JUDGE AND JURY APPENDICES

Appendix A.

You can see the following paragraph in www.sallyclark.org.uk/Appeal.

The consensus is that the jury were influenced by that prejudicial statistic. But the Appeal Court, whilst accepting that the statistic was wrong, thought it would not have influenced the jury unduly; and that there was other evidence. This ruling has been described by a leading QC (not connected with the case) as a "breathtakingly intellectually dishonest judgment".

Appendix B1.

BBC News, "Baby death trials to be reviewed" Monday, 19 January, 2004

Baby death trials to be reviewed

All criminal cases involving cot death over the past 10 years are to be reviewed urgently, the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has announced.

A total of 258 parents convicted of killing a child under two years old will have their cases studied.

If they relied on expert evidence they will be fast-tracked to an appeal.

The move comes after the Court of Appeal called for an end to prosecuting parents when there is a possibility of cot death.

Lord Justice Judge, giving the court's reasons on Monday for its decision last month to clear Angela Cannings of murdering her two sons, said medical science was "still at the frontiers of knowledge" about unexplained infant deaths. Mrs Cannings, 40, was convicted by a Winchester Crown Court jury in April 2002 of smothering seven-week-old Jason in 1991 and 18-week-old Matthew in 1999.

Lord Goldsmith said of the 258 convictions, 54 defendants were still in prison.

"These will be accorded the highest priority."

Lord Goldsmith said he would meet the chairman of the Criminal Cases Review Commission soon to discuss the review.

The commission said: "Such cases are likely to involve a number of causes of death and a variable level of expert involvement and it will be important to identify those where expert witnesses were crucial to securing the conviction," the commission said.

The Crown Prosecution Service had also been asked by Lord Goldsmith to review 15 ongoing cases involving an unexplained infant death.

After the judge's ruling, Mrs Cannings said: "We are just glad it's all over and we can be reunited as a family." She also advised other families similarly accused: "Hang in there - wait and hope and it will come right one day."

The Cannings' case followed a decision earlier last year to overturn solicitor Sally Clarke's conviction of murdering her two young sons, and the acquittal of pharmacist Trupti Patel on charges of murdering her three babies.

Ms Clarke's father Frank Lockyer said the Court of Appeal's comments were a "huge step forward".

Speaking on behalf of his daughter, he said: "For a long time, now we've been saying the criminal court is not the place to find out how a baby has died."

The judges said Mrs Cannings' case had broad implications for other cases involving parents accused of harming their children.

Lord Justice Judge, sitting with Mrs Justice Rafferty and Mr Justice Pitchers, said: "If the outcome of the trial depends exclusively, or almost exclusively, on a serious disagreement between distinguished and reputable experts, it will often be unwise, and therefore unsafe, to proceed."

He said that "justice may not be done in a small number of cases" where the mother has deliberately killed her baby without leaving any evidence.

He added: "Unless we are sure of guilt, the dreadful possibility always remains that a mother, already brutally scarred by the unexplained deaths of her babies, may find herself in prison for life for killing them when she should not be there at all."

Mrs Cannings always claimed Jason and Matthew - and their sister, Gemma, who died at the age of 13 weeks in 1989 - had been the victims of sudden infant death syndrome, or cot death.

The judges said they had been presented with "significant and persuasive fresh evidence" which had not been brought at the original trial, and which offered a possible explanation for the boys' deaths.

Appendix B2.

Article from telegraph.co.uk

'Better that killers go free than innocent go to jail' by Sandra Laville (Filed: 20/01/2004)

Lord Justice Judge acknowledged yesterday that a small number of mothers who kill might escape justice as a result of his widespread ruling. But that undesirable result was preferable to the greater wrong of sending an innocent woman to jail.

"Unless we are sure of guilt the dreadful possibility always remains that a mother, already brutally scarred by the unexplained death or deaths of her babies, may find herself in prison for life for killing them when she should not be there at all," he said.

"In our community, and in any civilised community, that is abhorrent."

Sitting in the public gallery of the Court of Appeal was one mother who had been treated as he described. Angela Cannings, 40, was in court with her husband Terry to hear Lord Justice Judge rule that the fundamental basis of the Crown's case against her - the rarity of three baby deaths in one family - had been "demonstrably undermined" on the basis of "significant and persuasive fresh evidence".

But in his ruling Lord Justice Judge went further than just examining the details of Mrs Cannings's case. Before her there had been Sally Clark, the solicitor wrongly accused of murdering her babies, and Trupti Patel, the pharmacist acquitted of killing her three children, and as a result he added further observations to his judgment.

