PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "In the NSW Supreme Court on Monday, Folbigg’s barrister Jeremy Morris SC said Mr Blanch “failed to exercise his jurisdiction” after medical evidence arose during the inquiry that indicated Laura and Sarah had a genetic variation that could have triggered Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. “He did not engage with the logical consequences that arose from” that evidence, Mr Morris said, which “established a potential natural cause of death for each of the children that needed to be excluded.” Mr Morris said having doubts raised about the cause of the girls’ deaths, Mr Blanch went on to use “his interpretation of” Folbigg’s diary entries “to extinguish any reasonable doubt”. “We say that was in error,” he said."
STORY: "Inquiry made error reading Folbigg diary, lawyer says," by reporter Jenny Noyes, published by The Sydney Morning Herald on February 15, 2021.
GIST: "A judicial inquiry into the conviction of notorious child killer Kathleen Folbigg failed to adequately grapple with the possibility that guilt expressed in her diaries could have been about something other than murdering her children, her lawyer has told the Supreme Court.
Folbigg, 53, is seeking to quash the outcome of the 2019 judicial inquiry by the Honourable Reginald Blanch AM, QC, which reinforced her guilt for the murders of Patrick, Sarah and Laura, and the manslaughter of Caleb, who were all aged between 19 days and 18 months old.
The children all died suddenly in the family’s Newcastle home over a 10-year period between February 1989 and March 1999, and post-mortems were unable to establish what caused them to stop breathing.
Diary entries in which Folbigg expressed guilt over the deaths were key in her trial – and the interpretation of them remains a major point of contention.
Folbigg, who was sentenced after appeal to at least 25 years jail, continues to maintain her innocence, and an inquiry into her convictions was announced in 2018 by NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman after petitions from her supporters.
The inquiry concluded there was no natural explanation for the deaths and reinforced Folbigg’s guilt.
In the NSW Supreme Court on Monday, Folbigg’s barrister Jeremy Morris SC said Mr Blanch “failed to exercise his jurisdiction” after medical evidence arose during the inquiry that indicated Laura and Sarah had a genetic variation that could have triggered Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
“He did not engage with the logical consequences that arose from” that evidence, Mr Morris said, which “established a potential natural cause of death for each of the children that needed to be excluded.”
Mr Morris said having doubts raised about the cause of the girls’ deaths, Mr Blanch went on to use “his interpretation of” Folbigg’s diary entries “to extinguish any reasonable doubt”.
“We say that was in error,” he said.
Justice John Basten told Mr Morris, after just over half a day of hearing his submissions, that “it seems to me at the moment you’re trying to re-run the case you ran before Mr Blanch”.
What Mr Blanch should have done, Mr Morris told the court, was consider the diaries “against the backdrop of a possibility of four natural deaths” and whether what Folbigg wrote in them was necessarily incriminating – or if there were other reasonable explanations for the guilt she expressed.
Parents in situations of emotional distress may “blame themselves irrationally for their actions and their omissions”, he said.
“Documents are written for all sorts of different purposes. Heaven help poets, songwriters and novelists if plain English meaning is to be attributed to the words that are used.”
He said the diary was “replete” with “references to a deity who metes out punishments ... and that is connected to the deity taking her children away from her”.
Folbigg contends that in the diary where she refers to doing “terrible things” out of stress, she is not talking about the murders, but other things for which she would be punished.
“That explanation was treated with some, some might say scepticism, some may say scorn … the fact is she held those beliefs, and they are not only contained within her diary but her record of interview and her evidence,” Mr Morris said.
The four-day hearing will resume on Tuesday.
The entire story can be read at:
