecutor,
cop and criminal defence lawyer in the country. News reports
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Sally Clark
her
campaign page
Solicitor accused
of killing sons freed
BBC, January 29, 2003
A solicitor jailed for murdering
her two baby sons has been cleared by the Court of Appeal.
Three judges decided that Sally
Clark's conviction was "unsafe".
The 38-year-old, from Wilmslow,
Cheshire, had always protested her innocence since being jailed
for life in November 1999 at Chester Crown Court.
She was convicted of smothering
11-week-old Christopher in December 1996 and shaking eight-week-old
Harry to death in January 1998 at the luxury home she shared
with her husband Stephen.
A composed Mrs Clark emerged from the cells at 1540 GMT to be
hugged and kissed by her husband.
Mrs Clark said: "Today
is not a victory. We are not victorious. There are no winners
here.
"We have all lost out.
We simply feel relief that our nightmare is finally at an end.
"I would like to thank
the hundreds of people who have written to offer me their support.
"These letters have been
my lifeline - a source of great comfort especially during my
bleak times and I've read and re-read every single one.
Brain infection
"Be in no doubt, it was
a tough experience to be in prison.
"The support that I received
while I was in there has made it much more bearable."
Sally Clark
Case Timeline
Dec 1996 11-week-old Christopher dies
Jan 1998 Eight-week-old Harry dies
Nov 1999 Sally Clark jailed
Oct 2000 Court of Appeal: "overwhelming" case
against her
Jan 2003 Freed after new appeal
Crucial evidence that set
Clark free
The court had been told that new medical evidence that suggested
Harry Clark may have been suffering from a brain infection was
withheld from her defence team.
The judges, Lord Justice Kay,
Mr Justice Holland and Mrs Justice Hallett, told the court: "We
are satisfied that the trial of this appeal was not a fair trial
in that the jury were deprived of the opportunity of hearing
and considering medical evidence that may have influenced their
decision."
The General Medical Council
(GMC) said it was considering whether to take action against
two pathologists whose evidence helped convict Mrs Clark.
Dr Alan Williams initially
said Harry had died from being shaken - and then changed his
finding to smothering during the trial.
Michael Green, professor of
forensic pathology at Sheffield University, who has since retired,
also changed his opinion about the cause of death.
A GMC spokeswoman said: "We are aware of the doctors and
are considering whether action, if any, needs to be taken."
Mrs Clark burst into tears
as the verdict was announced and later mouthed "I love you"
to her husband.
Frank Lockyer, Mrs Clark's
father, said his feeling was one of "total admiration"
for his daughter and son-in-law and for the way they had coped
over the last five years.
He added: "It's very easy
to be proud of one's daughter when they are taking A-levels and
university degrees.
"But the real time to
be proud is how they react when the chips are down."
Earlier, the Crown had indicated
that if Mrs Clark won her appeal they would not be seeking a
retrial.
Pathologist
criticised
Clare Montgomery QC, for Mrs
Clark, said that new evidence emerged in 2000 that there was
a staphylococcus aureus infection which had spread as far as
Harry's cerebral spinal fluid.
She said the prosecution pathologist
Dr Alan Williams, who had carried out post mortems on both babies,
had known about this evidence since February 1998.
Microbiological test results
demonstrated Harry probably died suddenly in reaction to the
bacteria, she added.
Lord Justice Kay also criticised
Dr Williams, saying the medical evidence was not disclosed because
of his "failure... to share with other doctors investigating
the cause of death information that a competent pathologist ought
to have appreciated needed to be assessed before any conclusion
was reached.
"The Court of Appeal on
the previous occasion reached their conclusions wholly unaware
of this aspect of the matter."
He added: "We have no
doubt that the resulting convictions are, therefore, unsafe and
must be quashed."
The Sally Clark Campaign
Stephen Clark has proclaimed
his wife's innocence ever since she was convicted of the murder
of their two sons. Now the couple - both solicitors - have unearthed
new evidence to help in her appeal, writes Victoria Maccallum
in the UK Law Gazette.