For each woman, evidence from Prof Sir Roy Meadow, the consultant paediatrician, was a common theme of the prosecution case. Lord Justice Judge said that the first problem with the Cannings conviction was whether any crime had taken place at all.

"Mrs Cannings's defence was simple: she had done nothing to harm any of her children," he said.

She could not explain how her babies had died but that was in the context of medical opinion that acknowledged that infant deaths could be natural and unexplained, even by doctors.

There was, he said, no sign of physical injury in any of the babies, no single piece of evidence conclusive of guilt. Instead there were experts who raised concerns but they stood against other reputable specialists who indicated possible natural causes for the deaths.

The second problem - which existed in all three cases - was that there was much more to be learned about sudden infant deaths and we were "still at the frontiers of knowledge".

"If we have derived an overwhelming and abiding impression . . . it is that a great deal about death in infancy and its causes remains as yet unknown and undiscovered . . . What may be unexplained today may be perfectly well understood tomorrow."

Fresh evidence had already come to light since Mrs Cannings's conviction in April 2002 in the form of two reports: the findings of the "Europe Concerted Action on Sids" (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) and analysis from the "Care of the Next Infant Programme".

There was also a concern that Britain did not apply what was already known about sudden infant deaths properly and that in another country the deaths of Mrs Cannings's children would have been investigated in a "much more precise and extensive" way.

Lord Justice Judge said there were critical questions that arose when multiple, unexplained baby deaths occurred in the same family - as in the case of Mrs Clark, Mrs Patel and Mrs Cannings.

He warned of the dangers of the "over-dogmatic" approach of experts such as Prof Meadow. Describing Sir Roy as "an expert witness of great distinction, if not pre-eminence in this field", he said however that the Court of Appeal's criticism of him in the Clark case "served to undermine his high reputation and authority as a witness".

Not only did that demonstrate that "even the most distinguished expert can be wrong", it also provided a salutary warning against the possible dangers of an over-dogmatic expert approach.

In the Cannings trial, Sir Roy said three baby deaths in one family was "a rare event, very rare". He said that although there was a possibility of a condition not yet understood by doctors being the cause, as a doctor of children his diagnosis was smothering.

In addition to the dangers of such an "extensively dogmatic approach", Lord Justice Judge said there was also now a substantial body of research to refute his theories.

"What is abundantly clear is that in our present state of knowledge it does not necessarily follow that three sudden, unexplained infant deaths in the same family leads to the inexorable conclusion that they must have resulted from the deliberate infliction of harm.

"There is acceptable evidence that even three infant deaths in the same family may be natural and may indeed all properly be described as Sids." In some cases the third death helped to establish that previous deaths were indeed natural, he said.

Further "important fresh evidence" existed specifically on Mrs Cannings. A half-sister had come forward to say that two of her babies suffered an apparently life-threatening event - similar to those suffered by Mrs Cannings's babies and something not known at the trial.

That evidence meant the court was unable to reject the possibility that there was a genetic cause for the deaths of the Cannings babies.

For more information about the case, search for "Angela Cannings" on the web.

Appendix C1.

Crusading cot death lawyer takes up case of "salt killer" parents

Stuart Wavell (The Sunday Times March 20, 2005)

THE case of a couple jailed for killing their three-year-old adoptive son has been taken up by the retired solicitor whose tenacity helped expose one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice of recent years.

John Batt, who wrote a book about the battle of Sally Clark, a solicitor, to overturn a conviction for murdering her two sons, is convinced of the innocence of Ian and Angela Gay, jailed for five years in January for manslaughter.

The Gays, from Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, were characterised by the prosecution as a selfish, well-to-do couple who force-fed Christian Blewitt salt because the difficult toddler failed to meet their expectations of a "perfect" child. Batt said yesterday: "There are all sorts of pointers suggesting something terribly wrong with this verdict."

He argues that the sudden downgrading of the Gays' murder charge to manslaughter and disagreements among expert witnesses are among the causes for doubt.

The Clark case changed the climate of public and judicial opinion on parents accused of killing infants after attention focused on the unreliable evidence of Professor Sir Roy Meadow. He suggested the chances of two children of the same family dying of cot death were "73m to one". Other research has shown the odds could be as short as 64 to one.

The quashing of Clark's conviction was followed by the acquittal of Trupti Patel, a pharmacist, for killing her two babies and the successful appeal of Angela Cannings, a shop assistant, against her life sentence for smothering two of her babies.

A landmark ruling in the Cannings case given by Lord Justice Judge was supposed to signal a legal overhaul of such trials. In future, no parent was to be prosecuted if the outcome hinged on disagreement between experts.

Yet, according to Batt, that was what occurred in the Gays' trial. "I want to know why the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) launched this prosecution, given the Cannings criteria and the fact that 12 experts couldn't agree on anything," he said.

Batt is also concerned that Mr Justice Pitchers, the judge in the Gay case, sat alongside Judge when he issued the new guidelines.

Another unusual aspect of the case was that murder charges against the Gays, based on a post-mortem finding that their adoptive son had died from "blunt force trauma", were dropped in mid-trial when it became apparent that bruising had probably occurred in hospital.

Dr Peter Acland, a Home Office pathologist for the Gays' defence, has said their imprisonment was a miscarriage of justice.

Appendix C2.

Mirror.co.uk 29 November 2005

SALT POISON CASE EXCLUSIVE

By John Sweeney Winner Of The Paul Foot Award For Campaigning Journalism

THE other day I tried to poison myself with four and a half teaspoons of salt.

That, apparently, is what Ian and Angela Gay did to three-year-old Christian Blewitt, the little boy they had taken into their home and planned to adopt.

He'd been behaving badly, so they force-fed him the salt to teach him a lesson. He went into a coma and, four days later, he died.

That at least, is what the prosecution says ...

The Gays were arrested, tried and convicted of poisoning him with salt. Lock them up and throw away the key, you might say - unless, of course, they didn't do it.

Let's presume for a moment that Ian and Angela are what their friends and family say they are - a loving and lovely couple, gifted, rich, and kind - and the only thing they lacked in life was children.

Angela's womb was removed when she was 16 because of fears of cancer.

So let's test the science that underlies the deduction - because no one saw it happen - that blond-haired Christian must have been poisoned with salt by mouth.

That's why I poured four and a half teaspoons of salt into a pint of water, took a hefty swig - and threw up.

Because I was reporting the story for both BBC radio and TV, I had to do it again for the camera.

I drank five times and I vomited five times, a wholly involuntary reflex. You just can't poison yourself with salt.

Now I challenge the Attorney General, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, the police officers, the lawyers and the experts who had a hand in the conviction of Ian and Angela Gay to knock back a pint of water with four and half teaspoons of salt in it.

If they can't, then they might consider they could have helped commit a terrible wrong.

The impossibility of force-feeding salt down anyone's throat without them throwing up is just the first of a series of grave questions which cast doubt on whether Ian and Angela poisoned Christian.

To begin with, the desperately ill boy was raced to hospital in Ian's sports car.

There, doctors realised that he had a terrifyingly high level of salt in his blood - but throughout the four days until his death, they couldn't get the salt level down.

Quite simply, the moment Christian got to hospital his salt level should have gone down because the source - his "evil" adopting parents - could no longer poison him.

So if it didn't go down, then the cause of the salt overload had to be something else.

As it happens, poor little Christian was not a well boy. The post mortem showed that he had actually suffered a heart attack some time before he met the Gays.

Why would a healthy boy have a heart attack unless he was suffering from something else?

Had Christian died from arsenic or cobra venom, I'd shut up. But in fact he died because he had too much of a substance that occurs perfectly naturally in the body.

The number one cause of too much salt in the body is salt diabetes or diabetes insipidus. Like classic sugar diabetes, if undetected, salt diabetes can kill.

But one of the experts in the case proclaimed, at a pre-trial meeting: "He clearly doesn't have diabetes insipidus."

So the jury heard nothing about salt diabetes.

Judge Pictures summed up: "Very sophisticated testing was done to rule out all known existing disorders which might have caused that high level of salt."

That's that, then. Or is it?

The Gays were convicted on the basis of complex calculations - and those sums were based on the "seminal paper" on salt poisoning, which plays up child abuse in the context of Munchausen's Syndrome By Proxy.

That's no surprise because it was written by Professor Sir Roy Meadow, the rogue child abuse expert who wrongly accused cot death mothers Sally Clark, Angela Cannings and Donna Anthony of killing their babies.

Sir Roy has been struck off - though he is appealing that decision - but he is still an authority on salt poisoning. Or is he?

Prof Ashley Grossman, a neuro-endocrinologist at St. Barts, fears that at least some of the 12 cases of salt poisoning in Meadow's paper could be, in fact, salt diabetes.

Prof Jean Golding, an epidemiologist at Bristol University, says Meadow's paper lacks control groups, and is "unscientific and unreliable".

