The 'nightmare is finally ended' for mother cleared of murdering her two babies
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails
Sign up to our free breaking news emails
Sign up to our free breaking news emails
Sally Clark's first words to a waiting world outside the High Court in London yesterday were for the two baby boys she had been convicted of murdering three years ago.
Released by the Court of Appeal, she stood in the arms of her husband, begging to be allowed to "grieve for our little boys in peace''. She said that in such a case there could be no winners and no victories.
The husband and father of the 38-year-old Manchester solicitor had fought relentlessly to clear her name. They were reunited yesterday after three judges ordered Mrs Clark's release in a case that raises serious concerns over the safety of the criminal justice system. Lord Justice Kay said that the jury at Mrs Clark's trial in 1999 and the judges at her subsequent appeal had been deprived of important medical evidence that might have influenced their decisions.
He told the court: "This resulted from the failure of the pathologist to share with other doctors investigating the cause of death information that a competent pathologist ought to have appreciated needed to be assessed before any conclusion was reached ... we have no doubt that the resulting convictions are, therefore, unsafe and must be quashed.''
Mrs Clark said after the hearing: "We are now back in the position we should have been in all along and plead that we may now be allowed some privacy to grieve for our little boys in peace and try to make sense of what has happened to us.''
She had special words of thanks for her husband, Stephen, who uncovered the vital medical documents that won her freedom yesterday. She said: "He has stood by me and supported me through this whole nightmare, not through blind love or unthinking loyalty, but because he knows me better than anyone else and knows how much I loved our babies.''
Mrs Clark has always said the babies died from natural causes. But in November 1999 a jury convicted her by 10 to 2 of shaking or smothering to death Christopher, 11 weeks, and Harry, eight weeks, within 14 months of each other. The prosecution presented expert evidence that the chance of two cot deaths in one family was one in 73 million. But on Tuesday Mrs Clark's counsel, Clare Montgomery QC, said that research suggested the true odds were more likely to be one in 100 to one in 400.
Lord Justice Kay indicated that the court's reserved judgement would be critical of the Home Office pathologist Dr Alan Williams, who failed to share with other doctors the possibility that Harry Clark died from an acute bacterial infection, possibly meningitis.