"EVEN MORE SAD AND BAFFLING IS THAT PROF. ROY MEADOW SHOULD HAVE BEEN CALLED IN, AFTER THE DERISION AROUSED BY HIS EVIDENCE AT THE TRIAL OF MRS SALLY CLARK, AND THAT JURIES SHOULD STILL BE MESMERIZED BY HIM."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"DURING THE LAST FEW YEARS WE HAVE GONE FROM A COUNTRY THAT SHARED THE GRIEF OF MOTHERS LOSING THEIR INFANTS WITHOUT KNOWN CAUSE TO THE SITUATION TODAY WHERE WE DAMN THEM FOR THE SAME TRAGEDY.
AFTER EVERY SUDDEN INFANT DEATH THERE IS NOW WHAT IS EUPHEMISTICALLY CALLED A “DEATH SCENE INVESTIGATION.”
ITS SOLE PURPOSE IS TO SEE IF A PARENT OR CARER CAN CONCEIVABLY BE SUSPECTED OF HAVING COMMITTED MURDER.
THE DOCTORS INVOLVED ARE SELECTED BECAUSE THEY DECLARE BELIEF IN “THINKING DIRTY.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"IF YOU’RE A GRIEVING MOTHER OR A NANNY, SHOCKED OUT OF YOUR WITS BY THE DEATH OF AN INFANT, THEN GOD HELP YOU, THE LAW IS INTENT ON RIPPING YOU APART.
THE PROSECUTION’S INVESTIGATORS USE THE NATURAL INSTINCT OF THE PARENTS WHO WANT A THOROUGH INVESTIGATION AND ANALYSE THEIR OUTPOURING OF GRIEF TO SEE IF THERE IS THE SLIGHTEST POSSIBILITY OF FOUL PLAY.
HAVE YOU SHAKEN THE BABY? A LOADED QUESTION, FOR IF YOU SAY YES, YOU HAVE GIVEN THE PROSECUTION A CONVICTION FOR SHAKEN BABY SYNDROME.
IF YOU DENY IT, YOU’RE PROBABLY A LIAR, FOR ALL BABIES ARE SHAKEN, IF ONLY IN AN EXPRESSION OF HAPPINESS.
IF YOU WERE NOT THERE TO SHAKE THE CHILD, YOU BECOME SUSPECTED OF HAVING LEFT THE BABY ALONE, TO SUFFOCATE."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Angela Cannings, like Sally Clark, was wrongly convicted in the death of her children, after "thinking dirty" in the case of an infant's death was once again permitted to stain Britain's criminal justice system.
The Cannings case - as did prosecution of Sally Clark - involved an expert witness named Sir Roy Meadow;
By way of brief introduction, Wikipedia tells us that:
"Angela Cannings was wrongfully convicted in the UK in 2002 of the murder of her seven-week-old son, Jason, who died in 1991, and of her 18-week-old son Matthew, who died in 1999.
Her first child, Gemma, died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in 1989 at the age of 13 weeks, although she was never charged in connection with Gemma's death.
Her conviction (for which she received life imprisonment) was based on claims that she had smothered the children, but was overturned as unsafe by the Court of Appeal on 10 December 2003.
[1] Cannings was convicted after the involvement in her case of Professor Sir Roy Meadow, a controversial pediatrician who was later struck off, then reinstated, by the General Medical Council.
The Cannings case was re-examined after a BBC "Real Story" investigation showed that her paternal great-grandmother had suffered one sudden infant death and her paternal grandmother two.
Professor Michael Patton, a clinical geneticist at St George's Hospital Medical School told the BBC that a genetic inheritance was the most likely explanation for the cot deaths in the family......
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 opinion of other specialists).
Cannings later said Meadow should be "severely punished" for his testimony in her case and others."
I have been left both sad and angry after reading an article published after Cannings was convicted by by Ken Norman,chairman of a campaign to free Cannings, and John Fryer who is a described a supporter of the campaign- called the Portia campaign - and a retired independent scientist, toxic chemicals and their effects on health.
"On Tuesday 16th April 2002, Angela Cannings was convicted of the murder of her two sons Jason and Matthew," the article, headed "Free Angela Cannings" began.