What doomed Ian and Angela Gay was the exclusion of salt diabetes - the number one natural cause of too much salt in the body - from their defence. It can be caused by things going wrong in two different parts of the body - the kidney and the brain, especially the pituitary gland.

The experts tested the kidney and the adrenal functions and they were normal.

And the pituitary gland? No tests were done because it has gone missing.

So have the medical records for a large part of Christian's short life - but we've seen medical notes diagnosing Christian as suffering from hydrocephalus - water on the brain.

Prof Grossman knows of five papers where the condition has triggered salt diabetes.

So how did Christian die?

Consider this. When your central heating is too hot, you don't immediately assume the boiler's shot. You check the thermostat.

The human version is the osmostat - a collection of brain cells that regulate the amount of salt in your body. If that goes haywire, then you can have way too much salt inside you - naturally.

Unlike salt poisoning, salt diabetes in conjunction with osmostat problems fits the evidence.

Grossman and Professor Pankaj Vadgama, a chemical pathologist, consider this natural cause the prime suspect.

A couple who have never done anyone any harm in their lives, have been found guilty of child-killing by means of an impossible act, made theoretically possible by a dodgy expert who has been struck off, while the number one natural cause of too much salt was ruled out on the basis of incomplete tests, missing evidence and bad science.

That's British justice in 2005 for you.

The Gays, both aged 37 and from Halesowen, West Midlands, were jailed for five years in January after being convicted of manslaughter. They have always protested their innocence and are appealing against their conviction.

JOHN Sweeney reported on the Gay case on Radio Four's File On Four at 8pm and BBC2 Newsnight at 10.30pm (29 November 2005)

Appendix C3.


DAILY MAIL (London) April 13, 2006 Thursday

"OUR JAIL HELL, BY COUPLE WHOSE CONVICTION FOR KILLING BOY WITH SALT IS QUASHED" BY CHARLOTTE GILL).

A COUPLE whose conviction for killing their foster son with salt was quashed spoke of their prison ordeal last night. Freed after 15 months, Angela and Ian Gay said they had suffered threats and torment. Inmates called Mrs Gay a 'baby killer' and 'nonce' while she grieved for her dead three year old. She wrote despairing letters to her family about the 'unbearable injustice' of their five-year prison sentence. A jury found the wealthy couple guilty of manslaughter in January 2005. But the Gays insist they did not poison Christian Blewitt to punish his naughtiness. Instead, they say, he died from natural causes. Yesterday the Court of Appeal ruled their conviction unsafe and ordered a retrial.

Mrs Gay said of her time in prison: 'They call you nonce and baby killer - lots of nasty things and then proceed to say in great detail what they are going to do to you if they get their hands on you. I had threats of being beaten up, having water thrown at me and I had salt put into my clothes.'

She said she was devastated to have lost Christian. 'I was taken to hospital because the shock of what happened was just too much for me to cope with,' she said. 'The grieving process when you lose a child, you can't describe unless you go through it yourself. It's just the most intense pain.'

After Christian's death, his brother and sister, who also lived with the Gays, were placed with another family. "They are constantly in my thoughts," said Mrs Gay, a £200,000-a-year insurance actuary. 'They were our future and we lost them and it was devastating."

The childless 40-year-old said it was too early to say whether she and her husband would try to adopt again. Mr Gay said: "We hope one day we will regain our trust in the human race but right now we are trying to get our feet back on the ground and our lives in order. Sometimes being locked in a room is just the smallest part of the problem. Being away from your family and friends, especially being away from my wife, has been very hard for me. You lose your whole life when you go to prison."

If the couple are cleared, the case will be one of the worst miscarriages of justice since the wrongful imprisonment for infanticide of Angela Cannings and Sally Clark. The Gays were jailed after a seven-week trial which heard hours of complicated argument involving a dozen medical experts.

After being jailed, Mrs Gay wrote to her brother Carl Swain: "There are still times when I can hardly believe what has happened to me and Ian. I am adjusting to this situation and becoming more settled as time goes by but it is still very difficult to accept that me and Ian have been found guilty. The injustice is unbearable. Being kept apart from you and the rest of the family is breaking my heart. It hurts so bad it feels like a physical pain. I just want to come home, I shouldn't be in prison - I don't belong here. Me and Ian are good people and totally innocent. Why is this happening to us?"

She described how she was kept from other inmates for her own safety. Since the trial, doubts have emerged about the prosecution evidence, some of which was based on research by Professor Sir Roy Meadow. He is the discredited paediatrician who helped to jail Mrs Cannings and Mrs Clark. In 1993, he published a paper declaring that 'deliberate salt poisoning' of children was widespread. His findings were mentioned five times in the judge's summing-up.