Stephen Clark is a disillusioned
man. 'You grow up respecting the rule of law and being taught
to have faith in the criminal justice system, and then suddenly
everything you know and believe in is pulled from underneath
you.'
A finance partner in a top
ten City law firm, Mr Clark is the husband of solicitor Sally
Clark, currently serving life imprisonment for the murder of
her two baby boys Christopher and Harry.
Since she was charged in July
1998, and since her sentence in October the next year, Mr Clark
has been his wife's most vocal supporter, campaigning for her
release and proclaiming her innocence to anyone who would listen.
And the number of people who
are prepared to listen has mushroomed. From the early days of
Mr Clark, Sally Clark's father (retired senior policeman Frank
Lockyer) and a small band of friends protesting her innocence,
the campaign to free her has fast gathered momentum, and was
further boosted by last month's decision by the Criminal Cases
Review Commission to send the case back for appeal in the autumn,
the Court of Appeal having rejected the appeal from the initial
trial.
'The amount of support we have
received has been phenomenal, particularly from the legal profession,'
says Mr Clark.
He singles out two solicitors
in particular 'without whom we wouldn't be here today': family
friend and retired solicitor John Batt, who - despite being older
than 70 and the veteran of three heart bypasses - was so shocked
by what he saw happen at the original trial that he 'has dedicated
the last three years to trying to put it right'; and Marilyn
Stowe, chief assessor of the Law Society's family law panel and
partner at Leeds-based Grahame Stowe Bateson.
'Although neither Sally nor
I knew Marilyn before the trial, she read about the case and
was so incensed that she contacted us wanting to help.'
It was Ms Stowe, says Mr Clark,
who was key in discovering the previously undisclosed medical
reports which the Clarks' defenders say show that Harry, the
youngest son, died of natural causes.
'We had been trying for many
months to get the hospital to release all the medical records
it held on the boys, but without success,' he says. 'When Marilyn
got involved, she went on the rampage, knocking on doors and
rattling cages at Macclesfield hospital, and eventually a huge
pile of medical documents - including the critically important
microbiology reports - arrived on her desk.' The hospital declined
to comment.
Mr Clark is 'hopeful but fearful'
at the prospect of the appeal. 'I cannot see what else we are
meant to do to demonstrate Sally's innocence - thanks to this
report, we have proved how one of our babies died, which is more
than the prosecution managed to do,' he says. 'I cannot see how
such an appeal can fail, but then we thought that of the last
appeal and we were disappointed then. Sally and I have to have
faith in the system to maintain hope, but it is difficult.'
When Sally Clark was told of
the discovery of the report and its potentially conclusive evidence,
Mr Clark says her first reaction was to ask if Harry would have
suffered before his death. 'As is typical of the kindest and
gentlest person I have ever known.'
The thought that the report
may not have come to light if it were not for Marilyn Stowe's
persistence is terrifying, Mr Clark says, and he says he is eternally
grateful for the profession rallying round to support its own.
All the supporters have been working on a pro bono basis, including
numerous medical specialists and advice on how to handle the
media from public relations consultant and solicitor Sue Stapely.
The campaign's solicitor, Michael Mackey at Burton Copeland in
Manchester, has worked on a pro bono basis ever since the trial,
such is his belief in Sally's innocence.
Mr Clark is grateful to the
profession for more than just pro bono advice. 'Addleshaws, my
firm in Manchester, where I had been a partner, had been incredibly
supportive of me and Sally, personally and financially, and I
shall always be in their debt.' he says. 'But, with all the publicity
the case had generated [Addleshaws was mentioned in court reports],
it was inconceivable that I could have returned to them.'
He seems remarkably sanguine
about the fact, stressing that 'with all the publicity the case
had generated, it was inconceivable that I could have gone back
into the sort of work I was doing'.
He decided to move back to
London, where he had worked for eight years post-qualification,
with his surviving son. 'I could have understood if the City
didn't want to touch me with a barge-pole because of all the
controversy, but everyone in the profession without exception
was extremely supportive, and I was deeply moved when I was inundated
with job offers,' he says.