"She was given a double life sentence," it continued.
" Her first child was stillborn; the second, Gemma, died 14 months before Jason, on November 14, 1989, and the prosecution claims that this was the “backdrop” to the two later deaths, on January 13, 1991 and November 12, 1999.
(Question: What the devil does “backdrop” mean? Answer: There was not the slightest evidence that Gemma was murdered, but the jury was made to realise that she might have been.)
Wiltshire police said they were sad and baffled by the case.
“I feel tremendous sympathy for her because she strikes me as a nice woman,” said Det. Sergt Rob Findley.
Even more sad and baffling is that Prof. Roy Meadow should have been called in, after the derision aroused by his evidence at the trial of Mrs Sally Clark, and that juries should still be mesmerized by him.
If guilty Angela deserves the sentence, unless there was mental/emotional breakdown, as the judge supposed.
Many people will suppose that she has had a fair trial.
The problem is that the conviction is neither fair nor just.
Gemma was born by Caesarean section; so was Jason, who suffered from dislocated hips and had to have a splint.
Nine days before his death a health visitor had to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation after finding him apparently lifeless.
She found Angela screaming, “It’s happened again.”
Matthew also suffered “acute life-threatening events” nine days before he died and, according to Paul Dunkels QC, prosecuting, these had been earlier attempts to smother.
(But why should attempts to smother babies end in failure?
Two minutes with a hand or pillow held over the face could not fail to kill.
A more fair opinion would be that these were apnoea attacks).
Angela’s second cousin lost two children due to cot death, and this indicates inherited mitochondrial mutation (inherited from the mother’s family, not from the husband; it can bring more than one-in-four risk of infant death).
Angela is now serving a sentence that even the judge considers to be inhuman - double life imprisonment - to complete the misery of these events.
Judge Dame Heather Hallett, 52, who has two sons of her own, said while passing the mandatory sentence, “There is no medical evidence before the court to suggest there was anything wrong with you at the time of the deaths of your children, but I have no doubt that for a woman like you to have committed these terrible acts of suffocating your own babies, there must have been something seriously wrong with you.”
Suggesting that post-natal depression was a factor, she continued: “This in my judgement is a classic kind of injustice that can be caused by mandatory sentencing. In my opinion you will be no threat to anyone in the future.”
It would have been only a minor step from this almost unprecedented expression of sympathy for the judge to have considered her innocent.
The likelihood is that Angela never has been a risk to children.
The jury took more than nine hours to unanimously decide that the babies were smothered (indicating that some jurors had to be argued out of their own beliefs) and in a front-page report the Daily Mail added the words “even though medical experts were unable to find clear proof of suffocation.”
Can we say for certain that she is an innocent victim?
No, but neither can we say that any person picked up at random has not committed murder.
Some people are vile and evil and some of these may be involved in the case – but if you were to ask, “Was it Angela?” we would say, “Not likely.”
She is like many other mums throughout the world who have suffered the loss of a child or children from Sudden Infant Cot Death Syndrome - termed a syndrome because there is no one cause that has yet been identified.
(The study of genetics is only in its infancy).
During the last few years we have gone from a country that shared the grief of mothers losing their infants without known cause to the situation today where we damn them for the same tragedy.
After every sudden infant death there is now what is euphemistically called a “Death Scene Investigation.”
Its sole purpose is to see if a parent or carer can conceivably be suspected of having committed murder.
The doctors involved are selected because they declare belief in “thinking dirty.”
Several large-scale studies (one published in 2001) have concluded that only three to six percent of cot deaths result from deliberate neglect or abuse, including murder, but “dirty thinkers” declare that 40% of cot deaths are actually murder; the consequence is that 37 out of every 40 prosecutions for child murder are highly controversial - even among paediatric pathologists - and yet the scales of justice are loaded even further than this.
If you’re a grieving mother or a nanny, shocked out of your wits by the death of an infant, then God help you, the law is intent on ripping you apart.
The Prosecution’s investigators use the natural instinct of the parents who want a thorough investigation and analyse their outpouring of grief to see if there is the slightest possibility of foul play.
