Court of Appeal: failure to disclose Clark medical report was 'wholly unacceptable'

FULL REASONS: controversial one in 73 million statistic was very likely 'grossly overstated'

The pathologist in the Sally Clark murder trial was strongly criticised by the Court of Appeal this week, which claimed that his working practices carried 'a significant risk of a miscarriage of justice'.

Ms Clark, a solicitor, was wrongly jailed in 1999 for murdering her two baby boys.

She was freed in January this year by the Court of Appeal, which ruled that she did not have a fair trial in 1999 because the prosecution failed to disclose to the jury a vital microbiology report which indicated that Harry, the couple's second son, probably died of a bacterial infection.

Releasing its full judgment, the court criticised pathologist Dr Alan Williams for failing to disclose the report at the original trial, saying his reasons were 'wholly unacceptable'.

Dr Williams' explanation for not disclosing the material - that it was not his practice to refer to additional results in his post-mortem unless they were relevant to the cause of death - was described as 'completely out of line with the practice accepted by other pathologists to be standard'.

Lord Justice Kay said this approach ran 'a significant risk of a miscarriage of justice'.

Despite the criticism, the court accepted that Dr Williams genuinely believed the deaths were not natural.

The judge said: 'We do not believe he was knowingly being a party to the putting forward of a false case.'

The court said that if Harry's death may have been from natural causes, 'it follows that no safe conclusion could be reached that Christopher [the first son] was killed unnaturally'.

The court also considered the controversial 'one in 73 million' statistic produced by a prosecution witness at the original trial as the chances of two cot deaths occurring in the same family, although this was not strongly argued on the appeal.

The figure was reached squaring the odds of a single cot death and it is argued that this did not take into account the likelihood that one cot death in a family made a second far more probable.

The judge said: 'We think it very likely that [the figure] grossly overstates the chance of two sudden deaths within the same family from unexpected but natural causes.' He said that had the point been fully argued before the appeal court, it would 'in all probability' have provided a distinct basis on which to quash the conviction.

Ms Clark, who had her suspension from the roll of solicitors lifted after her release, thanked the court for its 'wisdom and sense of justice'.

She said her priority was to spend time with her family and surviving son, and she wanted to avoid publicity.

Victoria MacCallum