By ROD McGUIRK, Associated Press
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — An Australian inquiry began investigating on Monday whether a girl convicted over a decade ago of smothering her 4 children to death could be innocent.
The inquiry by retired Latest South Wales state Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Bathurst is the second judicial investigation into Kathleen Folbigg’s convictions in 2003 and reflects advances in genetic science that add weight to her argument that her children died of natural causes.
The primary inquiry by retired District Court Chief Justice Reginald Blanch concluded in 2019 that there was no reasonable doubt that Folbigg, now aged 55, murdered her children Sarah, Laura and Patrick and was guilty of the manslaughter of her firstborn, Caleb.
The beginning of the brand new inquiry in Sydney is specializing in a rare CALM2 genetic variant present in each daughters. Research into the variant published last yr, after Blanch’s report, found that it’d cause heart arrhythmias and sudden death in young children, lawyer assisting the inquiry Sophie Callan said on the outset of the hearing.
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“The central query in any respect times has been whether Ms. Folbigg caused the death of a number of of her 4 children or whether or not they died of natural causes,” Callan said.
While 22 health workers had testified at her trial in 2003, quite a few experts across a variety of medical and scientific fields have since provided reports that support Folbigg’s case.
“This caucus of medical and scientific evidence is weighty and dominates consideration of Ms. Folbigg’s convictions,” Callan said.
“Nonetheless, it isn’t the one source of evidence relevant to the query of her guilty. One other significant category of evidence were diaries and journals she maintained when the youngsters were alive,” Callan added.
A second phase of the inquiry that begins in February will concentrate on the dairies which prosecutors in her trial presented as “intimate, personal and exact evaluation of what her pondering” when she wrote them, Callan said.
Prosecutors “characterised certain entries in her diaries, particularly together, as admissions of guilt, suggesting the diaries were the strongest evidence that you possibly can possibly have for Ms. Folbigg having murdered her 4 children,” Callan said.
Caleb was born in 1989 and died 19 days later in what a jury determined to be the lesser crime of manslaughter. Her second child, Patrick, was 8 months old when he died in 1991. Two years later, Sarah died at 10 months. In 1999, Folbigg’s fourth child, Laura, died at 19 months.
Prosecutors told her jury the variety of similarities among the many deaths made coincidence an improbable explanation.
Similarities included that every one died unexpectedly under the age of two. Folbigg was the just one at home or awake when the youngsters died and so they were all the time still warm to the touch. She lived on the time together with her former husband Craig Folbigg.
On three occasions, she said she discovered the deaths during trips to the toilet and once while checking on a baby’s wellbeing.
Except in Laura’s case, Folbigg never helped them, Callan said.
Prosecutors offered the jury three options: the youngsters died of identified natural causes, unidentified natural causes or deliberate suffocation by their mother.
Some health workers who testified at her trial cited Meadow’s Law, an approach to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS, named after British pediatrician Samuel Roy Meadow.
As Callan described the idea, the primary unexpected death of an infant in a family could also be attributed to SIDS, a second must be labeled undetermined and a 3rd must be considered homicide until proven otherwise.
Callan said that reasoning had been widely discredited and urged Bathurst to reject any expert evidence that relies upon that reasoning.
“It may very well be described as unscientific and, in a legal context, wholy inconsistent with the prosecution baring the burden of proof and the accused person’s entitlement to the presumption of innocence,” Callan said.
Folbigg is serving a 30-year prison sentence which can expire in 2033. She is going to turn into eligible for parole in 2028.
Latest South Wales Attorney General Mark Speakman ordered the brand new inquiry in May when he rejected Folbigg’s petition for a pardon.
That petition was “based on significant positive evidence of natural causes of death” and signed by 90 scientists, medical practitioners and related professionals.
If Bathurst finds reasonable doubt of Folbigg’s guilt, he can report back to the Court of Criminal Appeals which could consider squashing her convictions.
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