Have you shaken the baby? A loaded question, for if you say yes, you have given the prosecution a conviction for Shaken Baby Syndrome.
If you deny it, you’re probably a liar, for all babies are shaken, if only in an expression of happiness.
If you were not there to shake the child, you become suspected of having left the baby alone, to suffocate.
An apnoea alarm had been given to Angela after the first death (which was therefore professionally believed to have been due to breathing failure).
It went off, and another death occurred. Angela said she had failed to hear it, and presumably told the investigators, in anguish, “If only I had been listening.”
This became additional grounds for prosecution - did she ignore the alarm?
Yet it’s only like a telephone bell; how often have you been indoors, or nearby, and failed to hear the phone ring?
The benefit of hindsight is remarkable.
Everything the parent does is analysed in the greatest detail for deviation from assumed normal behaviour.
How can a mother who has suffered the loss of a previous baby have what we would imagine is normal behaviour?
After losing possibly the most precious person in your life you cannot be normal. Everything you say or do will be anything but normal.
The consequence is that whatever you do will be construed as strange.
Just put yourself in the position of losing a child.
Would any reaction be considered normal?
Tears? They’re crocodile. A brave face? You’re a hard brute.”
You have misery that no one would wish upon their worst enemy.
Perhaps you decide to get rid of any sign that the first infant ever existed – and that eventually becomes evidence of murder.
It was devastating evidence (used against Angela) that she was at home alone with the children when they died.
Surely all mothers ARE alone with their infants for much of their life?
It is considered evidence of crime to have further children only months after a death . . . but isn’t this evidence that a devastated mother has unsatisfied maternal longings that she cannot endure?
If in fact it had become intolerable living with one baby, so that she had been driven to murder, how on earth could this give need for a second pregnancy?
How does a mother know what has happened to cause the loss of a child when cause of a first death is recorded as unknown?
There are various possibilities.
The baby may have been too hot or too cold, or placed face-down; the parents smoke, the mattress or quilt was too soft, the child could slip down beneath blankets.
These are just a few of the many factors that parents have been warned about.
The Cannings were warned that their smoking might have caused a child’s death.
So they gave up smoking to avoid any more losses. It didn’t work for them. It was not the fatal factor.
They may have lost babies because of toxicity – one possibility is that the mum herself carried toxicity and was feeding a slow death to her infants.
In Asia parents have the lowest cot death rate in the world, yet babies are put to sleep in the more dangerous positions.
In short there are no easy answers.
In Hong Kong for example the death rate was 0.04 whereas in New Zealand it stood 100 times this rate at 4.00 – all per 1,000 live births.
Doctors claim subtle differences in using hard mattresses, not smoking, changing the angle at which babies lie, but the change in the rate of cot death is less than 10 percent of the regional variation around the world.
Something does not add up. Something is clearly not right.
At Angela’s trial, the defence argued that two babies other than Gemma and Jason had died within two years in the tiny hamlet of Winterbourne Gunner - “a very unusual event and there may be something in the evidence about Winterbourne Gunner that tells you about the toxins inside a baby and toxins in the environment.”
The Guardian reported: “The Wiltshire hamlet is near the Ministry of Defence nuclear biological and chemical centre at Porton Down, and the defence is expected to argue the deaths could be connected to residues of materials or poisons left at the site.”
“Earlier the court heard from Group Captain Ian McPhee, a former commandant of the nuclear biological and chemical centre, who said an independent civilian survey [How independent?] had found ‘no gross contamination of the land or the water table’ and had detected no chemical or nerve agents.
“But the officer added that during an operation to clear the land between November 1998 and July 1999, 1,088 munitions were recovered to add to a previous total of 108 [ten times as many - presumably after the ‘independent civilian survey’].
Of the earlier discoveries, two munitions contained mustard and lewisite blister agents that would cause breathing difficulties, and one of phosgene - a pulmonary agent that attacks the lungs and causes the victim to ‘dry drown’ as the lungs reduce.”
Porton Down is a place dedicated to delivering death as quickly and as undetectably as possible to an enemy.
In fact at the same time as the Wiltshire Police were prosecuting and convicting Angela there was a parallel investigation into death at this establishment.
