More than 250 cases involving parents who may have been wrongly convicted of killing their babies are to be urgently reviewed, the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith QC, announced today.
Britain's most senior lawyer said that the 258 convictions, more than 50 of which involve defendants still serving prison sentences for their alleged crimes, all involved the possibility of "cot death" or sudden infant death syndrome (Sids). He said that the guilty verdicts could be unsafe.
Lord Goldsmith's announcement, in the form of a written parliamentary answer, came in response to a report issued by three high court judges detailing their reasons for overturning the murder conviction of Angela Cannings. Mrs Cannings was last month cleared of killing her two baby sons.
In their report, the three judges warned that convictions reached solely on the basis of expert medical advice were potentially flawed.
"Unless we are sure of guilt, the dreadful possibility always remains that a mother, already brutally scarred by the unexplained death or deaths of her babies, may find herself in prison for life for killing them when she should not be there at all," the judges said in their ruling. "In our community, and in any civilised community, that is abhorrent."
Lord Goldsmith said that he shared the unease expressed over the dangers of relying solely on expert evidence when the cause of an unexplained death is in dispute, acknowledging that the judgment would have "serious and far-reaching implications".
"To date, some 258 convictions over the past 10 years have been identified involving the murder, manslaughter or infanticide of an infant aged under two years of age by its parent. These cases will be considered further as a matter of urgency," he said
"I am particularly concerned about cases where the defendant has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment which is still being served. We have so far identified 54 such cases that may involve Sids. These will be accorded the highest priority," he added.
In April 2002, Mrs Cannings was convicted of smothering her seven-week old son Jason in 1991, and 18-week-old Matthew in 1999. However, the court of appeal last month ruled her conviction unsafe on the basis that the family may have suffered from a genetic disorder.
Mrs Cannings, whose three-month-old daughter Jemma died of Sids in November 1989, had always denied killing her sons and said that they also suffered cot death.
Her appeal came after a similar court ruling last year which overturned the murder conviction against Sally Clarke, a solicitor accused of killing her two young sons, and the acquittal of another mother, Trupti Patel, of charges of murdering her three babies.
At her appeal, Mrs Cannings's lawyers argued that paediatrician Profesor Sir Roy Meadow had misled the original hearing when he said that three cot deaths in the same family was extremely rare.
Little is known about Sids - the unexpected death, often during sleep, of an apparently healthy baby - other than it affects boys more than girls, and that its victims are most commonly aged between two months and six months. There is no known cause.
