Sally Clark (August 1964 – 15 March 2007) was an English

solicitor A solicitor is a legal practitioner who traditionally deals with most of the legal matters in some jurisdictions. A person must have legally-defined qualifications, which vary from one jurisdiction to another, to be described as a solicitor and ...

who, in November 1999, became the victim of a miscarriage of justice when she was found guilty of the murder of her two infant sons. Clark's first son died in December 1996 within a few weeks of his birth, and her second son died in similar circumstances in January 1998. A month later, Clark was arrested and tried for both deaths. The defence argued that the children had died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The prosecution case relied on flawed statistical evidence presented by paediatrician Roy Meadow, who testified that the chance of two children from an affluent family suffering SIDS was 1 in 73 million. He had arrived at this figure by squaring his estimate of a chance of 1 in 8500 of an individual SIDS death in similar circumstances. The Royal Statistical Society later issued a statement arguing that there was no statistical basis for Meadow's claim, and expressed concern at the "misuse of statistics in the courts".Royal Statistical Society (23 October 2001). " ". Retrieved on 5 February 2012. Clark was convicted in November 1999. The convictions were upheld on appeal in October 2000, but overturned in a second appeal in January 2003, after it emerged that Alan Williams, the prosecution

forensic pathologist Forensic pathology is pathology that focuses on determining the cause of death by examining a corpse. A post mortem examination is performed by a medical examiner or forensic pathologist, usually during the investigation of criminal law cases an ...

who examined both babies, had failed to disclose microbiological reports that suggested her younger son had died of natural causes. Clark was released from prison having served more than three years of her sentence. Journalist Geoffrey Wansell called Clark's experience "one of the great miscarriages of justice in modern British legal history".Wansell, Geoffrey
"Whatever the coroner may say, Sally Clark died of a broken heart"
''The Independent'', 18 March 2007. As a result of her case, the

Attorney General In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general. In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...

Lord Goldsmith ordered a review of hundreds of other cases, and two other women had their convictions overturned. Clark's experience caused her to develop severe psychiatric problems and she died in her home in March 2007 from alcohol poisoning.

Early life

Sally Clark was born Sally Lockyer in Devizes, Wiltshire, and was an only child. Her father was a senior police officer with Wiltshire Constabulary and her mother was a hairdresser. She was educated at

South Wilts Grammar School for Girls South Wilts Grammar School, formerly South Wilts Grammar School for Girls, is a grammar school in Salisbury, south Wiltshire, England, for pupils aged 11 to 18. Established in 1927, the school converted to an academy in 2011. In 2020, the name ...

in Salisbury. She studied geography at Southampton University, and worked as a management trainee with Lloyds Bank and then at

Citibank Citibank, N. A. (N. A. stands for " National Association") is the primary U.S. banking subsidiary of financial services multinational Citigroup. Citibank was founded in 1812 as the City Bank of New York, and later became First National City ...

. She married

Steve Clark in 1990, and left her job in the City of London to train in the same profession. She studied at City University, London, and trained at Macfarlanes, a city law firm. She moved with her husband to join the law firm Addleshaw Booth & Co in Manchester in 1994. They bought a house in Wilmslow in

Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county t ...

Conviction for murder

Clark's first son, Christopher, was born on 22 September 1996. Court documents describe him as a healthy baby. On 13 December Clark called an ambulance to the family home. The baby had fallen unconscious after being put to bed, and was declared dead after being transported to the hospital.First appeal
''R. v Clark'',

000 Triple zero, Triple Zero, Zero Zero Zero, Triple 0, Triple-0, 000, or 0-0-0 may refer to: * 000 (emergency telephone number), the Australian emergency telephone number * "Triple Zero", a song by AFI (band), AFI from ''Shut Your Mouth and Open Your ...

EWCA Crim 54, 2 October 2000, from BAILII. Clark had post-natal depression and received counselling at the

Priory Clinic The Priory Hospital, Roehampton, often referred to as The Priory, is a private mental health hospital in South West London. It was founded in 1872 and is now part of the Priory Group, which was acquired in 2011 by an American private equity firm, ...

, but was in recovery by the time her second son, Harry, was born three weeks premature on 29 November 1997. However, he was also found dead on 26 January 1998, aged 8 weeks. On both occasions, Clark was at home alone with her baby and there was evidence of trauma, which could have been related to attempts to resuscitate them. Clark and her husband were arrested on 23 February 1998 on suspicion of murdering their children. On the advice of her lawyers she twice refused to answer questions. She was later charged with two counts of murder while the case against her husband was dropped.Obituary
'' The Times'', 19 March 2007. Clark always denied the charge, and was supported throughout by her husband. During the court proceedings she gave birth to a third son. Clark was tried at Chester

Crown Court The Crown Court is the court of first instance of England and Wales responsible for hearing all Indictable offence, indictable offences, some Hybrid offence, either way offences and appeals lied to it by the Magistrates' court, magistrates' court ...

