So
what happened to all the feared miscarriages of justice?
http://society.guardian.co.uk/children/story/0,1074,1682356,00.html
Guardian
- 9th January 2006
·
Only two verdicts quashed after Cannings cleared
· Five out of 89 shaken baby cases 'cause for concern'
When Angela
Cannings's convictions for murdering her two baby sons were quashed
two years ago, the media speculated that dozens of parents found
guilty of killing their children could have been convicted on flawed
medical evidence.
Mrs Cannings,
who had previously lost a baby daughter, spent nearly two years
in prison after a jury found her guilty of the murders of seven-week-old
Jason in 1991 and Matthew, 17 weeks, in 1999. The paediatrician
Sir Roy Meadow, who has since been struck off by the General Medical
Council, told the jury that the babies had probably been smothered,
although other experts argued that the deaths could have been from
natural causes.
The appeal
court's statement that in such cases, where reputable experts disagree
on the causes of death and there is no other cogent evidence, prosecutions
should not go ahead sparked a review of baby killing cases over
the previous 10 years, ordered by the attorney general.
But two
years on, after an exhaustive trawl, just two parents - Donna Anthony
and Lorraine Harris - have had their convictions for killing their
children quashed. A third, Raymond Rock, had his conviction for
murdering his girlfriend's 13-month-old daughter reduced from murder
to manslaughter on the basis that he did not intend serious harm
to the child.
A further
review of 89 "shaken baby" convictions, in the light of
an appeal court judgment last July, has thrown up fewer than five
cases causing concern, the attorney general will reveal in a report
to be published soon.
The Cannings
case also prompted the then children's minister, Margaret Hodge,
to order a separate review of more than 30,000 cases in the family
courts, where children were removed from parents found by the court
to have harmed them or a sibling. At the time commentators suggested
that around 5,000 care orders could be overturned.
The first
stage, which looked at more than 5,000 cases still going through
the courts, produced only one case in which the care plan for the
child was changed.
The figures
for the review of around 30,000 cases in which care orders had already
been made have never been published. But a spokesman for the Association
of Directors of Social Services told the Guardian that the number
of cases where the review produced a change in the outcome was "in
the low double figures".
Lawyers
who represent parents in care cases criticised the minister for
allowing social services departments to review their own cases.
Professionals in the field argued from the beginning that the review
would create a lot of work to little effect because very few care
cases are decided wholly or exclusively on medical evidence which
is disputed.
But the
expected flood of applications by parents to the court of appeal
to reopen care cases has also failed to materialise. Only two cases
have gone to appeal, and in both the court ruled that the decision
to remove the child from the family was justified.
A long-term
fallout from the crisis of confidence in expert evidence is a serious
shortage of paediatricians willing to testify in court. In a current
case involving a Birmingham couple fighting for the return of their
baby, taken into care soon after her birth in summer 2004, no British
paediatrician was willing to prepare a report to help decide whether
the mother killed the couple's first baby, a son who died aged four
months in 1999. A foreign paediatrician has been found to take the
case, but the search has put the hearing back till at least June
and possibly October.
The couple's
second child, a daughter born in 2000, was taken into care after
a high court judge concluded that the mother had smothered the first
child, and has now been adopted.
Sally
Clarks response to Richard Horton 1st July 2005