Curiously the death of Ronald Maddison, which happened in the 1950’s, is still being investigated while that of Angela’s children who died up to forty years later has just reached a successful conclusion. (Successful if you like to lock up an innocent person for two lifetimes.)
For Ronald Maddison the charge could result in the UK Government and the scientists being charged with murder.
This of course cannot be allowed to happen.
Our claim is that Angela’s children died because of the chemical insidiousness of a group of chemicals chosen as the weapon of choice to terminate life – all forms of life.
These chemicals are called nerve toxic organophosphates – made by man to destroy the nervous system of all animal life with a nervous system inside them – our nervous system is 95% similar to that of a fly.
The data of the killing power of these chemicals is awesome – you cannot imagine how dangerous they are.
With old nerve toxins dumped for 80 years in the field next door, the risk to her children was incalculable.
When you ask what OP flame retardants are in mattresses, the answer is that this is a trade secret.
In 1969 cancer-inducing, nerve-destroying life-taking chemical was put into nightclothing for infants between the ages of one month and six months – because this was the age they were vulnerable to catching their nightclothes alight and dying of burns from an open fire.
The flame retardants were perhaps more lethal than the original risk. The number of cot deaths has multiplied.
A friend who worked in the ambulance service through the 1980’s tells me of the build up in cases in a small village to the point where there were three deaths in one week.
Not all cot deaths are due to a particular OP nerve toxic, of course. Carbon monoxide is a similar acting toxin.
Drugs can kill, thalidomide kills as well as disables.
A whole group of phenothiazines have been proven to cause cot death.
Phenothiazines and tobacco smoke kill, but are relatively non-toxic in comparison to OP’s and are used in lesser amounts.
Then you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that OP nerve toxins designed to kill fleas, etc., and used in large amounts around infants presents a clear and present risk.
As we write this, a recent court ruling means hundreds of people suffering from mesothelioma, a cancer caused by asbestos, can no longer claim compensation because they may have become contaminated at any one of scores of sites.
Years ago a hard-working doctor showed that thalidomide had a less than desirable effect on new-born babies – they had defective arms or legs.
In less than two years he was struck off the medical register.
A director of the company that supplied this drug got a knighthood.
I (John Fryer) know a thalidomide victim.
She was born with a defective hand.
Her twin brother was a deformed thalidomide victim born dead.
There was just one problem – although my friend’s mother took thalidomide, she could not prove it.
So she is not recognized as a thalidomide case and does not show up on the government figures.
Neither does the twin brother; he was a bit of waste down the hospital sluice, just part of the after-birth.
We do have a peer-reviewed paper showing that an 80% death rate among children is possible in a small village next to a source of OP nerve toxins.
This is not Winterbourne Gunner, of course, but a small European village called Rinya, where the population availed themselves of some easy-to-catch fish.
They did not know that the fish had been made ill by an OP product, and a carnage of infants followed.
In fairness, when it was recognised that risk existed around Porton Down, men in space-suits cleared up a lot of mess.
They claimed that the 100 or so glass phials found were intact, complete with life-destroying nerve agents sealed in safely.
They were less forthcoming about 1,000 remnants of phials picked up at the same time.
Angela can be seen to have at least four exposures to nerve-destroying toxins:
1. The chemical establishment;
2. The dumped of nerve agents;
3. At home she used OP flea spray on her dog – diazinon or chlorpyrifos, one withdrawn and the other banned for use in the home - perhaps because of experiences like Angela’s but not admitted;
4. In the mattress used by Matthew there was an OP flame retardant – probably TCP or tricresyl phosphate. In 1932 a few drops spilled on to a worker; he died, but production and sales went ahead;
Fire risk has diminished with the open coal fire; children’s clothes do not spontaneously burst into flame when near a radiator.
Clearly OP’s are a risk and it seems that babies are more sensitive than adults.
Angela to this day may have OP’s still in her body, as a result of time spent at Winterbourne Gunner, bringing possibility of death to any child she suckled.
If she is to serve two life sentences in prison this can hardly matter.
But she told the court, when asked how she felt after Matthew died: “I really did not know what I had done in my life to deserve to lose my children. Each time I felt empty inside and wondered why it had all happened.