, before Mr Justice Harrison and a jury. The 17-day trial began on 11 October 1999. The prosecution, led by Robin Spencer QC, was controversial for its involvement of the paediatrician professor Sir Roy Meadow, former professor of paediatrics at the University of Leeds, who testified at Clark's trial that the chance of two children from an affluent family suffering

cot death Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is the sudden unexplained death of a child of less than one year of age. Diagnosis requires that the death remain unexplained even after a thorough autopsy and detailed death scene investigation. SIDS usual ...

was 1 in 73 million. He likened the probability to the chances of backing an 80–1 outsider in the Grand National four years running, and winning each time. Home Office pathologist Dr Alan Williams withheld the results of bacteriology tests on Clark's second baby which showed the presence of the bacterium ''

Staphylococcus aureus ''Staphylococcus aureus'' is a Gram-positive spherically shaped bacterium, a member of the Bacillota, and is a usual member of the microbiota of the body, frequently found in the upper respiratory tract and on the skin. It is often positive ...

'' in multiple sites including his cerebro-spinal fluid. During the trial the jury asked specifically if there were any 'blood' test results for this child. Williams returned to the witness box to deal with their query. He was specifically asked about an entry in the notes referring to 'C&S' results. These referred to samples taken for culture and sensitivity (bacteriology) tests. In his responses, he failed to reveal the existence of these withheld test results. Clark was convicted by a 10–2 majority verdict on 9 November 1999, and given the mandatory sentence of

life imprisonment Life imprisonment is any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted people are to remain in prison for the rest of their natural lives or indefinitely until pardoned, paroled, or otherwise commuted to a fixed term. Crimes for ...

. She was widely reviled in the press as the murderer of her children. Despite recognition of the flaws in Meadow's statistical evidence, the convictions were upheld at appeal in October 2000. She was imprisoned at Styal women's prison, near her home in Wilmslow, and then Bullwood Hall women's prison in Hockley in Essex. The nature of her conviction as a child-killer, and her background as a solicitor and daughter of a police officer, made her a target for other prisoners. Her husband left his partnership at a Manchester law firm to work as a legal assistant nearer the prison, selling the family house to meet the legal bills from the trial and first appeal.

Successful second appeal

Later, it came to light that microbiological tests showed that Harry had a colonisation of ''

'' bacteria, indicating that he had died from

natural causes In many legal jurisdictions, the manner of death is a determination, typically made by the coroner, medical examiner, police, or similar officials, and recorded as a vital statistic. Within the United States and the United Kingdom, a distinct ...

, but the evidence had not been disclosed to the defence. This

exculpatory evidence Exculpatory evidence is evidence favorable to the defendant in a criminal trial that exonerates or tends to exonerate the defendant of guilt. It is the opposite of inculpatory evidence, which tends to present guilt. In many countries, including ...

had been known to the prosecution's pathologist, Alan Williams, since February 1998, but was not shared with other medical witnesses, police or lawyers.Shaikh, Thair
"Sally Clark, mother wrongly convicted of killing her sons, found dead at home"
''The Guardian'', 17 March 2007. The evidence was unearthed by her husband from hospital records obtained by the divorce lawyer

Marilyn Stowe Marilyn Stowe (born 1957) is an English family lawyer. She founded her firm in a converted cobbler’s shop in Halton, Leeds, in 1982. An attack by three masked men outside her office on 3 December 2003 led to the closure of her offices in Leeds ...

, who provided her services free of charge because she felt that "something was not right about the case".O'Hara, Mary"
"Suspicious mind"
''Guardian'', 3 August 2005. It also became clearer that the statistical evidence presented at Clark's trial was seriously flawed. For her second appeal a report regarding the medical evidence was provided by Sam Gulino, a prosecution forensic pathologist for the State of Florida, US. He commented scathingly about the poor quality of the pathologists' work in these cases: Her case was referred back to the

Court of Appeal A court of appeals, also called a court of appeal, appellate court, appeal court, court of second instance or second instance court, is any court of law that is empowered to hear an appeal of a trial court or other lower tribunal. In much of t ...

by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, and her convictions were overturned in a second appeal in January 2003.Second appeal
''R. v Clark'',

003 003, O03, 0O3, OO3 may refer to: *003, fictional British 00 Agent *003, former emergency telephone number for the Norwegian ambulance service (until 1986) *1990 OO3, the asteroid 6131 Towen * OO3 gauge model railway *''O03 (O2)'' and other related ...

EWCA Crim 1020, 11 April 2003, from BAILII. She was released from prison having served more than three years of her sentence.

