Stolen Innocence - again?
Disturbing parallels between the cases of Lucy Letby and Sally Clark
There is much in the news at the moment about the case of a nurse, Lucy Letby, who has been convicted of killing a number of babies, and attempting to kill several more. Many experts, both medical and legal, feel that she was wrongly convicted. I do not know enough about the case to comment further, but I did know about the case of Sally Clark.
More than 25 years ago Sally Clark, a solicitor, was wrongly convicted of killing her two sons. I felt from the outset that the conviction was wrong. I published 3 articles in the Solicitors Journal over a 4 year period expressing my concern.
Here they all are, starting with a piece I wrote shortly after she was convicted:
The case of Sally Clark
When a solicitor finds himself or herself in trouble with the law most of us do not gloat. We know the pressures of our kind of work. We worry about someone whose life has been ruined, who was once one of us.
The feelings generated among the legal profession about the conviction of Sally Clark, a Manchester solicitor, for the murder of her two little boys Christopher and Harry, has raised questions across the whole profession. How could she do it? Why did she do it? Most importantly, did she do it?
She was convicted of the two murders by a majority verdict (10-2) in the Chester Crown Court on evidence which ought to have been viewed view with extreme caution.
The death of her first son was initially put down to natural causes: a cot death. It was only when her second son died that suspicions were raised. The prosecution initially alleged that she had shaken her second son Harry to death. However, shortly before the trial, a key prosecution pathology witness had to concede that on re-examination of the slides the evidence was not consistent with death by shaking, and that she must have smothered her son.
By the time the case had concluded, even two of the four prosecution witnesses were not able to assert categorically that the deaths were not due to natural causes.
The media made great play of Sally’s alcohol problem and depression (a matter entirely irrelevant as she had not taken a drink on the day either of her sons died), hers and her husband’s expensive house, and the fact that her husband is also a solicitor.
On the day of his death Mrs Clark took her second son Harry to have his DPT (whooping cough) vaccination at 4.30. She and her son were noted by the surgery to be fit and happy. About an hour after she returned home, a health visitor called unannounced to deliver a replacement apnoea monitor (a device often supplied to families who have suffered a cot death. It sets off an alarm if there is a break in a child’s breathing pattern). The first monitor had apparently been faulty, in that it gave frequent false alarms. Or did it? A medical consultant approached by the family after the conviction has suggested that the monitor might actually have been doing its job, and was giving an early warning of a problem with Harry.
This health visitor found no problems and mother and baby happy.
Harry was found to be dead after her husband had gone downstairs for a few minutes to make a night time drink. It was a few hours after his vaccination. The matter is controversial, but papers have been published which associate this vaccine with cot deaths.
What seems to have clinched the prosecution case was a statistic (given by a paediatrician, not even an epidemiologist) that the chances of a double cot death occurring in one family were only one in 73 million. Quite apart from the fact that the figure is quite obviously wrong (at least one family each year in this country suffers such a double tragedy - and one cot death is a predisposing factor for the second), it demonstrates how dangerous it is to rely on large numbers to back up what at best is highly tenuous evidence. The chances of winning the lottery are 14 million to one against. Does that mean that the chances are so remote that anyone who does win must have cheated?
Published in Solicitors Journal December 1999
That was published just a month after Sally was convicted. Sally was still in prison when I published my next article which also covers the case of Angela Cannings, another mother convicted of killing her children
Re-examine the possibilities
In December 1999 I wrote an editorial in the sj about solicitor Sally Clark who had been convicted of killing her two young sons, even though by the end of the trial not one of the five prosecution experts was able to state categorically that either death was not due to natural causes.
Sally Clark remains in prison despite the sustained efforts of a band of concerned lawyers and others. She has maintained from the outset that she did not harm either of her boys.
Last week saw history repeat itself. Angela Cannings was convicted of murdering her sons Jason and Matthew. Once again the evidence against her was very thin. The children bore no outward signs of injury, and medical experts were unable to find clear proof of suffocation.
What appears to have swayed the jury in both cases is that it appeared to be vanishingly unlikely that two children could have died from cot death in one family. It is also vanishingly unlikely that any one person will win the national lottery but people win every week.
But there is more. The Cannings children were found to have staphylococcus infection after their death, as were Sally’s boys. Although this bacterium exists on the skin and noses of healthy people, it can cause death. It is the same bacterium which causes toxic shock syndrome in menstruating women. In 5% of those cases the outcome is fatal. It is easy to imagine how much more vulnerable to the bacterium young children would be.
Little publicity has been given to the fact that children from both families died within a short time of receiving a whooping cough (Pertussis) vaccine. Sally’s son Harry had received his DPT (Diphtheria Pertussis Tetanus) vaccine just hours before he died. Two of Angela’s children died within 24 hours of receiving their vaccination. Curiously the prosecution did not proceed against her for the murder of one of those children (Gemma). Could the prosecution have made the decision on the basis that the coincidence of two deaths in one family immediately after vaccination might encourage a jury to the view that the children did not die at the hand of their mother?
Disturbing evidence has recently been published in the United States which claims to establish a causal relationship between these vaccines and infant death. In the USA they have changed over to using a less toxic form of the vaccine, so it is possible to make a “before and after” comparison with the 2 types of vaccine from the Vaccine Adverse Reaction Database. The authors assert that the old (whole cell) vaccine is associated with 3 ½ times as many deaths as the newer version and 76 times as many deaths when compared with Diphtheria-Tetanus vaccine alone.
In Sally Clark’s website she makes the point that lightning can strike twice.
Only Sally and Angela know for certain whether they harmed their children but in the minds of many who are familiar with the cases there remains the terrifying possibility that both women are innocent, and that the deaths were caused by a familial predisposition to illness which rendered them vulnerable to infections or vaccinations which other children would have taken in their stride – in effect a double lightning strike, which is not the same as murder.
Published in Solicitors Journal April 2002
Sally’s case trundled on and eventually, with the support of a number of dedicated lawyers, her conviction was overturned. Her whole story was then told in a book by John Batt “Stolen Innocence”
Here is my review of that book:
Stolen Innocence
I am angry, really angry, so angry in fact that I am giving my computer a hard time as I punch out these words.
The reason? I have just read "Stolen Innocence" by John Batt (a solicitor and sometime scriptwriter) published by Ebury Press (£14.99). It is the account of an extraordinary miscarriage of justice perpetrated on Sally Clark, the solicitor who tragically lost her two sons and was then convicted of their murders.
I am not angry with the book. It is well written and has the same unputdownable quality of a good novel. But a novel it is not. What happened to Sally makes you want to spit!
Batt, nearly at retirement, became involved when he offered to help the family by keeping a watching brief at Sally’s trial. He had known Sally all her life, and his daughter played with her as a child. He ended up working on her case every waking hour. He was not alone. Others (Mike Mackey the solicitor who represented Sally at her trial, Sue Stapely, a solicitor who now specialises in public relations and Sally's husband Steve) went so far beyond the call of duty that they left it a small dot in the distant horizon. They, with Sally, represent all that is best in the solicitors’ profession.
Would that the same could be said about others who seemed to go out of their way to secure a conviction for murder despite the most obvious flaws in the evidence.
For those who do not know the details, two of Sally's sons died when they were very young. The first death was put down to a lung infection, but when her second son Harry died, a pathologist (not even a paediatric pathologist) thought he saw signs that Harry had been shaken to death. No criticism can be made of the initial decision to investigate. As with many deaths there were signs that could point to foul play. The Clarks were arrested and their house was searched. They both made full statements to the police and co-operated freely. That was a mistake. The information innocently given (in the absence of legal representation: they had done nothing wrong; why would they need solicitors?) was then skilfully turned against Sally at her trial to paint her as a career obsessive who did not really want children. The first lesson from all of this is: if you, a solicitor, are arrested for a crime you did not commit, say nothing and call in a crime specialist before you breathe a word. In my book the police by their actions against Sally have forfeited the right to co-operation in these circumstances, and you can say what you like about inferences to be drawn from silence.
Both Sally and Steve clung to the view that the police would recognise their innocence and let them get on with grieving for their lost children. But they were mistaken: Sally was charged with 2 counts of murder. The juggernaut of British “justice” (for want of a better word), once rolling, was unstoppable. At every stage her solicitors tried to bring the process to an end, but were thwarted. As the case wore on the evidence became more bizarre, with a leading prosecution expert making fundamental mistakes and the prosecution even changing its case a few days before trial (it decided that the children were not shaken but smothered – despite the lack of evidence for either cause of death). By the time the prosecution evidence was concluded at the trial, not one prosecution witness was able to say for certain that either of the boys’ deaths was not due to natural causes. But still the case rumbled on, with Sally being forced to give evidence in her defence - at the end of which, her QC (a hardened advocate who mainly did prosecution work) said: “If that wasn’t a lady telling the truth I have never seen one”.
The unlikely statistic (given in evidence by a paediatrician) that the chances of 2 cot deaths happening in one family by chance were one in 73 million appears to have been too much for the jury who then convicted Sally on a majority verdict. She was taken to Bullwood Hall prison where she was mistreated (suffering physical and verbal abuse), but where she gradually rose in stature so that by the end she was admired and respected by all.
Her defence team were confident that she would be out on appeal. But they reckoned without the blinkered approach of the Court of Appeal judges who considered her case. When her appeal was turned down, Sally’s QC described the judgment as “the most intellectually dishonest appeal judgment I have ever read”.
There followed months of frantic activity by Sally’s supporters to uncover evidence that she did not kill the babies. Experts were contacted from all over the world, and the hospital notes (located with difficulty) were closely scrutinised. At length it was discovered that the prosecution had failed to disclose key test results.
In the meantime, the Law Society, anxious to protect the public from a dangerous woman, applied to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for an order against Sally. Sally was unable to be present, but she recorded a videotape of her submissions. In consequence, the Tribunal took the unusual (and brave) step of suspending Sally but not striking her off.
That was not good enough for the Law Society who, protecting our profession to the last, decided to appeal the Tribunal’s decision on the ground that it was not harsh enough. I wonder what they thought they would achieve by doing that!
Those test results revealed that Harry died from an overwhelming staphylococcal infection (in other words: natural causes). You would think that it would then have been all over for Sally, but not a bit of it. The prosecution caused Sally to spend many weeks longer in prison while they argued against the new evidence, and insisted that they had NOT withheld vital documents. Yet once the appeal started, the prosecution admitted that there had been material non-disclosure. The Court of Appeal in allowing her appeal held that:
The two cases should not have been tried together
The statistic of 1:73 million was not admissible in law and should never have been allowed in evidence, and that it might in itself have been sufficient grounds for a successful appeal
There had been a failure to disclose a material document.
There was to be no retrial.
As Sally said on 29 January 2003 on her release more than 3 years after her conviction, “There are no winners here. We have all lost out. We simply feel a relief that our nightmare is at an end.”
But it was not. An interfering paediatrician had seen Steve (her husband) on television and had concluded it was he who had killed the children. He maintained that view even when he appeared recently before the GMC on misconduct charges.
And the government still has failed to compensate Sally for her years in prison and is arguing about the costs of her appeal (despite the fact that her legal team did not charge anything like the full amount for the work they did).
This is a book that should be read by all solicitors who are concerned about justice. It is not a happy story, but you will almost certainly emerge from it with a huge admiration for the Clarks and those who helped to secure her release; you may also suffer despair that our legal system could have got it so wrong. Sally was vindicated through the sustained efforts of a number of solicitors who would not give up. How many more mothers, I wonder, languish in prison because they have not had such support?
Angela Cannngs was also acquitted of the charges of murdering her children.
Sally Clark died in March 2007, aged just 42 years, her life having been destroyed by her conviction and years spent in prison.
No further comment from me in Lucy Letby’s case is appropriate, except to urge the Criminal Cases Review Commission to get its finger out and waste no time in assessing the disturbing evidence publicly presented today (4th February 2025) by Lucy’s legal team and - if validated, to procure that (as in Sally’s case) she is cleared of all charges and does not have to endure a retrial.