“Throughout all of this it has been a struggle, but my husband Terry and I are still married. We are still as together as we can be - and he fully supports me.
“The one thing that I have regretted since I have lost Matthew was that I had arranged to be sterilised early in my pregnancy with him. To this day I would still try again for another baby if I hadn’t been sterilised.
“It is nothing to do with replacing the babies that I have lost. I don’t understand how or why or what I have done to deserve all this sadness.”
Was Prof Roy Meadow giving deliberately false evidence when claiming Angela was a murderess for example simply because she lost Matthew at 9.30am and not 7.30am when she was not alone with the child? Of course not.
Was Professor Berry a liar when he found “every sign of cot death” and asked for murder charges to be brought if justified? Of course not.
But neither should we accept what they say as being evidence of murder when other expert evidence could contradict them.
Helping to convict Mrs Sally Clark of supposedly murdering two of her three children, Meadow solemnly assured the jury that odds against a single cot death in an affluent family were 1,850 to one, therefore for two deaths the odds became 1 in 73 million.
This has been met with derision by mathematicians and paediatricians.
Yet he was still allowed to give evidence convicting Angela.
By his peculiar maths, three deaths would involve odds of one in 129,500 billions - more children than have ever been born.
Coming back to reality, Ms Michelle Horton, of Northfield, Birmingham, lost three infants to cot death, all in fairly identical circumstances to Angela, but could not be prosecuted because one of the deaths occurred in hospital when she was nowhere near.
(She still had the word “murderer” daubed on her door by someone with similar mentality to Meadow).
Another expert view concerning Mrs Clark came from Professor Emeritus of Medical Genetics Brian Lowry, of Calgary, who wrote that “while most [cot death] cases are non-genetic or of unknown origin, nevertheless a few are genetic.
Mrs Clark’s risk of a second affected child could be 25 percent, or even higher in the case of a mitochondrial mutation.
There was a case in the US a few years ago where a mother was convicted of murder based on a cot death.
She was pregnant when she went to prison and gave birth there; the baby was removed and placed in foster care.
This baby subsequently died under similar circumstances to the first.
Investigation of the first baby’s death disclosed that the experts who said the death was due to glycol (anti-freeze) poisoning had made a mistake.
The mother was subsequently released.
“These parents had a 25 per cent risk of subsequent children having the same disorder and dying suddenly in infancy.”
There is a huge amount of material on the world-wide web showing that cot deaths - even multiple ones - are likely to be natural.
A BBC report, April 16, 2002, describes Sudden Infant Death Syndrome as “a mysterious condition for which the cause is not known.
It is estimated that seven babies die for no apparent reason every week in the UK.
“Certainly second cot deaths can be true cot deaths, where all other causes have been excluded.”
And this is the rub - for “think dirty” evidence will bring together every other conceivable cause of death, and induce jurors (knowing nothing of the subject) to believe there must have been murder.
Epidemiologist Professor Jean Golding, a senior expert in patterns of disease and illness, told the Salisbury jury there could be inherited genetic flaw.
“I couldn’t see where they were coming from in thinking there was any pattern that would mean this was not a natural set of deaths.”
She had identified one potentially significant pattern in the family.
A distant cousin in Ireland had experienced a series of four cot deaths and near-death experiences.
“It is intriguing that they seem to show the same pattern” putting the family at greater risk.
“Genetics is in its infancy and there are new discoveries all the time. Things that we had no idea about are being revealed everyday, and I think the Cannings family is going to be a very intriguing one to look at further.”
She gave the opinion that paediatricians had become too ready to suspect foul play where more than one child had died in the same family.
Criticising Prof Meadow’s conclusion that the Cannings case was typical of smothering, Prof Golding described his collection of case notes on smothering as the equivalent of a “stamp collection” and of little relevance.
“There are none of the patterns one would usually see in the background of someone who was out to murder her children.”
Vivian Howard, a prominent toxico-pathologist, listed a number of ways in which the babies might accidentally have been exposed to potentially dangerous levels of organo-phosphates (OPs); originally developed as chemical weapons, at the time of the infant deaths they occurred in diluted form in insecticides, in agricultural use and within the home as fly-killers and flea powders for pets.
