Posted on 06/04/2023 10:00:35 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A woman imprisoned for 20 years over the deaths of her four children was pardoned by Australia's New South Wales state on Monday (Jun 5) after a judicial review found there was reasonable doubt about the original convictions.
Kathleen Megan Folbigg was convicted in 2003 for the murder of her three children and manslaughter of her fourth. Folbigg maintained her innocence and said the children had died of natural causes.
An initial inquiry in 2019 found the evidence reinforced Folbigg's guilt. However a second inquiry led by former chief justice Thomas Bathurst revisited her convictions in 2022 after new evidence suggested two of the children had a genetic mutation that could have caused their deaths. New South Wales state Attorney General Michael Daley pardoned Folbigg on Monday after summary findings from the Bathurst inquiry found reasonable doubt for each conviction.
(Excerpt) Read more at channelnewsasia.com ...
Also, it seems like forum shopping. If one inquiry reinforced her guilt, why does a second inquiry get to dismiss, why not at least have a third. And why dismiss it, not order a new trial?
A woman has four children who die. How many have to die before she gets help? If she lets them all die without getting help, then how can she claim innocence?
I don’t know much about this case or if she deserved to have her conviction overturned. But I do recall this case of a woman convicted of murdering her child with antifreeze, but it turned out to be a rare genetic condition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Stallings
There was also a Law & Order SVU episode loosely based on this case.
It’s possible that her children went for a long period of time undiagnosed. It happened to me when I was a kid - my whole family just thought I was getting fat, as women in my family did during puberty, but I was holding water due to an uncommon auto-immune disorder that caused glomerular scarring and eventual kidney failure. Docs never found it when I was a kid, and it’s normally diagnosed in children between the ages of one and five. I was sixteen.
They did say that it was a rare mutation. I would need more information, but it sounds like it causes cardiac arrhythmia, mostly in infants and toddlers. Unless there are noticeable symptoms, like with me, it’s possible that it can go unnoticed for long periods when the child isn’t able to communicate that they don’t feel well.
Australia is different from here. In the US we have an appeals process, and once you exhaust it, that’s pretty much it. That doesn’t seem to be the case there.
Even if they communicate that they don't feel well, they need to be believed and the condition needs to be recognized.
I was never running a fever or actively throwing up so I was just a *hypochondriac*.
Not that knowing anything would likely have changed where I'm at now, but you never know.
Yeah, it was a problem when I was a kid. I was constantly feeling like crap (when I was finally diagnosed, my BP was running 250/120 and I had a cholesterol of 660), but it was assumed that I was just trying to get out of going to school, summer camp, what have you. I won’t lie, I faked on occasion, but it was 85% legit feeling crummy. By high school, I virtually missed my last two years.
Been there.
The widespread availability of DNA testing today, as opposed to 2003, is the difference. Hidden genetic problems can now be found more quickly and easily than back then, so I’m OK with this finding. Awful thing for the mom (and dad) if true...
Protecting the mentally ill instead of treating them and keeping them locking them up. Seems the west is hell bent on destroying itself
Juries sometimes get it wrong. It’s common knowledge that the jury that recently “convicted” DJT got it wrong. And we know that the juries in DJT’s upcoming trials (Manhattan,DC and Atlanta) will also get it wrong.
First it’s Australia, not the US
Second if new evidence shows up that puts a prior conviction in doubt, then what exactly is your problem with judicial review?
DNA has shown many convicted people were NOT the person involved even though they were convicted. DNA evidence didn’t exist at the time of the trial… are you suggesting such people should rot in jail even though it’s clear they did not commit the crime?
Not familiar with this case, but if evidence comes out after trial that suggests or proves a convicted persons innocence they shouldn’t rot in jail
A now discredited Doctor claimed that there was only a 1 in a trillion chance her four children could have died from natural causes - he more or less arrived at this number by taking the statistical average chance of any child dying of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and multiplying it to the fourth power.
What this ignored was any possibility that any of the four children (two boys and two girls) might have medical conditions that made it more likely they would die.
It is now known that the two girls definitely contained genetic markers for a condition that makes death much more likely. It is also known that there is a good chance the two boys also contained genetic markers for a condition that makes death more likely - it hasn't absolutely been confirmed in their case, because their father has refused to be tested (for various complicated reasons) and the condition only occurs if both parents carry the defective gene - Kathleen does.
A combination of this means that the statistical probability of all four children dying of SIDS drops from 1 in 1,000,000,000,000 to 1 in 30. Still unlikely statistically, but much more probable, and that creates a scenario of reasonable doubt. When presented with this evidence, the prosecution agreed that Folbigg should not have been convicted on the grounds that the case had not been proven beyond all reasonable doubt, and that's why she's been pardoned and released. It remains to be seen whether the conviction will be completely overturned and she will be formally declared not guilty.
Why not order a new trial?
The primary ground by which she was found guilty at the first trial was, as I have said, a now discredited medical theory that told the jury the odds of all four children dying young was on the order of a trillion to one.
That was the primary piece of evidence that lead to her conviction. And it’s now known to be nonsense.
Why not order a new trial? Most likely because she’s served most of her minimum sentence already and because there is a general view, now supported by the prosecution as well as the defence, that, at the very minimum, reasonable doubt exists as to her guilt, which means the prosecution would not be willing to proceed with the case (if a prosecutor decides reasonable doubt exists, they will generally not take a case to court).
Sorry - just realised you are referring to the first inquiry, not the trial, which I’ve referred to.
At the time of the first inquiry in 2019, only the two girls had been identified as having genetic abnormalities. That fact reduced the statistical likelihood of all four deaths being non-suspicious substantially, but the Judge in that case, concluded it was still so unlikely as to not constitute reasonable doubt.
It’s only since then that the genetic issues in the case of the two boys have been identified, which has lead to a much higher chance of all four deaths being non-suspicious.
Cab the courts order the father to provide a sample?
No. He’s not formally accused of any crime, and he’s under no obligation to submit to any medical procedure.
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