An appeals court on Thursday overturned the conviction of a woman once labeled Australia’s worst serial killer by the tabloids for the deaths of her four young children.
The woman, Kathleen Folbigg, 56, was convicted in 2003 of murdering the children and sentenced to 30 years in prison. But Australia’s scientific community rallied behind her, citing genetic evidence that the children most likely died of natural causes.
All four of Mrs. Folbigg’s children died before the age of 2: Caleb, at 19 days old, in 1989; Patrick, at 8 months, almost two years later; Sarah, at 10 months, in 1993; and Laura, at 18 months, in 1999.
Andrew Bell, chief justice of the state of New South Wales, told the court there was a “reasonable doubt” about Ms Folbigg’s guilt, based in part on “a comprehensive body of new scientific evidence » which were not available at the time of the survey. time of his conviction.
“It is appropriate that his convictions be overturned,” he added.
Ms Folbigg was pardoned in June and was released after an official investigation found there was a reasonable probability that three of the four children had died of natural causes and that prosecutors had relied on “evidence of coincidences and trends” which no longer held. .
The Court of Criminal Appeal in Sydney on Thursday threw out his conviction, potentially opening the door to compensation from the state. Speaking to reporters outside court, Rhanee Rego, Ms Folbigg’s lawyer, suggested the compensation could be “greater than any substantial payment made before”.
Ms. Folbigg, who has long maintained her innocence, thanked her supporters and criticized the “disbelief and hostility” she said she suffered for nearly a quarter of a century. “The system preferred to blame me rather than accept that sometimes children can die suddenly, unexpectedly and heartbreakingly,” she said.
At the time of her conviction, prosecutors argued that she had smothered her children, although there was no medical evidence of this, and that all four were in poor health before she died.
A doctor who served as an expert witness said he had never seen a case of four children dying in the same family, and prosecutors argued that the deaths of four siblings so young in a decade would be so spectacularly improbable that it would be impossible.
“There has never been a case like this in the history of medicine,” a prosecutor said in closing arguments. “It’s not a reasonable doubt; “It’s absurd.”
But the Australian Academy of Science, which acted as an independent adviser in the inquiry, describe the case as “Australia’s greatest miscarriage of justice” and said the outcome showed the inquiry had “heeded extensively to the science”.
