Shaken baby convictions quashed

[Caligula]

shaken baby convictions quashed

Apropos all the Meadows/ expert witness threads, here's another one. I feel particularly sorry for Lorraine Harris, whose baby looks like he died because of an undiscovered blood disorder which responded badly to a vaccine and who had another child who was adopted and whom she's not allowed to see.

[monkeytrousers]

It's just unbelievable. So many tragedies.

[Pixiefish]

[monkeytrousers]

This is on Radio 4 now

[ScummyMummy]

I feel very sad for Lorraine Harris too. But I'm glad they are taking a case by case approach, because it sounds like the 3 men all had cases to answer and were guilty of manslaughter.

[Caligula]

Agree Scummy. Interesting that it was the women who were found to be innocent.

Just how many mothers have been wrongly accused of child abuse and convicted on really flimsy evidence? What has been happening to the medical profession, that they're so quick to diagnose abuse rather than any other cause, and to the legal profession, that they're so willing to suspend their critical faculties when it comes to mothers in the dock?

[renaldo]

I think its a sad day for child protection and in the words of one of the mums who's baby wqas killed by the dad
"I am devastated. What they are basically saying is that you can shake a baby to death and you are not guilty of murder. You only get manslaughter."

[Caligula]

A sad day for child protection that innocent people don't have to serve time for a crime they didn't commit?

I don't know whether that case should be murder or manslaughter (don't know enough about the details of the case and the legal definitions), but I do know that if there is reasonable doubt that someone committed a crime, they certainly shouldn't be sent to prison for it. And in these cases, there was plenty of reasonable doubt.