Thursday, July 14, 2005

SIDS a/k/a Cot Death & the Doctrine of Chances in the UK: The Sally Clark Case

Michael McCarthy, "GMC [General Medical Council]: Meadow failed in his duty as expert witness,"The Independent Online Edition (14 July 2005):
One of Britain's most eminent paediatricians, Professor Sir Roy Meadow, gave "erroneous" and "misleading" evidence in the trial of a solicitor, Sally Clark, who was found guilty of murdering her two sons, but later cleared, the General Medical Council ruled.

Sir Roy, former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, failed in his duty as an expert witness to explain the limited relevance of his findings, a GMC fitness-to-practise panel said yesterday, when he told Mrs Clark's trial the chance of two babies dying of cot death within an affluent family was "one in 73 million".

...

Mrs Clark was arrested in 1998 over the deaths of her sons Christopher and Harry, and in November 1999, after Sir Roy had testified against her, she given two life sentences for their murder. But in January 2003, she had her convictions quashed on appeal, with the judges criticising Sir Roy's evidence.

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