The Cannings’ home at Horse Barrow not only lay close to farmland and rail lines, both of which could have been sprayed with organophosphate preparations, but was also not even a hundred yards from the Porton Down Site.
She was in the habit of walking a dog and the babies around the village every day, allowing the dog to run in the fields.
OPs were semi-volatile; they could evaporate into the atmosphere and recondense elsewhere, particularly on absorbent surfaces such as bedding.
In recent years [particulary since the children’s deaths] they had become more sparingly used but some infants might be exceptionally vulnerable to toxins in the environment.
“They live rather closer to the edge than adults.”
Babies under six months old were particularly vulnerable to OPs because they had not yet developed the capacity to metabolise toxins.
After this evidence, unfortunately, the jury took an Easter break before returning to give their verdict [and to forget inconvenient facts].
On resumption, Paul Dunkels QC, prosecuting, asked the jury to ignore “the combination of medical reasons offered by the defence.” [Surely jurors should not ignore such evidence].
The common factor was that Jason and Matthew had the same mother and each baby was alone with her when he died. [Warning to women: never have more than one child; never be alone with it.]
“Jason’s scare on June 4, 1991, when he stopped breathing and had to be resuscitated, and his death nine days later both occurred after her husband had gone to work.”
[Husbands, don’t go to work, shops or pub, or there’s be murder.]
Organophosphates at Winterbourne Gunner could not have affected Matthew because the family lived in Salisbury during the baby’s lifetime. [But they could have collected in the mother’s body and been passed on in her milk.]
These are cockeyed arguments on which to base murder convictions, but with jurors who know nothing of cot death, they succeed.
Mike Mansfield QC, in his closing speech for the defence, said sudden infant death has its origins in the bible.
Because it remains a mystery does not mean there has to be a scapegoat.
There was no haemorrhaging of the eyes, no pressure marks, no bleeding from the nose and mouth [all regarded as indicators of smothering], no rib fractures, no old injuries.
“Matthew’s so-called life-threatening event was no such thing.
It was a vomit attack, misinterpreted by the mother as something threatening life.”
He was immune-deficient and becoming susceptible to various infections.
After the verdict, Angela has not been found guilty of murder; she’s guessed to be guilty.
Lawyers are preparing an appeal.
The entire legal system is heavily loaded against a defendant.
The suspect is escorted into the dock, having been held in jail perhaps for more than a year among inmates filled with hate for a monster who (the press informs them) is likely to have killed a baby, or two or three; in court, perhaps in handcuffs, with police or prison officers on each side, accused, allowed to speak only when voice is demanded, already identified to jurors over a period of many months in local and perhaps national or world media as an accused child-killer; and those jurors must be strangers to her and cannot know anything to her credit.
She stands on display in the dock, to be denounced and declared guilty by lawyers who paint in thick vivid daubs, producing images in stark black and white with huge crimson splashes of blood.
There is not the slightest doubt that you are evil, they declare.
The innocent victim was a helpless baby who must have been shaken for several minutes then dashed to the ground with force equivalent to a 15ft fall on to concrete, or cold-bloodedly suffocated.
All this is beyond question for there is no other way the killing could have taken place, declare the “think dirty” experts, while other equally qualified medical men attempt to suggest that possibly there may be doubt.
Is it in any way remarkable that mistakes are made, when the jurors called upon to decide have no knowledge of what the expert witnesses are arguing about, and they might as well be speaking in Mandarin Chinese, Farsi or Urdu?
There is little or no chance that jurors fully understanding vital evidence in these trials unless they themselves possess understanding of medicine; for accurate verdicts the defending counsel should have the right to demand that every juror is a General Practitioner or possess a doctorate in medicine.
Here is the far more civilised Florida solution for bringing people to trial: “Cutting edge - murder two,” on Channel 4, on November 3 and 4, 1998, gave a day-to-day picture of the murder trial in Florida of a Lancashire midwife who had made immediate admission to police of shooting her husband six times.