Despite this outpouring of
goodwill from fellow lawyers, he is realistic about the effect
the trial has had on his career. 'I've had to start from the
bottom again, and although I've recently been made partner, it's
at a more junior level than my experience really merits. But
I am extremely grateful for my firm's vote of confidence.'
Still, in the scheme of things,
it is a miracle that he has clawed his way back into the ranks
at all. 'The easiest thing for me to have done would have been
to go on the dole and take my son to live with my parents,' he
admits. 'But that wouldn't have been good for me, or for Sally,
and it was a huge boost to her when she found out that I had
been able to restart my career.'
Being a lawyer has also helped
him in sifting through the complex medical evidence produced
about the boys' deaths. 'If nothing else, I have been trained
to think objectively and logically, and when looking at medical
reports I try to treat it as an academic exercise rather than
evidence of how my children died, otherwise it would have been
impossible to cope.'
Sally Clark's own career as
a corporate lawyer was 'incredibly important' to her, according
to Mr Clark, as she had qualified later in life after a stint
as a banker.
The decision by the Solicitors
Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) last year not to strike her off the
roll of solicitors, therefore, was an immense fillip to her confidence.
'You can't underestimate the
effect it had on her,' he said. 'It was the first time that an
independent, official, quasi-judicial body had said that there
was something wrong with the conviction.'
Doubts over her conviction
have been seen as the only other plausible reason why the SOT
suspended her indefinitely. It said the fact she was in prison
was sufficiently punitive, while suspension protected the profession's
reputation.
A return to the law for his
wife, post-release, is an issue which Mr Clark is loath to commit
to, fearing that he may be tempting fate. 'If this appeal is
successful, she will still have been in jail for three years,'
he says. 'She will have been institutionalised, and once she
is out she needs to relearn basic life skills, not to mention
building our family unit once again.'
However, all these plans hinge
upon the result of the appeal later this year. Although a lawyer
by trade, Mr Clark admits to having become highly disappointed
with the criminal justice system.
'When we were both first arrested,
we co-operated fully with the police, and gave full answers to
all their questions without a lawyer present. We trusted the
system, but it failed us. I've always assumed that, on the whole,
our criminal justice system is one of the best in the world.
It's not. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the
system got it horribly wrong.'
He also feels strongly about
the use of juries in trials with specialist evidence. 'I have
no criticism of the jury in our trial, but they were put in an
impossible position and were totally out of their depth. Much
of the trial was based around incredibly complex medical evidence,
and when a jury of 12 ordinary people sees one doctor saying
one thing that they don't necessarily understand, and another
doctor contradicting him and saying something else, who are they
meant to believe?' In this climate, he says, the 'false one in
73 million' statistic (see below) swung the jury's opinion.
There is a lot Mr Clark feels
angry about, but he tries to restrain from 'going on a personal
crusade, as it's the wrong thing to do'. He and his wife are
looking ahead to the appeal and trying to keep positive, although
he admits that there is a lot more to get through before she
comes home.
'The case isn't over yet. We've
got a long way to go, and this is the start of another long fight,
but at least we're back in the game again.'
'Smoking
gun' of statistical evidence damned solicitor
Sally Clark was 32 when her
first baby, Christopher, died at the Cheshire home she shared
with husband Stephen in December 1996.
Although a previously healthy
child, and despite his parents using all possible safety precautions
such as an apnoea monitor to check his breathing
he was found dead in his Moses basket aged 11 weeks. The death
was certified as natural causes, probably a lung infection.
The couple decided that the
best therapy for bereavement was to have another baby, and Harry
was born on 29 November 1997.
Eight weeks after he was born,
as his father prepared a late-night feed for him in the kitchen,
Harry collapsed in his bouncy chair and died on 26 January 1998.
