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Sally Clark
Case history written in January 2000 by Sally's father, Frank Lockyer
Why the conviction?
Faced with no motive, no aggressive act and no cause of death,
the speculation must be that 10 members of the jury
who convicted were swayed by the sheer prejudice of
the statistic cited by Professor Meadow - that two cot
deaths are a 73 million to one chance. He is not even
a statistician. Or the "one-liners"
innocently offered by Steve and Sally themselves when
interviewed by the police. They agreed that Sally took
time to settle up North until she made friends; that
ideally they would have waited for a family until her
legal career was established, but her biological clock
was ticking and they decided on a family; that, yes,
Sally did like to look smart and wondered whether she
would get into her dresses again. All this trotted out
by the Prosecution as a depressed mother, a career
girl with a comfortable life style who did not want a
family! Or, maybe the jury were swayed by inferences
that Sally was rather too upset at the hospital; or
after waiting four weeks she was rather too anxious
for the autopsy report; or that she demonstrated
Harry's collapse wrongly; or the exploitation of minor
discrepancies on the sequence of events on the
night. Inferences in the Prosecutor's speech but never
supported by evidence. The consensus is
that, backed by five eminent specialist professors,
the Defence won the medical arguments and the jury's
verdict astonished everyone present. The speculation
is that the jury did not understand the medical
evidence and took soundbites, reaching a majority
decision on the disbelief that "lightning could
strike twice" - plus the damning statistics from
Professor Meadow, which are universally refuted even by
the authors of the report from which the purports were
made.
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Site last modified Wed Oct 12 09:58:06 BST 2011
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