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Prosecutions (Parents)

Answer

On 29 January 2003 the Court of Appeal overturned Sally Clark's conviction for murdering her two sons. On 19 January 2004 the Court of Appeal issued its judgment allowing the appeal of Angela Cannings against her convictions for murdering two of her children. On the same day the Attorney-General announced he had established a review of all convictions in the previous 10 years (1994—2004), of a parent, foster parent or carer convicted of the unlawful killing of a baby and/or infant under the age of two. A small number of cases which did not fall strictly within the parameters of the review were also included at the request of defendants or their solicitors.At the same time, January 2004, the Attorney-General asked the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to review current cases involving an unexplained infant death, which were still to come to trial.A Central Review Team (CRT) of experienced legal practitioners was set up within the CPS, answerable only to the Attorney. The CRT purely reviewed case files on legal merits in the light of the Court of Appeal ruling in Cannings. No pathologist was involved in this legal review work.A total of 297 cases were reviewed by the CRT. The papers reviewed included evidence served on the prosecution by the defence, who were in the best position to know about the circumstances of their clients' convictions. None of the cases were reinvestigated (by the police) in the sense that the original investigation was reopened but all the available papers were thoroughly reviewed. A selection was also sent to independent counsel for review.The team's work was supervised by an Inter-Departmental Group (IDG). This group considered 34 cases identified by the CRT for possible referral to the defendant. All but six of those cases were accepted for such referral. After careful consideration, the Attorney-General, IDG and counsel decided that the remaining six cases did not give such cause for concern that they needed to be referred to the defendant. Again, no pathologist was involved in this work but the Attorney-General was assisted by an expert in child health and paediatrics.On 21 December 2004, the Attorney-General published the results of the review of the Infant Death Cases, and together with the then Solicitor-General, made oral statements before Parliament on that day. The report was also placed in the Libraries of both Houses.As a result of the review a number of cases were referred to the Court of Appeal. It was at this stage that these cases were subject to the re- examination of evidence by medical professionals, including pathologists.In addition, the review of current cases resulted in three prosecutions being stopped without going to trial. This was set out in the original review.At the time of publication of the original review in December 2004, the Attorney-General explained that he had deferred final consideration of 89 further cases of so-called Shaken Baby Syndrome. An addendum to the report, dealing with those cases, will be published shortly.Neither stage of the review has prevented any person from referring their case to the Court of Appeal or Criminal Cases Review Commission if they wish to do so.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

48169; 442 c1802-3W;442 c1802-3W

Session

2005-06

Subjects

Appeals Convictions Crown Prosecution Service Babies Court of Appeal Homicide Infanticide Judgements Parents Miscarriages of justice Reviews Pathology

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk