PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "There is just one final slice of hope left for the woman once dubbed “Australia’s most hated” and her growing army of supporters, which now includes dozens of eminent scientists. Last month, a 14-page petition containing the signatures of 90 medical and science leaders – among them, Australian Academy of Science president John Shine, AC, 2009 Nobel laureate Emeritus Professor Elizabeth Blackburn, AC, and former chief scientist for Australia, Emeritus Professor Ian Chubb, AC – was presented to the Governor of NSW calling for Folbigg’s immediate pardon and release from jail."
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QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Folbigg’s long-time friend and supporter, Tracy Chapman, said “today wasn’t our day” but that she and Folbigg were “content that we respectfully challenged the system” and the decision “only strengthens our resolve to keep going”. Ms Chapman said the medical evidence has grown since the inquiry, and “many more Australians are rightly asking why Kath’s still in prison after 18 years when there’s mounting scientific evidence relating to her innocence.”"
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QUOTE TWO OF THE DAY: "Mr Cordner, who wrote the 2013 report, said the significance of the gene mutation “was not understood at the time, even by the geneticists.” He said at the time of the inquiry “it was a more theoretical possibility”, but since then, “those mutations have been shown to be actually disease causing”."
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STORY: "'Today wasn't our day': Baby killer Folbigg looks to pardon after appeal," by Reporter Jenny Noyes, published by The Sydney Morning Herald on March 24, 2021;
GIST: Australia’s worst female serial killer, convicted child murderer Kathleen Folbigg, has spent the last 14 years fighting to clear her name through the courts, using every avenue open to her. On Wednesday, it took less than a minute for the NSW Court of Appeal to dash her hopes once more.
Folbigg, appearing briefly by video link, sat in stunned silence as her appeal was dismissed and she was ordered to pay the NSW Attorney-General’s costs. Her last hopes are now pinned on the same Attorney-General advising the NSW Governor to pardon her.
The appeal court on Wednesday found there was “no error of law” in the 2019 judicial inquiry by the Honourable Reginald Blanch AM, QC, which reinforced Folbigg’s guilt for the manslaughter of her first son, Caleb, and the subsequent murders of Patrick, Sarah and Laura.
The children were all aged between 19 days and 18 months when they each died suddenly in the family’s Newcastle home between February 1989 and March 1999, and post-mortems were unable to establish what caused them to stop breathing.
Folbigg was found guilty of the homicides in 2003 and sentenced on appeal to at least 25 years jail. She appealed her conviction without success in 2005, and was unsuccessful again in the Court of Criminal Appeal in 2007.
She maintains her innocence and claims damning diary entries in which she expresses guilt for her children’s deaths were not literal confessions.
The diary entries were key in her trial and ultimate guilty verdict – and they again sealed her fate at the 2019 inquiry, along with Folbigg’s own testimony, in which she said her writing was taken out of context and blamed what she wrote on her “depressed state”.
Mr Blanch found Folbigg, who had not given evidence at trial, had been “untruthful, unbelievable and made deliberate attempts to obscure the fact that she committed the offences of which she was convicted.”
That inquiry was conducted at a cost of $2.4 million, launching three years after Folbigg’s lawyers petitioned for a re-examination – in light of a report they commissioned from forensic medical investigator Professor Stephen Cordner that cast doubt on the medical evidence presented at the trial.
Mr Blanch, a former Supreme Court Justice and Chief Judge of the NSW District Court, was not persuaded that the report raised a reasonable doubt as to her guilt.
New evidence that arose after the inquiry’s conclusion – of a genetic mutation affecting Sarah and Laura that could have triggered Sudden Infant Death Syndrome – was addressed in an addendum, with Mr Blanch again finding it did not change the outcome.
In the Court of Appeal judgment delivered on Wednesday, Justices John Basten, Mark Leeming and Paul Brereton wrote that Mr Blanch’s 2019 conclusion was not at odds with the scientific evidence, which had “raised a theoretical possibility that there were innocent explanations for the deaths of the two girls.”
Despite the existence of the CALM2 genetic mutation in Ms Folbigg and the two girls, “their circumstances departed from the reported cases of deaths associated with CALM abnormalities,” they wrote.
“The girls’ deaths were thus ‘outliers’ when compared with those reported in the literature. Further, the boys’ genomes provided no common cause.”
When weighed alongside Ms Folbigg’s diary entries and “her evidence in seeking to present innocent explanations” for them, “there was an ample basis, consistent with the scientific evidence, for the judicial officer to conclude that there was no reasonable doubt as to Ms Folbigg’s guilt.”
Folbigg’s long-time friend and supporter, Tracy Chapman, said “today wasn’t our day” but that she and Folbigg were “content that we respectfully challenged the system” and the decision “only strengthens our resolve to keep going”.
Ms Chapman said the medical evidence has grown since the inquiry, and “many more Australians are rightly asking why Kath’s still in prison after 18 years when there’s mounting scientific evidence relating to her innocence.”
Mr Cordner, who wrote the 2013 report, said the significance of the gene mutation “was not understood at the time, even by the geneticists.”
He said at the time of the inquiry “it was a more theoretical possibility”, but since then, “those mutations have been shown to be actually disease causing”.
ANU immunologist Carola Vinuesa, who gave evidence at the inquiry, said it was “unfortunate” the NSW Court of Appeal had adopted “incorrect conclusions about the genetic evidence” from Mr Blanch.
There is just one final slice of hope left for the woman once dubbed “Australia’s most hated” and her growing army of supporters, which now includes dozens of eminent scientists.
Last month, a 14-page petition containing the signatures of 90 medical and science leaders – among them, Australian Academy of Science president John Shine, AC, 2009 Nobel laureate Emeritus Professor Elizabeth Blackburn, AC, and former chief scientist for Australia, Emeritus Professor Ian Chubb, AC – was presented to the Governor of NSW calling for Folbigg’s immediate pardon and release from jail.
A spokesperson from Government House in Sydney said the matter had been referred to NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman and the Governor would await his advice.
Mr Speakman declined to comment on the outcome of the appeal on Wednesday, saying it would be inappropriate as the petition “remains under consideration.”
Folbigg will be eligible for parole in 2028."
The entire story can be read at:
