Every time I revisit it and see the bizarre random attempt at a gotcha re the father of baby O, my faith in the justice system goes down a notch. I am really surprised at the standard of reasoning these judges are willing to put on public display.
(Defence suggested that Dr Jayaram's evidence on rashes wasn't entirely reliable, since he neither mentioned this in evidence to the coroner nor in the medical notes - only years later in police interviews. CoA judges say:
" Save that the description of skin discolouration did not feature in Dr Jayaram’s clinical notes, we observe in passing that there appears to have been little evidential basis for the allegation implicitly made on behalf of the applicant, that Dr Jayaram had made up this part of his evidence. We also note that no similar allegation appears to have been
made against the father of Baby O who, as set at para 93 above, described his child’s
veins as being “bright, bright blue”.
But Baby O's father wasn't making medical notes or reporting anything to the coroner; neither do the veins appearing bright, bright blue have any relationship to the symptoms Dr Jayaram claimed to see in other babies (he wasn't present for this one).
Since then, of course, the Court of Appeal has acknowledged that Dr Jayaram's testimony on another case could be criticized, we've seen emails suggesting that he misrepresented events in at least one case, and we have an explanation of the child's venous symptoms in the high ventilation pressures used in his case, according to expert reports.
It's an embarrassing instance of "confidently wrong", inserted completely unnecessarily, and suggesting that whoever wrote and approved the document was well out of their depth.