Sally Clark - Conviction For Murder

Conviction For Murder

Clark's first son, Christopher, was born on 22 September 1996. Court documents describe him as a healthy baby. On 13 December Clark called an ambulance to the family home. The baby had fallen unconscious after being put to bed, and was later declared dead after being transported to hospital. Clark suffered from post-natal depression and received counselling at the Priory Clinic, but was in recovery by the time her second son, Harry, was born three weeks premature on 29 November 1997. However, he was also found dead on 26 January 1998, aged 8 weeks. On both occasions, Clark was at home alone with her baby and there was evidence of trauma, which could have been related to attempts to resuscitate them.

Clark and her husband were both arrested on 23 February 1998 on suspicion of murdering their children. On the advice of her lawyers she twice refused to answer questions. She was later charged with two counts of murder whilst the case against her husband was dropped. Clark always denied the charge, and was supported throughout by her husband. During the court proceedings she gave birth to a third son.

Clark was tried at Chester Crown Court, before Mr Justice Harrison and a jury. The prosecution was controversial due to the involvement of the pediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow, former Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Leeds, who testified at Clark's trial that the chance of two children from an affluent family suffering cot death was 1 in 73 million. He likened the probability to the chances of backing an 80-1 outsider in the Grand National four years running, and winning each time.

Clark was convicted by a 10-2 majority verdict on 9 November 1999, and given the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. She was widely reviled in the press as the murderer of her children. Despite recognition of the flaws in Meadow's statistical evidence, the convictions were upheld at appeal in October 2000. She was imprisoned at Styal women's prison, near her home in Wilmslow, and then Bullwood Hall women's prison in Hockley in Essex. The nature of her conviction as a child-killer, and her background as a solicitor and daughter of a police officer, made her a target for other prisoners. Her husband left his partnership at a Manchester law firm to work as a legal assistant nearer the prison, selling the family house to meet the legal bills from the trial and first appeal.

Later, it came to light that microbiological tests showed that Harry had colonisation of staphylococcus aureus bacteria, suggesting that her second son may have died from natural causes, but the evidence had not been disclosed to the defence. This evidence had been known to the prosecution's pathologist, Alan Williams, since February 1998, but was not shared with other medical witnesses, police or lawyers. The evidence was unearthed by the divorce lawyer Marilyn Stowe, who provided her services free of charge because she felt that "something was not right about the case". It also became clearer that the statistical evidence presented at Clark's trial was seriously flawed. Her case was referred back to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, and her convictions were overturned in a second appeal in January 2003. She was released from prison having served more than three years of her sentence.