Sally Clark

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Sally Clark (15 August 1964 – 15 March 2007)[1] was a British lawyer. She is best known as the victim of a miscarriage of justice, after convictions in 1999 for the murder of two of her sons were quashed in 2003.

Clark's first son died suddenly within a few weeks of his birth in 1996. After her second son died in a similar manner, she was arrested in 1998 and tried for the murder of both sons. Her prosecution was controversial due to statistical evidence presented by paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow, who testified that the chance of two children from an affluent family suffering cot death was 1 in 73 million, when in fact it was closer to 1 in 200. [2] In an unusual intervention, the Royal Statistical Society wrote to the Lord Chancellor saying there was "no statistical basis" for Meadow's figure.

Clark was convicted in November 1999. The convictions were upheld at appeal in October 2000, but after she had served more than three years of her sentence, they were quashed in a second appeal in January 2003, and she was released from jail. Journalist Geoffrey Wansell called Clark's experience "one of the great miscarriages of justice in modern British legal history." [2]

She never recovered from her ordeal. She was found dead in her home on 16 March 2007.[3]

Contents

[edit] Early and private life

An only child, she was born as Sally Lockyer in Devizes.[4][5] Her father was a senior police officer with Wiltshire Constabulary and her mother was a hairdresser.[4][5] She was educated at South Wilts Grammar School for Girls in Salisbury.[4][5] She studied geography at Southampton University, and worked as a management trainee with Lloyds Bank and then at Citibank.[4]

She married Steve Clark, a solicitor, in 1990, and she left her job in the City of London to train as a solicitor.[4] She studied at City of London University, and trained at Macfarlanes, a city law firm.[4] She moved with her husband to join a law firm in Manchester in 1994.[4] They bought a house in Wilmslow in Cheshire.[4]

Her first son, Christopher, was born on 26 September 1996.[6] Apparently a healthy baby, he was found dead in his cot at 11 weeks old on 13 December.[6] Suffering from post-natal depression, she consoled herself with alcohol; after counselling at the Priory Clinic, she was in recovery by the time her second son, Harry, was born on 29 November 1997, three weeks premature.[4][6] However, he was also found dead at eight weeks on 26 January 1998.[6] On both occasions, she was at home alone with her baby, and there was evidence of trauma, which could have been related to attempts to resuscitate them.

She and her husband were both arrested on 23 February 1998 on suspicion of murdering their children.[6] On the advice of her lawyers, she twice refused to answer questions,[6] and was charged with two counts of murder. She always denied the charge, and was supported throughout by her husband. She gave birth to a third son in 1999.[5]

She was tried at Chester Crown Court, before Mr Justice Harrison and a jury.[6] The prosecution was controversial due to the involvement of the paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow, who testified at Clark's trial that the chance of two children from an affluent family suffering cot death was 1 in 73 million. He likened the probability to the chances of backing an 80-1 outsider in the Grand National four years running, and winning each time.[7] In an unusual intervention, the Royal Statistical Society wrote to the Lord Chancellor saying there was "no statistical basis" for Meadow's figure, and the correct probability was later estimated at 1 in 200.[2]

She was convicted by a 10-2 majority verdict on 9 November 1999,[7] and given the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. She was widely reviled in the press as the murderer of her children. Despite recognition of the flaws in Meadow's statistical evidence, the convictions were upheld at appeal in October 2000.[6] She was imprisoned at HMP Styal, near her home in Wilmslow, and then HMP Bullwood Hall in Hockley in Essex.[4] The nature of her conviction as a child-killer, and her background as a solicitor and daughter of a police officer, made her a target for other prisoners.[4] Her husband left his partnership at a Manchester law firm to work as a legal assistant nearer the prison, selling the family house to meet the legal bills from the trial and first appeal.[4]

