Angela
Cannings
Angela Cannings
was convicted in 2002 of smothering her seven week old son Jason in
1991 and her eighteen week old son Matthew in 1999. Her first baby Gemma
had died at the age of 13 weeks in 1989 but her death was not the subject
of a prosecution.
She was released
on a second appeal after serving 20 months of a life sentence.
She had always insisted that
her children were victims of sudden infant death syndrome (Sids).
The original
conviction was based on expert witness testimony and circumstantial
evidence. The prosecution statement that there was no family history
of cot death was not refuted by the defence at the original trial, despite
two of Cannings's relatives having had an abnormally high number of
infant deaths.
Judges who overturned
Mrs Clark's conviction on appeal said Prof Meadow's evidence was "manifestly
wrong" and "grossly misleading". In Mrs Cannings' case
the court was told again that his evidence was misleading and in future
his testimony would need a "health warning" attached to it.
During Mrs Cannings'
appeal, Lord Justice Judge, Mrs Justice Rafferty and Mr Justice Pitchers
heard fresh evidence from a geneticist, Professor Michael Patton, that
an undiscovered genetic disorder could have been responsible for the
deaths of Jason and Matthew. He revealed that Mrs Cannings' great-grandmother
and grandmother had both lost babies in unexplained circumstances and
the daughter of a half-sister had suffered an "acute life-threatening
event".
Expert witness
Professor Sir Roy Meadow was later temporarily struck off the General
Medical Council register partly as a result of his evidence at the Cannings
trial. Meadow based his calculations on the likelihood of a second cot
death being the same as the likelihood of a first, whereas in households
where one cot death has taken place, the probability of another is greatly
increased. He also asserted that as the children were previously in
good health, this made cot death implausible (which was contrary to
the opionion of other specialists). Cannings later said Meadow should
be "severely punished" for his testimony in her case and others.
The quashing
of Cannings convictions and other high profile cases resulted in a review
of 297 other cases where conviction relied on expert witness opinion.
On 14th of february 2006 the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith announced
that three of these cases needed to be reconsidered by the courts, but
that the majority did not give rise to concern.
Other
High Profile MSbP cases