Four weeks after Harry's death,
the police arrived at the house to arrest both the Clarks on
suspicion of murdering the boy, whose death had been attributed
by a local Home Office pathologist who was, perhaps significantly,
not a paediatric pathologist to 'baby shaking'.
The autopsy result prompted
a review of Christopher's death, which changed the original natural
causes verdict to 'death by smothering'. In July 1998, Sally
Clark alone was charged with the murder of both boys. By the
time the case came to trial 18 months later, she had given birth
to the couple's third son.
Much of the prosecution case
hinged upon evidence from the pathologist Dr Alan Williams, whose
post-mortem report on Harry recorded that he had detected retinal
haemorrhages in both eyes, which together with tears in
the brain and severe injuries to the spine were seen as
classic symptoms of shaking.
Michael Green, emeritus professor
of forensic pathology at Sheffield University, confirmed the
retinal haemorrhages, and together with Dr Williams, re-examined
Christopher's tissues. He found fresh bleeding in the lungs which
he said was a 'marker', but not proof of, smothering.
However, much of the pathology
in the case was fiercely disputed. For example, the slides which
allegedly showed retinal damage in Harry's eyes were sent to
Professor Philip Luthert, consultant histopathologist at the
institute of opthalmology at Moorfields eye hospital in London,
who in turn found just three days before the trial was
scheduled to start no evidence of retinal haemorrhages.
One of the biggest guns wheeled
out by the prosecution was Sir Roy Meadow, retired emeritus professor
of paediatrics and child health at St James' University hospital.
His testimony, which hit the
headlines and provided the 'smoking gun' soundbite which stuck
in people's minds, was that the chances of a double cot death
happening in a family such as the Clarks was 73 million to one:
or, it was likely to happen once every hundred years. Mr Clark
has been contacted by almost 50 other families who have suffered
two or more unexplained infant deaths.
In his summing up, Mr Justice
Harrison said that 'although we do not convict people in these
courts on statistics', he emphasised that 'the statistics in
this case do seem compelling' and told the jury that 'this may
be part of the evidence to which you attach some significance'.
The jury appeared to follow
his advice, and convicted Sally Clark by majority verdicts (ten
to two) on each count of murder.
She was jailed for life in
November 1999, and an appeal heard in October the next year was
dismissed.
'Flawed' evidence spurred
the campaign to clear Sally Clark
Almost from the time Sally
Clark's trial ended, murmurs of unease at the guilty verdict
began to sound.
As time went on, apparent flaws
began to appear in the prosecution's evidence. The much publicised
'one in 73 million' statistic produced by Professor Sir Roy Meadow
was the first casualty.
Sir Roy had calculated that
the chances of one cot death or sudden infant death syndrome
(SIDS) in a family such as the Clarks was one in 8,543.
As they had two deaths, he multiplied 8,543 by 8,543 to produce
the final, damning statistic.
However, some statisticians
have been loath to support Sir Roy in his use of the figure,
and many have been lining up to criticise.
The Royal Society of Statistics
issued a statement claiming that the figure had 'no statistical
basis', and warned that the case was an example of a 'medical
expert witness making a serious statistical error which may have
had a profound effect on the outcome of the trial'.
Criticism continued to pile
up. Oxford University's professor of statistical science, Peter
Donnelly, dismissed it as 'poor science it's not rigorous, it's
just wrong' and Peter Fleming, the author of the report in which
Sir Roy found the 73 million figure, was quick to distance himself.
He claimed that 'the statistic was never intended as an estimate
of real risk it was used completely out of context, and it is
potentially misleading and dangerous'.
Their basic argument is that
simply squaring the odds of one cot death ignores the environmental
and other factors which make a second death far more likely;
two deaths in the same family would not be unconnected events.
The Court of Appeal judges
took these arguments on board, and while agreeing in their judgment
that 'inaccurate statistical arguments had been made' (case ref
1999/07495/Y3), they claimed that the figure would not have influenced
the jury's verdict, a conclusion greeted with incredulity by
professional observers at the trial.
