At 09:56 22/01/04 +0000, Kevin McConway wrote:
>In the Sally Clark case, there was evidence that her husband was out when
>the first death occurred, and that she was present and no evidence was
>presented that anyone else was there. He was present at the time of the
>second death and was arrested (with Sally Clark) on suspicion of murder but
>was not prosecuted.
OK. If one knows that a death resulted from homicide, then evidence that
only one other person was in the vicinity of the victim at the time of
their death is clearly pretty decisive. However, what seems to be lacking
in this case is any good evidence that homicide was the cause of death -
and, without that, an individual's presence at the time of death means
absolutely nothing. Goodness, over the years I have 'been present at the
time of death' of countless people, but have yet to be arrested on
suspicion of murder!
>You have to bear in mind that there was a lot of other evidence of various
>sorts (and pointing in various directions) in this case apart from the
>statistical stuff. The original appeal in 2000, indeed, concluded that the
>statistics (1 in 73 million etc.) was wrong and misleading, but that the
>other evidence was overwhelming so that the wrong statistics wasn't enough
>to overturn the conviction.
I've obviously missed some crucial information, since I find it almost
beyond belief that (if one excludes the 'statistical evidence', which could
seem dramatic and overwhelming to those who believed it) any sane human
being, let alone experienced judiciary, could mention this case and
'overwhelming evidence' in the same breath! If one discounts the
'statistical evidence', what other evidence ('overwhelming' or otherwise)
was there that ANY murder had been committed, let alone that Sally Clark
had committed it? As you go on to say:
>The second appeal in 2003 was on two grounds, the statistical one and also
>that microbiological evidence, based on a postmortem, that established
>that one of the deaths was probably due to natural causes, was not
>presented in the trial. Most of the discussion in the judgment is actually
>about the microbiological point, ......
Indeed, and this again seems like an overt manifestation of 'guilty until
proved innocent'. As I said above, in the absence of direct evidence that
a murder had been committed, it strikes me as nonsense for any court to
conclude 'beyond reasonable doubt' that a particularly individual had
committed that crime. However, it seems to have taken direct evidence of a
possible natural cause of death to make the courts realise that there was
'doubt' even as to whether a murder had been committed. They obviously
have a very different definition of 'doubt' from me!! To my mind, there
was very considerable 'doubt' when pathological examination had failed to
determine ANY cause of death.
>In the Angela Cannings appeal .... again there was evidence that the
>mother was there at the time of the deaths and no evidence was presented
>that anyone else was. So in both cases, the decision to prosecute the
>mother rather than someone
>else wasn't entirely based on assumptions about probabilities and so on.
OK, that answers my question as to why it was the mothers who were
prosecuted - but, as I've discussed, being the only person present at a
death 'from unknown causes' obviously should not, in itself, lead to a
conviction for murder!
Kind Regards
John
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