Statistical evidence

The first trial was widely criticised for the misrepresentation of statistical evidence, particularly by Meadow. He stated in evidence as an expert witness that "one sudden infant death in a family is a tragedy, two is suspicious and three is murder unless proven otherwise" (

Meadow's law Now discredited, Meadow's Law was a precept much in use until recently in the field of child protection, specifically by those investigating cases of multiple cot or crib death – SIDS – within a single family. History The "law" has it that be ...

). He claimed that, for an affluent non-smoking family like the Clarks, the probability of a single

was 1 in 8,543, so the probability of two in the same family was around "1 in 73 million" (8543 × 8543). Given that there are around 700,000 live births in Britain each year, Meadow argued that a double cot death would be expected to occur once every hundred years. In October 2001, the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) issued a public statement expressing its concern at the "misuse of statistics in the courts". It noted that there was "no statistical basis" for the "1 in 73 million" figure. In January 2002, the RSS wrote to the Lord Chancellor pointing out that "the calculation leading to 1 in 73 million is false".Royal Statistical Society (23 January 2002). . Retrieved on 26 December 2014. Meadow's calculation was based on the assumption that two SIDS deaths in the same family are independent. The RSS argued that "there are very strong reasons for supposing that the assumption is false. There may well be unknown genetic or environmental factors that predispose families to SIDS, so that a second case within the family becomes much more likely than would be a case in another, apparently similar, family." The prosecution did not provide any evidence to support its different assumption. In a 2004 article in ''

Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology ''Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed medical journal covering epidemiologic research related to paediatrics and perinatology. It was established in 1987 by Jean Golding, who remained editor-in-chief until 2012 an ...

'', Professor of Mathematics Ray Hill of Salford University concluded, using extensive SIDS statistics for England, that "after a first cot death the chances of a second become greatly increased" by a dependency factor of between 5 and 10.Ray Hill (2004). " ", ''Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology'', vol. 18, pp. 320–326. Retrieved on 2 January 2009. The ruling was also subject to a statistical error known as the " prosecutor's fallacy".Ben Goldacre (18 October 2006).
Prosecuting and defending by numbers
, '' The Guardian''. Retrieved on 2 January 2009. Many press reports of the trial reported that the "1 in 73 million" figure was the probability that Clark was innocent. However, even if the "1 in 73 million" figure were valid, this should not have been interpreted as the probability of Clark's innocence. In order to calculate the probability of Clark's innocence, the jury needed to weigh up the relative likelihood of the two competing explanations for the children's deaths. In other words, murder was not the only alternative explanation for the deaths in the way that one might have inferred from asserted probability of double SIDS. Although double SIDS is very rare, double infant murder is likely to be rarer still, so the probability of Clark's innocence was quite high. Hill calculated the odds ratio for double SIDS to double homicide at between 4.5:1 and 9:1, that is double SIDS is twice as likely as double murder. Hill raised a third objection to the "1 in 73 million" figure. Meadow arrived at the 1 in 8,500 figure by taking into account three key characteristics possessed by the Clark family, all of which make SIDS less likely. However, Hill said that Meadow "conveniently ignored factors such as both the Clark babies being boys – which make cot death more likely". Hill also argued: During the second appeal, the court noted that Meadow's calculations were subject to a number of qualifications, but "none of these qualifications were referred to by Professor Meadow in his evidence to the jury and thus it was the headline figures of 1 in 73 million that would be uppermost in the jury's minds". The appeal court concluded that "the evidence should never have been before the jury in the way that it was when they considered their verdicts". The judges continued, "we rather suspect that with the graphic reference by Professor Meadow to the chances of backing long odds winners of the Grand National year after year it may have had a major effect on he jury'sthinking notwithstanding the efforts of the trial judge to down play it".

Aftermath

Clark's release in January 2003 prompted the

Lord Goldsmith to order a review of hundreds of other cases. Two other women convicted of murdering their children,

Donna Anthony Donna Anthony is a British woman from Somerset who was jailed in 1998 after being convicted of the murder of her two babies. She was cleared and freed after having spent more than six years in prison. She was one of several women at the centre of ...

and

Angela Cannings Angela Cannings was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in the UK in 2002 for the murder of her seven-week-old son, Jason, who died in 1991, and of her 18-week-old son Matthew, who died in 1999. Her first child, Gemma, died ...

, had their convictions overturned and were released from prison.

Trupti Patel Trupti Patel is a qualified pharmacist from Maidenhead in Berkshire, England, who was acquitted in 2003 of murdering three of her children, Amar (5 September 1997 – 10 December 1997), Jamie (21 June 1999 – 6 July 1999), and Mia (14 May ...

, who was also accused of murdering her three children, was acquitted in June 2003. In each case, Roy Meadow had testified about the unlikelihood of multiple cot deaths in a single family. Meadow was

struck off The General Medical Council (GMC) is a public body that maintains the official register of medical practitioners within the United Kingdom. Its chief responsibility is to "protect, promote and maintain the health and safety of the public" by c ...

the medical register by the

General Medical Council The General Medical Council (GMC) is a public body that maintains the official register of medical practitioners within the United Kingdom. Its chief responsibility is to "protect, promote and maintain the health and safety of the public" by c ...

in 2005 for serious professional misconduct. It was during the GMC hearing that, when questioned directly, he made his first public apology for the effect of his 'misleading' evidence. He cited 'legal advice' and 'professional etiquette' as the reasons for the delay. Then current GMC professional conduct guidance did not support his 'professional etiquette' reason. He was reinstated in 2006 after he appealed and the court ruled (2 to 1) that his actions in court had amounted to misconduct though not serious enough to warrant him being struck off. The senior judge on the panel, Master of the Rolls Sir Anthony Clarke, dissented from the view of his two colleagues. In his opinion Meadow's actions had amounted to serious professional misconduct. In June 2005, Alan Williams, the Home Office pathologist who conducted the postmortem examinations on both the Clark babies, was banned from Home Office pathology work and coroners' cases for three years after the General Medical Council found him guilty of "serious professional misconduct" in the Clark case. At the same time he had chosen to withhold evidence of infection as a possible cause of the death of the second baby, he changed his original opinion regarding the first baby from death caused by lower respiratory infection to unnatural death by smothering. He failed to give any good reason for this change in opinion and his competence was called into question. His conduct was severely criticised by other experts giving evidence and opinion to the court and in the judicial summing up of the successful second appeal. He was given the opportunity to address the court to explain his decision to withhold the laboratory results. He declined to do so. The decision of the GMC was upheld by the High Court in November 2007. Earlier that year he had successfully appealed against the decision to ban him from performing Home Office postmortem examinations; the ban was replaced by an 18-month suspension which by then had passed.

Death

The nature of Sally Clark's wrongful conviction as a child-killer, and her background as a solicitor and daughter of a police officer, made her a target for other prisoners. According to her family, Clark was unable to recover from the effects of her conviction and imprisonment.Obituary
BBC News, 17 March 2007. After her release, her husband said she would "never be well again". A family spokesman stated "Sally was unable to come to terms with the false accusations, based on flawed medical evidence and the failures of the legal system, which debased everything she had been brought up to believe in and which she herself practised." It was stated in the later inquest that she was diagnosed with a number of severe psychiatric problems, "these problems included enduring personality change after catastrophic experience, protracted grief reaction and alcohol dependency syndrome." Clark was found dead in her home in

Hatfield Peverel Hatfield Peverel is a village and civil parish at the centre of Essex, England. It is located 6 miles (10 km) north-east from Chelmsford, the nearest large city, which it is connected by road and rail. The parish includes the hamlets of ...

in Essex on 16 March 2007. It was originally thought that she had died of natural causes,Lee Glendinnin
"Sally Clark's death 'probably natural causes'"
''The Guardian'', 20 March 2007. but an inquest ruled that she had died of

acute alcohol intoxication Alcohol intoxication, also known as alcohol poisoning, commonly described as drunkenness or inebriation, is the negative behavior and physical effects caused by a recent consumption of alcohol. In addition to the toxicity of ethanol, the main ps ...

, though the

coroner A coroner is a government or judicial official who is empowered to conduct or order an inquest into Manner of death, the manner or cause of death, and to investigate or confirm the identity of an unknown person who has been found dead within th ...

stressed that there was no evidence that she had intended to commit suicide.

References

Bibliography

* Leila Schneps and Coralie Colmez, '' Math on trial. How numbers get used and abused in the courtroom'', Basic Books, 2013. . (First chapter: "Math error number 1: multiplying non-independent probabilities. The case of Sally Clark: motherhood under attack"). *

John Batt John Michael Batt (born 22 September 1935) is a former Australian jurist who was a Appellate court, Court of Appeal Judge, justice at the Supreme Court of Victoria. He retired from the court in 2005, and prior to his judgeship had served as the ...

, ''Stolen Innocence: The Sally Clark Story — A Mother's Fight for Justice'' Elbury Press, 2004. . * Ian McEwan, '' The Children Act''.

External links

Sally Clark's website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Clark, Sally 1964 births 2007 deaths 2003 in British law Alcohol-related deaths in England Alumni of the University of Southampton English solicitors Forensic statistics History of mental health in the United Kingdom Overturned convictions in England People with mental disorders People from Devizes People educated at South Wilts Grammar School for Girls People from Wilmslow People from Hatfield Peverel People wrongfully convicted of murder 20th-century English lawyers British lawyers with disabilities English people with disabilities