SUB-HEADING: "Why Lindy Chamberlain feels forced to speak out after Kathleen Folbigg’s pardon."
GIST: "Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton has called for an overhaul of the way scientific evidence is assessed in criminal trials after Kathleen Folbigg was pardoned and freed from prison 20 years into her sentence over the deaths of her four young children.
In a rare intervention in public debate, Chamberlain-Creighton said her wrongful conviction over the 1980 death of her nine-week-old daughter Azaria, who disappeared during a camping trip at Uluru, had “started highlighting” problems in the way scientific evidence was used in court.
“Kathleen’s case has once again really slapped this in the public’s face,” Chamberlain-Creighton told The Australian Women’s Weekly in an interview published on Thursday.
“For years, I’ve had something on my mind that needs fixing, needs comment,” she said. “Kathleen Folbigg’s case has made me think that perhaps the public is now ready to listen to what I have to say.”
Folbigg, 56, served 20 years of a minimum 25-year prison sentence after being convicted in 2003 of the murder of three of her children, Patrick, Sarah and Laura, and the manslaughter of her first child, Caleb.
She was granted an unconditional pardon in June after a landmark inquiry concluded there was reasonable doubt about her guilt, based on scientific evidence pointing to potential natural causes of death.
The jury in Chamberlain-Creighton’s trial heard evidence from a forensic scientist suggesting arterial blood was found in the Chamberlains’ car. A royal commission concluded in 1987 that the substance was sound-deadening material commonly found in cars.
“In the testing, the difference between copper and blood is a matter of seconds,” Chamberlain-Creighton said.
Chamberlain-Creighton was jailed for murder in 1982 but released in 1986 after Azaria’s jacket – a key piece of evidence – was found at Uluru.
The royal commission subsequently concluded that a judge hearing the same evidence as it heard would have been obliged to direct the jury to acquit Lindy and her then-husband Michael, who had been convicted as an accessory but not imprisoned. Michael Chamberlain died in 2017.
The Chamberlains were pardoned in 1987 and their convictions quashed in 1988. They received $1.3 million in compensation in 1992.
A fourth inquest in 2012 reached the same finding as the first: Azaria had died “as the result of being attacked and taken by a dingo”.
Chamberlain-Creighton, who remarried in 1992, said an independent panel of experts could help assess scientific evidence used in criminal trials.
“So, if it’s blood evidence, you have blood specialists looking at it. They look at it and say, ‘That’s inaccurate, that’s irrelevant, this is the only bit you can rely on.’ So that is the only piece of evidence sent to the jury.
“It needs to be a rolling panel of experts who are not always on duty. No one knows who is on which case, so they can’t be bribed.”
“In order to get something like this going, the public needs to get behind a groundswell to give it momentum. It was me way back then, but there have been many since. This can happen to anyone.”
The Folbigg inquiry heard expert evidence that a genetic variant Kathleen shared with her daughters might cause cardiac arrhythmias – irregular heart rhythms – and sudden unexpected death.
It also heard Patrick might have died as a result of an underlying neurogenetic disorder such as epilepsy.
The genetic variant was discovered after Folbigg’s trial. An earlier inquiry in 2019 heard evidence about the mutation but did not consider it persuasive.
The second inquiry also heard psychological and psychiatric evidence about the interpretation of Folbigg’s diaries – a key plank of the prosecution’s circumstantial case.
This evidence had never been heard before. No expert concluded the diaries contained clear admissions of criminal guilt.
Chamberlain-Creighton said she still received letters from people touched by her story, including a recent letter from a woman who apologised for not believing her during her trial.
“It takes a lot of guts to do that,” she said. “I think letters like this are absolutely beautiful.”\""
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-1234880143/
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