However, the campaign to free
Sally Clark continues to gain momentum, and last summer's decision
by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal not to strike her from
the roll of solicitors was the first quasi-official statement
of doubt at the safety of the verdict.
The discovery of a 'cot death
gene' by scientists at Manchester University in February last
year raised the possibility that the odds of a second SIDS death
in one family could be as high as one in four.
Even more significant was the
discovery earlier this year of a previously unseen microbiology
report which appears to indicate that Harry died of natural causes.
Blood and other tests showed
the presence of staphylococcus aureus in Harry's blood, bacteria
which can cause a lethal and quickly spreading infection.
The tests not revealed
at the trial were sent for verification to James Morris,
honorary professor of biological sciences at Lancaster University
and one of the country's leading experts on bacterial toxins
in cot deaths.
Professor Morris reported that
'staphylococcal infection is a recognised cause of sudden and
unexpected death in infancy', and stressed that on the basis
of this new information, this was the most likely cause of Harry's
death. 'No other conclusion could be sustained,' he argued.
Why the report was not disclosed
at the original trial has never been made clear, but what is
certain is that its emergence at this late stage has resulted
in the Criminal Cases Review Commission sending Sally Clark's
case back for a second appeal this autumn.
Baby deaths case sent
to appeal
By John Sweeney and Robert
Verkaik, 03
July 2002
A solicitor serving a life
sentence for killing her two babies is to have her case sent
back to the Court of Appeal after her husband uncovered evidence
that throws the reliability of her conviction into doubt.
Sally Clark has always denied
smothering her two sons, Christopher, aged 11 weeks, and Harry,
eight weeks, claiming they both suffered cot deaths. But in November
1999 she was found guilty of their murder at Chester Crown Court.
Yesterday The Independent reported
that strong doubts remained over the safety of the conviction,
which was imposed after the jury was told there was a "one
in 73 million chance" that both deaths, a year apart, had
had natural causes.
Her husband, Steve, 37, who
has always believed his wife is the victim of a gross miscarriage
of justice, has led a campaign to have the conviction quashed.
Yesterday the Criminal Cases
Review Commission (CCRC) confirmed that it had been made aware
of fresh evidence and was sending the case back to the Court
of Appeal for a second time. Clark's first appeal failed shortly
after her trial.
The evidence consists of medical
tests on the couple's second child, Harry, which were not disclosed
to the defence. Blood and tissue samples, taken by a Home Office
pathologist, Dr Alan Williams, showed Harry may have died from
natural causes.
Last night Mr Clark, also a
solicitor, told BBC Radio 4's File On Four that he was delighted
that the CCRC had seen "the strength" of the fresh
evidence, which he said provided a powerful new ground for appeal.
"I have always known that
my wife was innocent and have been determined to find justice
for her," he said. "After over four years of struggle
against these false accusations, I hope that the system will
now move quickly to give it to us."
The evidence could also have
an impact on the case of Angela Cannings, who, like Clark, was
found guilty of killing two of her babies and sentenced to life
imprisonment in April this year. Her appeal will be heard later
in the year.
The tests, on eight swabs taken
at Harry's post-mortem examination, were commissioned by Dr Williams.
The laboratory at Macclesfield Hospital, Cheshire, wrote a report
on its results in January 1998, a few days after Harry's death.
It revealed that it had found lethal levels of the bacterial
infection staphylococcal aureus in his body.
Staph. aureus is a common bacterium,
often to be found in the nose and throat as a result of post-mortem
contamination. But the critical finding was that the infection
in the cerebrospinal fluid had traces of polymorphs showing
that Harry was infected while alive.
Medical experts who have seen
the evidence have told the Clarks that the most likely cause
of death was "overwhelming staph. aureus infection"
and that "no other cause of death was sustainable".
The microbiology lab report
was found in 1,000 pages of medical records obtained by the defence
team two years after the conviction.
Sir Roy Meadow, a witness for
the prosecution, told the jury that the two deaths were unnatural
and that there was a "one in 73 million chance" that
both deaths happened naturally. He added that "it could
only happen once every 100 years".
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