Kathleen Folbigg: Australia: Her release would make the Chamberlain case ‘pale into insignificance,’ Legal Affairs Reporter Michaela Whitbourne reports in the Sydney Morning Herald..."Anna-Maria Arabia, chief executive of the academy, said the Folbigg case pointed to a need “to reconsider how science is considered in the legal system, and how we deal particularly with advances in science that are rapid”. Some fellows of the academy have already backed calls for Folbigg’s immediate release from prison, including Professor Carola Garcia de Vinuesa, an immunologist and geneticist who gave evidence about a novel genetic variant Folbigg shared with her two daughters. It was not found in her sons. The inquiry heard the variant, discovered after Folbigg’s 2003 trial, may cause cardiac arrhythmias – irregular heart rhythms – and sudden unexpected death. If Bathurst finds reasonable doubt about Folbigg’s convictions, “it will make the Lindy Chamberlain case pale into insignificance”, Arabia said. Chamberlain was convicted in October 1982 of murdering her infant daughter Azaria and spent three years in prison. She was pardoned in 1987 after a royal commission examined new evidence. “I don’t think Folbigg has yet captured the public imagination in the same way, but if she’s released this year it’s 20 years [since her conviction],” Arabia said."

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: " The jury in Lindy Chamberlain’s trial over the 1980 death of her nine-week-old daughter Azaria, who disappeared d...