When Christian died, doctors found he had sodium levels equivalent to eating four teaspoons of salt - the same amount found in a gallon of sea water. Experts for the prosecution said that he must have eaten it. Dr Peter Acland, the Home Office pathologist who carried out Christian's post-mortem examination, later said "significant doubt" surrounded the medical evidence.

Now fresh medical evidence shows that Christian may have died from a rare kind of 'salt diabetes' which meant his body was unable to regulate sodium levels. Appeal judges ruled the evidence should be heard by a new jury. For Mr and Mrs Gay it is the ray of hope they had prayed for.

The couple, who were kept in separate prisons, were reunited for the first time yesterday. They kissed and embraced as they emerged from the cells onto the steps of the High Court in London. "After 15 months in prison we are finally free," an emotional Mrs Gay said, with her husband by her side. 'The convictions against us have been quashed. However, we must now face the fresh agony of a retrial. It is now known for certain what we believed all along - that Christian died of natural causes. We thank our legal team. We thank all our family and friends for their love and support. We'd also like to thank the media for their support over the last 12 months".

"We're now just looking forward to going home. Yet again we protest our innocence and hope that one day soon true justice will finally be done." Relatives let out gasps of delight in court as Lord Justice Richards announced the decision to quash the Gays' convictions. But there was bitter disappointment that the court ordered a retrial rather than acquitting them. Mrs Gay's father Roy Swain said afterwards: "I can't see any point at all with it. I don't think it's in the public interest."

Christian, his brother Nathan, two, and nine-month-old baby sister Chloe were placed with the Gays at their £500,000 home in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, in October 2002. The couple planned to adopt the children. It has since emerged that social services failed to disclose that Christian, who was born six weeks older to a drug addict teenage mother, had a complex and lengthy medical history. The Gays made concerned calls to social workers about their son in the weeks before his death, saying that he would go zombie-like.

They were told not to worry. On December 8, 2002, the little boy misbehaved at lunch and Mr Gay, a 39-year-old chemical engineer, claims he put him in his sister's cot upstairs because he was acting like a baby. They say that Christian was lifeless when they went upstairs to check on him later. Mr Gay rushed the boy to hospital in his Lotus sports car but he died four days later without regaining consciousness.

The couple were arrested and later charged with murder. A jury at Worcester Crown Court cleared them of murder, deciding that injuries to Christian's head had occurred while he was being treated in hospital. But they found the Gays guilty of manslaughter. The couple hope a new jury will clear them after hearing the evidence of retired pathologist Dr Glyn Walters. He believes Christian suffered from a condition where a mechanism in his brain called an osmostat failed to control sodium levels. Sufferers are said to be able to function normally with high sodium levels until the point of overload. The trial is expected to begin later this year.
c.gill@dailymail.co.uk

For more information about the case, make a combination search for 'Angela Gay' & 'salt' on the web.

Appendix D.

Beyond Reasonable Doubt.

The following is a preview by the ABC of the final part (Part 3) of their program entitled 'Beyond Reasonable Doubt' in a series entitled 'Australian Story' broadcast on 31/7/2006. The outcome of the second trial was the two defendants were found not guilty of wilful murder but guilty of murder.

Australian Story concludes the saga that began one February night in 1998, when a young man died and police decided he was murdered - thrown from a freeway bridge.

That night a group of teenage youths, two armed with tyre levers, chased two men over the same footbridge after something was thrown at their car. The men being pursued, escaped in a taxi and as the teenagers returned to their car angry and frustrated, they make an unprovoked attack on a drunk and defenceless Phillip Walsham. Two of them kick him and then drive away leaving him where they found him, bleeding from a head wound.

Less than 15 minutes later, Phillip Walsham is found fatally injured on the road under the footbridge. An eyewitness later reports that she saw him fall from the bridge.

The two youths who kicked him are convicted of assault, but the group is initially cleared of any involvement in the fall. Five years later, the coroner finds otherwise. It is a circumstantial case, but a crucial link is a small C-shaped injury on Mr Walsham's shoulder, thought to have been inflicted by a tyre lever.

As Mr Walsham had not been assaulted with a tyre lever at the time he was kicked, the coroner concludes these men must have returned to the scene and struck him with a tyre lever before pushing or throwing him from the footbridge.

 

Editors note: In Britain it is not even a jury decision of 12 people but a permutation of any 10 from the 12. The system is rigged to get a result and if two jurors do not agree they are ignored.