The defence secured her release on bail; she was given care of her baby to bring normality and calm to her life during the months of waiting; she received psychiatric counselling to prepare her for the ordeal of trial; a mock trial took place before students of law, to obtain opinion upon the best line of defence; there was a mock cross-examination, so that she could learn to appear calm, steadfast, confident, and aware of legal trickery which might infer that she had intended to kill; a group of perhaps twenty lawyers, psychologists and medical experts met for a round-table discussion on how best to outwit the prosecutor.
There was even an attempt to persuade a judge to declare her first hysterical confession to be inadmissible evidence.
All this on legal aid, with a highly experienced former chief prosecutor now turned defence counsel to lead the massive team.
It sounds ridiculous, yet does no more than put the defendant more nearly in equality with her accusers.
And the defence, unsurprisingly, was successful.
Compare this with trials elsewhere (and normal British procedure).
Every nuance that might conceivably hint at guilt is presented as hard evidence.
Louise Woodward had “dropped,” not “popped,” a child down; Tricia Muff had “whip-lashed” a baby’s head; Helen Stacey had used force “equivalent to an injury in a road traffic accident”; Manjit Basuta “banged a child’s head repeatedly on the floor” inflicting “very catastrophic injuries” (without leaving a bruise); Sally Clark was at fault in two directions - she had screamed hysterically in the ambulance, “diverting paramedics from their attempts to revive the child,” yet had “superficial” reaction according to a doctor who broke the news of the child’s death. [Advice for any mother accused of murdering a child: don’t show grief; don’t fail to show it.]
The accused parent or carer is left to choose a defence solicitor from her own small town, possibly while she is already held in custody.
She has no possible means to assess his skill.
It may be the first murder trial he has ever attended; almost certainly it will be his first child-murder case and he has no experience of refuting “dirty thinking” expert witnesses; he may be chosen during interrogation because this was the only lawyer on duty or whose name was known to the defendant (perhaps he once helped her buy a house).
There is no possibility to grieve and calm herself - unprepared for a situation in which the whole panoply of justice puts her in a bewildered starring role of “the prisoner at the bar,” she is unrehearsed, ashamed, frightened, under cross-examination, with a highly proficient Prosecutor doing his utmost to bring a pause, a hesitancy, a lack of verbal fluency, appearance of doubt, the slightest apparent contradiction.
She has had no mock-trial, no rehearsal of interrogation, no psychiatric counselling, and, in the appalling role of suspected child-killer, there is the knowledge that an adored baby (or several) died in a manner she cannot begin to understand, no doubt having feared for months that by some slight error or omission in mothercraft she had involuntarily caused the death(s).
The chance of acquittal in such a totally one-sided contest, experienced heavyweight against badly injured novice pigmy? It’s like an amateur lightweight in a 12-round encounter with Mike Tyson.
Furthermore, there is a huge flaw in the modus operandi of trial by jury: the requirement that they get together to agree their verdict.
There are many cases (such as Angela’s) in which no one other than God and the accused can know for certain whether there is culpability.
We are not allowed to know what goes on behind the doors of a jury room - but can we speculate?
Some jurors, given a dreadful and almost impossible task, might prefer a verdict of not-proven, but outside Scotland the law does not allow it.
The judge wants unison, for it’s so much more satisfactory, removing (or disguising) all appearance of doubt.
If there can’t be unison, he might agree to accept a 10-2 majority conviction (conveniently regarding this as “guilty beyond reasonable doubt” despite the 16.8% belief in innocence).
And if the jury is split 9-3 he might order a retrial to bring the illusion of certainty next time.
What are the thoughts of the jurors during protracted argument, knowing that until they agree, discussion may go on for days longer, growing more heated and more futile with every hour, for there is nothing new emerging?
One Alf Garnett among them - prejudiced, loud-mouthed, highly opinionated, incapable of seeing any other viewpoint - can gradually force the other eleven to forget their scruples and convict.
A passionate member of the hang ’em, flog ’em, lock ’em up for life brigade, he cannot be argued with; he knows wrong from right, and that’s that. The police have made an arrest, there’s been questioning and a charge was laid, so it’s obvious that they know more than they can say.
Other jurors, wishing to dissent, have the choice of fruitless squabbling for the next several hours or days, or giving way to duress and blackmail (denial of their wish to get it over and go home).
