Angela Cannings was wrongfully convicted and sentenced tolife imprisonment in theUK in 2002 for the murder of her seven-week-old son, Jason, who died in 1991, and of her 18-week-old son Matthew, who died in 1999. Her first child, Gemma, died ofSudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in 1989 at the age of 13 weeks, although she was never charged in connection with Gemma's death.
Her conviction was based on claims that she had smothered the children, but was overturned as unsafe by theCourt of Appeal on 10 December 2003.[1] Cannings was convicted after the testimony of Professor SirRoy Meadow, a paediatrician who was later struck off, then reinstated, by the General Medical Council.[2] Another expert witness for the prosecution was neonatologistMartin Ward Platt. Her defence solicitor was Bill Bache.[3]
The Cannings case was re-examined after aBBC "Real Story" investigation showed that her paternal great-grandmother had suffered one sudden infant death and her paternal grandmother two. Professor Michael Patton, a clinical geneticist at St George's Hospital Medical School, told the BBC that a genetic inheritance was the most likely explanation for the crib deaths in the family.[4]
Expert witness Professor SirRoy Meadow was later struck off theGeneral Medical Council register partly as a result of his evidence at the Cannings trial. Meadow based his calculations on the likelihood of a secondcrib death being the same as the likelihood of a first, whereas in households where one crib death has taken place, theprobability of another is greatly increased. He also asserted crib death implausible (which was contrary to the opinion of other specialists). Cannings later said Meadow should be "severely punished" for his testimony in her case and others. Meadow was later reinstated to the GMC on appeal, a judge ruling that his errors did not amount to serious professional misconduct.[5]
The quashing of Cannings' conviction and other high-profile cases resulted in a review of 297 other cases where conviction relied on expert witness opinion. On 14 February 2006,Lord Goldsmith, theAttorney General, announced that three of these cases needed to be reconsidered by the courts.
The trial of Angela Cannings was dramatised in the 2005 BBC film,Cherished (2005), starringSarah Lancashire as Angela andTimothy Spall as Terry Cannings.
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