Roy Meadow - Cot Death Trial Controversies

Cot Death Trial Controversies

This trend was to reach its apogee in 1999 when solicitor Sally Clark was tried for allegedly murdering her two babies. Her elder son Christopher had died at the age of 11 weeks, and her younger son Harry at 8 weeks. Medical opinion was divided on the cause of death, and several leading paediatricians testified that the deaths were probably natural. Experts acting for the prosecution initially diagnosed that the babies had been shaken to death, but three days before the trial began several of them changed their collective opinion to smothering.

By the time he gave evidence at Sally Clark's trial, Roy Meadow claimed to have found 81 cot deaths which were in fact murder, but he had destroyed the data. Amongst the prosecution team was Meadow, whose evidence included a soundbite which was to provoke much argument: he testified that the odds against two cot deaths occurring in the same family was 73,000,000:1, a figure which he obtained by squaring the observed ratio of live-births to cot deaths in affluent non-smoking families (approximately 8,500:1). The jury returned a 10/2 majority verdict of "guilty".