Australian court rejects conviction of mother accused of murdering four of her children

An appeal court on Thursday quashed the conviction of a woman once labeled by tabloids as Australia’s worst female serial killer for the deaths of her four young children.

The woman, Kathleen Folbigg, 56, was found guilty of killing the children in 2003 and sentenced to 30 years in prison. But Australia’s scientific community rallied behind her, citing genetic evidence that indicated 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, in 1989; Patrick, eight months old, almost two years later; Sarah, ten months old, in 1993; and Laura, at 18 months, in 1999.

Andrew Bell, the chief justice of the state of New South Wales, told a court there was “reasonable doubt” about Ms Folbigg’s guilt, based in part on “an extensive body of new scientific evidence” that had not been available to the court. moment of her conviction.

“It is appropriate that her convictions be quashed,” he added.

Ms Folbigg was pardoned and released in June after an official investigation found that there was a reasonable probability that three of the four children had died of natural causes, and that prosecutors had relied on “chance and tendency evidence” that was no longer held out. .

The Court of Criminal Appeal in Sydney overturned her conviction on Thursday, potentially opening the door for state compensation. Speaking to reporters outside court, Ms Folbigg’s lawyer, Rhanee Rego, suggested the compensation “could be greater than any substantial payment previously made”.

Ms Folbigg, who has long maintained her innocence, thanked her supporters and criticized the “disbelief and hostility” she said she had suffered for almost 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 had been in poor health before they died.

A doctor who served as an expert witness testified that he had never seen a case in which four children died in the same family, and prosecutors argued that it would be so spectacularly unlikely for four siblings to die so young within a decade that it would be impossible.

“There has never been a case like this in the history of medicine,” one prosecutor said in closing his argument. “It’s not a reasonable doubt; it is ridiculous.”

But the Australian Academy of Science, which acted as an independent adviser to the study, described labeled the case “Australia’s biggest miscarriage of justice” and said the outcome showed the inquiry had “listened extensively to the science.”