Is it inconceivable that eleven jurors, placid by nature, unused to pub brawls and arguments, could be forced to suppress their own doubts and convict under the inflexibility of one?
There may be just one or two jurors capable of real understanding when a complex medical issue is involved, but let’s suppose they are unaccustomed to heated bar-room disputation: it creates a situation in which, to quote an old saying, “The best lacking all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Faced with one or two others, more forceful and opinionated, brushing aside technicalities, which view is likely to predominate?
And is it necessarily the truth?
As one reform (writes Tom Watkins, of the Portia Campaign), jurors should be required to account for their views in writing, to show they had undertaken the task fairly.
It would force them to take a responsible attitude, and if it became apparent that there was prejudice or misunderstand, this would give grounds for appeal.
Because they would need to take notes, there would be less likelihood of minds wandering.
And if jurors were put into 12 separate rooms, out of contact with others while making their decisions and writing in explanation, those with dominant views (either way) could not influence the opinions of others.
This, however, would certainly not please Home Secretary David Blunkett who has already complained that there are too many acquittals.
The establishment, actually, doesn’t give a monkey’s cuss whether or not Angela is falsely convicted - either way she has served the purpose by deterring other parents and carers from killing babies.
It’s a logical, valid argument, of course, and applies to many other types of crime.
Except that, having the largest proportion of prisoners in Europe, you would logically expect a dramatic decline in crime.
We can speak only for cases involving child death.
There is no dramatic decline; this would come only if tragedies such as Angela’s were scientifically investigated, genetic defects and toxins detected, and treatment given.
Years ago a hard-working doctor showed that thalidomide had a less than desirable effect on new-born babies – they had defective arms or legs.
In less than two years he was struck off the medical register. A director of the company which supplied this drug got a knighthood.
I (John Fryer) know a thalidomide victim.
She was born with a defective hand. Her twin brother was a deformed thalidomide victim born dead.
There was just one problem – although my friend’s mother took thalidomide, she could not prove it.
So she is not recognised as a thalidomide case and does not show up on the government figures.
Neither does the twin brother; he was a bit of waste down the hospital sluice, just part of the after-birth.
We do have a peer-reviewed paper showing that an 80% death rate among children is possible in a small village next to a source of OP nerve toxins.
This is not Winterbourne Gunner, of course, but a small European village called Rinya, where the population availed themselves of some easy-to-catch fish.
They did not know that the fish had been made ill by an OP product, and a carnage of infants followed.
In fairness, when it was recognised that risk existed around Porton Down, men in space-suits cleared up a lot of mess.
They claimed that the 100 or so glass phials found were intact, complete with life-destroying nerve agents sealed in safely.
They were less forthcoming about 1,000 remnants of phials picked up at the same time. Angela had at least four exposures to nerve-destroying toxins:
1. The chemical establishment;
2. Dumped nerve agents;
3. She used OP flea spray on her dog – diazinon or chlorpyrifos, one since withdrawn and the other banned for use in the home - perhaps this was because of experiences like Angela’s although such a link has never been admitted;
4. In the mattress used by Matthew there was an OP flame retardant – probably TCP or tricresyl phosphate. In 1932 a few drops spilled on to a worker; he died, but production and sales went ahead.;
Fire risk has diminished with the open coal fire; children’s clothes do not spontaneously burst into flame when near a radiator.
Clearly OP’s are a risk and it seems that babies are more sensitive than adults.
Angela to this day may have OP’s still in her body, as a result of time spent at Winterbourne Gunner, bringing possibility of death to any child she suckled.
We have knowledge that phenothiazines lead to the symptoms and findings of Cot Death – we can therefore be sure that the completely unacceptable risk of what Angela used in her home, the unfortunate OP in the babies mattresses added to her choice of where to live presented her with the lot to lose 75% of her live born babies plus the first one that never made it.
She has suffered what other people can scarcely imagine: to lose all your children and then face the shame and humiliation of being accused of their murder and given life sentences.
It is sickening to think that so-called humans could have built up the distorted case against her, presumably for the betterment of their own careers.
Angela is not a murdering monster.
Much more likely, the case proves that a chemical designed to kill does really KILL."
Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;