Later, it came to light that microbiological tests showed that Harry had widespread infection of staphylococcus aureus bacteria, suggesting that her second son may have died from natural causes, but the evidence had not been disclosed to the defence.[7] This evidence had allegedly been known to the prosecution's pathologist, Alan Williams, since February 1998, but had not been shared with Clark's defence team.[3] It also became clearer that the statistical evidence presented at her trial was seriously flawed.[7] Her case was referred back to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, and she was released from jail in January 2003, after serving over three years of her sentence.[7] Her convictions were formally quashed in a second appeal in January 2003.[7]

Her case led to a wide-ranging review of hundreds of similar cases. Two other women were cleared of similar charges.[5]

According to her family, she was unable to recover from the effects of her conviction and imprisonment.[8] After her release, her husband said that she would "never be well again."[5] She was unable to read John Batt's book based on her case, Stolen Innocence: A Mother's Fight for Justice.[5] In 2005, Meadow was struck off the medical register by the General Medical Council for serious professional misconduct, but he was reinstated in 2006 after he appealed.

She was found dead in her home in Hatfield Peverel in Essex on 16 March 2007.[3] She was survived by her husband and their third son, born in 1999.

[edit] Statistical evidence

The case has been much criticised because of the way statistical evidence had been misrepresented in the original trial, particularly by expert witness Sir Roy Meadow, former Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Leeds. He stated in evidence as an expert witness that "one sudden infant death in a family is a tragedy, two is suspicious and three is murder unless proven otherwise" and that the chances of two Sudden Infant Deaths in the same affluent, non-smoking family were 1 in 73 million. This figure came from the "Confidential Enquiry for Stillbirths and Deaths in Infancy" (CESDI), an authoritative and detailed study of deaths of babies in five regions of England between 1993 and 1996. The original report states that the chances of a randomly chosen baby dying a cot death are 1 in 1,303. If the child is from an affluent, non-smoking family, with the mother over 26, the odds fall to around 1 in 8,500. The authors go on to say that if there is no link between cot deaths of siblings then we would be able to estimate the chances of two children from such a family both suffering a cot death by squaring 1/8,500 - giving the figure of 1 chance in 73 million quoted by Meadow in court.

However, it should be noted this calculation is based upon a very strong assumption, namely the independence of deaths between siblings; it would not apply if there were to be a common cause of death, for example, if a genetically inherited defect was a contributory factor in the deaths. No evidence of independence was presented as evidence and more recent work by Professor Raymond Hill of the Mathematics Department of the University of Salford suggests that independence is unlikely. The chances of a family which has already had a cot death having a second cot death are estimated by Hill to be around 1 in 100, not 1 in 8,500.

Furthermore, if the chances of a double cot death are relevant to assessment of guilt then the chances of a double murder are also relevant and should have been presented and compared. Even if the probability of two instances of SIDS were as low as 1 in 73 million, it is not unlikely to have occurred to some family in the country. In October 2000, the Royal Statistical Society wrote a letter to the Lord Chancellor and issued a press release which pointed out some of the problems, while the appeal judges concluded "...it seems likely that if this matter had been fully argued before us we would, in all probability, have considered that the statistical evidence provided a quite distinct basis upon which the appeal had to be allowed."

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Sally Clark (Obituary)", The Times, 19 March 2007.
  2. ^ a b c Wansell, Geoffrey. "Whatever the coroner may say, Sally Clark died of a broken heart", The Independent, 18 March 2007.
  3. ^ a b c Shaikh, Thair. "Sally Clark, mother wrongly convicted of killing her sons, found dead at home", The Guardian, 17 March 2007.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Obituary, The Daily Telegraph, 19 March 2007.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Obituary, The Times, 19 March 2007.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h First appeal, R. v Clark, [2000] EWCA Crim 54, 2 October 2000, from BAILII.
  7. ^ a b c d e f Second appeal, R. v Clark, [2003] EWCA Crim 1020, 11 April 2003, from BAILII.
  8. ^ *Obituary, BBC News, 17 March 2007.

[edit] Further reading

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