Expert Evidence: Multiple Infant Deaths
| Published date | 01 June 2005 |
| DOI | 10.1350/jcla.69.3.210.64782 |
| Date | 01 June 2005 |
| Subject Matter | Court of Appeal |
Expert Evidence: Multiple Infant Deaths
R v Cannings [2004] EWCA Crim 1
The appellant was convicted in April 2002 of two counts of murder, each
count relating to one of her infant children. The prosecution case was
that the appellant had smothered both children, intending to kill or to
cause them really serious bodily harm. In support of that case it was
suggested that the death of another of the appellant’s infant children,
and a number of ‘Acute’ or ‘Apparent Life Threatening Events’ (ALTEs),
were also due to smothering by the appellant, and that the deaths of the
two children who were the victims in the current case formed part of an
‘overall pattern’. The appellant was of good character, described as a
loving mother, apparently free of personality disorder or psychiatric
condition, and consistently denied harming any of her children. Her
case was that the deaths were natural, even if unexplained, and classi-
fied as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), known colloquially as
cot death. Expert evidence had been called for both sides.
H
ELD
,
ALLOWING THE APPEAL
,the Court of Appeal was in receipt of
fresh evidence in the form of a ‘substantial body of research, not before
the jury … suggesting that such deaths can and do occur naturally, even
when they are unexplained’ (at [138]). Some of the evidence was the
result of further research into the problem of SIDS generally, and some
was specific to the appellant and her family, where a possible history of
SIDS type deaths had been detected. The court suggested (at [35]):
…for the purposes of this appeal, we are quite unable to reject the realistic
possibility that in the absence of some compelling piece of evidence,
whether specialist or extraneous, suggestive of the deliberate infliction of
harm, there may have been a genetic cause, as yet unidentified, for the
deaths and ALTEs experienced by the Cannings children.
On the issue of the nature and status of the expert evidence, the court
noted (at [129]):
The matters which have created concern among some of the specialists
have to be considered against the evidence of other reputable specialists
which indicate possible natural explanations for the events with which we
are concerned.
There was considerable disagreement within the relevant community of
experts on the likelihood of natural multiple infant deaths within the
same family. The court suggested (at [148]):
What is abundantly clear is that in our present state of knowledge, it does
not necessarily follow that three sudden unexplained infant deaths in the
same family leads to the inexorable conclusion that they must have re-
sulted from the deliberate infliction of harm. There is acceptable evidence
that even three infant deaths in the same family may be natural, and may
indeed all properly be described as SIDS.
C
OMMENTARY
On occasion, clusters of cases arising from similar facts come to the
courts at similar times, and are taken as being emblematic of broader
The Journal of Criminal Law
210
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