Wickham's musings from Chalke

 
There have been some staggering cases of rough justice over the last ten or fifteen years. People have been convicted on the evidence of experts but years later that evidence has been proved wrong. Not just wrong facts in some cases but wrong opinions, guesswork sometimes.

First there were a series of cases alleging abuse of babies and many parents were jailed. Babies were put in foster homes and some are still there. There was a particular female expert who said she could tell whether a baby had been abused just by looking at its anus. Recently some parents who were jailed have successfully appealed and have been reunited with their children after many years apart.

Then there was the expert who frequently told courts that cot deaths were murder. One particular case involved the cot deaths of twins at different times and he said the chance of natural deaths of twins was 75 million to one so it must be murder. The mother was jailed for years but appealed that he was straying out of his field of expertise into the field of statistics which he knew little about and the woman won her freedom. It was subsequently agreed that the two twins could have had the same genetic makeup which made it quite likely they would suffer in the same way. Several other jailed mothers who had the same expert testify against them have now won appeals.

Now we have had a case where parents were jailed for murdering a foster child by administering huge salt doses which poisoned the child to death. It was speculated (no evidence) that they must have forced the child to swallow about six teaspoons of salt, equivalent to drinking one litre of seawater, as a punishment. At appeal they successfully convinced the court that the child had a genetic makeup which prevented it from disposing of excess salt.

I am disgusted by the way that experts can be so wrong and the courts seem so easy to hoodwink.