Sally Clark

Sally Clark - victim of a miscarriage of justice
Sally Clark - Friday 16th March 2007

It is with the very greatest sadness that Sally Clark's family announces that Sally was found dead at her home this morning, having passed away during the night.

The matter is in the hands of the coroner and it is too early to provide any further information. Sally's family very much hopes that the media will refrain from making any enquiries or attempts to contact them at this painful time.

Sally, aged 42, was released in 2003 having been wrongfully imprisoned for more than 3 years, falsely accused of the murder of her two sons. Sadly, she never fully recovered from the effects of this appalling miscarriage of justice.

Sally, a qualified solicitor, was a loving and talented wife, mother, daughter and friend. She will be greatly missed by all who knew her.

**********************************************Sally Clark describes her childhood as 'quite idyllic'. she was born in Devizes, Wiltshire, in August 1964, the only child of a hairdresser, Jean, who died of cancer in 1989, and a senior policeman, Frank Lockyer. When Frank retired in 1985, he had been Divisional Commander of South Wiltshire for the previous 16 years and had been decorated with the Queen's Police Medal in 1984. Mr Lockyer, who is now 71, both loves and admires his daughter: 'She wasn't naturally brilliant', he told me, 'but she was a very hard-working girl. She carried the cross at school that all policeman's daughters, and particularly senior policeman's daughters, carry: that they're expected to be a little bit better than everybody else in their behaviour, same as the parson's daughter.'

Sally Clark attended South Wiltshire Grammar School for Girls in Salisbury before going up to Southampton University in 1982 to read Geography. After graduating with a 2:1, she joined Lloyds Bank as a graduate trainee and moved to London. Two years later she was recruited by Citibank, where she worked with corporate clients. And it was there, in 1988, that she met Steve Clark, a lawyer specialising in financial work - Steve, whose father had been a Tory county councillor, had been the only pupil in his year at his comprehensive school in Derbyshire to win a place at Cambridge.

The couple married in 1990, and lived in a flat in north London. Sally Clark decided to become a lawyer - with both banking and legal qualifications, she reasoned, she would be able to specialise in venture capital work - and was finally articled in 1994. In 1993, though, wanting a large enough house in which to be able to start a family, they decided to move out of London. Both got jobs with leading Manchester law firms: Steve with Addleshaw Booth, where he was quickly made a partner; his wife as an assistant solicitor with Halliwell Landau.

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Five years ago, a young couple from Cheshire suffered one of the most devastating losses imaginable - their baby Christopher died in his sleep, aged 11 weeks. Doctors, neighbours, all were sympathetic, and the death was certified as natural causes - there was evidence of a respiratory infection, and no sign of any failure of care.

But just a year later, in what must have felt like a horribly familiar nightmare, the Clarks' second child Harry died, aged 8 weeks. This time, there was no sympathy from the professionals. Four weeks after Harry's death the couple were arrested, and eventually Sally Clark was charged with murdering both children. She was tried and convicted in 1999 and is now almost three years into a life sentence.

The forensic evidence was slim to nonexistent - certainly neither case would have stood up alone. Even the prosecution team disagreed among themselves as to how the two children had died. They claimed first that they had been shaken, then that Sally Clark had smothered them (the forensic indications of these two causes of death are normally quite distinct). There was no evidence that she had been an uncaring or violent mother - in fact, all the evidence pointed in the opposite direction. So how come Sally Clark is serving life in prison? Simply put, because the prosecution argued, and the jury accepted, that lightning does not strike twice.

As Cheshire solicitor Sally Clark - convicted of killing two of her babies - is freed by the Court of Appeal, BBC News Online looks back on the case.
Opinion on Sally Clark was polarised during her trial and her subsequent campaign to quash her conviction.

Mrs Clark, 38, from Wilmslow, Cheshire, was convicted of murder at Chester Crown Court in November 1999.

We were meant to have children and I loved them so much I couldn't believe it happened twice."



Sally Clark

She denied smothering her sons, eight-week-old Harry, and Christopher, aged 11 weeks, and said they must have died of "cot death syndrome".

The Crown portrayed her as a "lonely drunk" who missed her well-paid job as a solicitor and resented her children for keeping her at home.

But her supporters say she always loved her children and was supported by her husband Stephen.

Mrs Clark herself told the trial: "We were meant to have children and I loved them so much I couldn't believe it happened twice."

She gave birth to a third child after Harry's death, who is now being cared for by her husband.

Statistics

The crux of the case revolved around whether it was conceivable the "cot deaths" of two of Mrs Clark's children were coincidences.

Eminent paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow, who appeared for the prosecution, estimated the likelihood of two siblings dying of "cot death syndrome" were one in 73 million.


Husband Stephen has campaigned for his wife's freedom
This was damning evidence against Mrs Clark.

But her husband and supporters took issue with Sir Roy's evidence.

They were supported by the Royal Statistical Society, which took the unprecedented step of writing to the Lord Chancellor stating "there was no statistical basis" for the figure.

Dr Stephen Watkins, Director of Public Health at Stockport Health Authority, said Sir Roy had made a fundamental mathematical error.

Dr Watkins said when correctly calculated under the laws of probability the odds against the two deaths dropped dramatically.

Lifeless

Mrs Clark said she found both babies lifeless.

Christopher was found in his Moses basket while Mrs Clark's husband was at a Christmas party and Harry was found in a bouncing chair.

The death of Christopher in December 1996 was initially thought to have been due to a breathing problem.

But that was reassessed following Harry's death in January 1998.


In October 2000 Appeal Court judges threw out her first attempt to have her conviction quashed, saying there was "overwhelming" evidence to support the conviction.


The babies were found at the Clarks' home
The judges - who on Wednesday were examining the case for a second time - would have been more concerned with fresh evidence than opinion.

Campaigners for Mrs Clark hoped the keys to unlock her cell door were laboratory tests commissioned by a Home Office pathologist on Harry, the second of her babies to die.

Infection

Mrs Clark's lawyers say the tests showed "lethal" levels of bacterial infection which indicated Harry died of natural causes.

The jury was not told of these test results.

The tests were among fresh evidence included in a dossier which persuaded the Criminal Cases Review Commission to refer the case back to the Court of Appeal last year.

She was freed on Wednesday, after her second appeal.