BMJ  2004;328:183 (24 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7433.183

News

Parents convicted of killing to have their cases reviewed

BMJ

Major changes in England and Wales relating to the handling of cases in which mothers are suspected of killing their babies were announced this week by the Court of Appeal and the attorney general.

Hundreds of parents convicted of killing their babies are to have their cases urgently reviewed, said the attorney general after the appeal court called for an end to the prosecution of parents when experts' opinions on the cause of death differ.

In addition, thousands of parents whose children were taken away from them are to have their cases reopened as part of the review, Solicitor General Harriet Harman told parliament on Tuesday.

Medical science was "still at the frontiers of knowledge" about unexplained infant deaths, said Lord Justice Judge, the deputy chief justice, giving the appeal court's reasons for its decision last month to quash Angela Cannings' conviction for murdering her two baby sons.

In those cases in which a full investigation into two or more sudden unexplained infant deaths in the same family was followed by a serious disagreement between reputable experts about the cause of death, and natural causes could not be excluded as a reasonable possibility, "the prosecution of a parent or parents for murder should not be started or continued unless there is additional cogent evidence," said the deputy chief justice.

The rethink, prompted by Mrs Cannings' case and the cases of two other mothers, Sally Clark and Trupti Patel, means that in future prosecutions will be brought only if the evidence is much more clear cut than it was in their cases.

A national protocol is to be drafted by a working party chaired by the Labour peer and criminal QC Helena Kennedy. This will ensure that cases are investigated as expertly as possible from the start. The working party will be set up by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and the Royal College of Pathologists.

Before Mrs Cannings' appeal, the cases of the solicitor Sally Clark ( BMJ 2003;326: 304[Free Full Text]), whose conviction for murdering her two baby sons was quashed on the second appeal, and pharmacist Trupti Patel, acquitted of murdering her three babies, had already highlighted the uncertainties in cases when babies die suddenly.

Evidence from one prosecution expert Professor Sir Roy Meadow, was an important factor in each case. But this week Lord Justice Judge said that although the court recognised that three sudden infant deaths in one family was "very rare or very rare indeed," the fact that they occurred did "not identify, let alone prescribe, the deliberate infliction of harm as the cause of death."

The 258 cases to be reviewed are all those in which a parent has been convicted, in the past 10 years, of murder, manslaughter, or infanticide of a child aged under 2.

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Rapid Responses:

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