Free Angela Cannings
another miscarriage of justice
by Ken Norman (Portia Campaign chairman)
and
John Fryer (Portia member, retired independent scientist, toxic chemicals
and their effects on health)
On
Tuesday 16th April 2002, Angela Cannings was convicted of the murder
of her two sons Jason and Matthew. She
was given a double life sentence. Her
first child was stillborn; the second, Gemma, died 14 months before Jason, on
November 14, 1989, and the prosecution claims that this was the �backdrop�
to the two later deaths, on January 13, 1991 and November 12, 1999.
(Question: What the devil
does �backdrop� mean? Answer:
There was not the slightest evidence that Gemma was murdered, but the
jury was made to realise that she might have been.)
Wiltshire
police said they were sad and baffled by the case. �I feel tremendous sympathy for her because she strikes me
as a nice woman,� said Det. Sergt Rob Findley.
Even more
sad and baffling is that Prof. Roy Meadow should have been called in, after the
derision aroused by his evidence at the trial of Mrs Sally Clark, and that
juries should still be mesmerized by him.
If guilty
Angela deserves the sentence, unless there was mental/emotional breakdown, as
the judge supposed. Many people
will suppose that she has had a fair trial. The problem is that the conviction is neither fair nor just.
Gemma was
born by Caesarean section; so was Jason, who suffered from dislocated hips and
had to have a splint. Nine
days before his death a health visitor had to give him mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation after finding him apparently lifeless.
She found Angela screaming, �It�s happened again.�
Matthew
also suffered �acute life-threatening events� nine days before he died and,
according to Paul Dunkels QC, prosecuting, these had been earlier attempts to
smother. (But why should
attempts to smother babies end in failure?
Two minutes with a hand or pillow held over the face could not fail to
kill. A more fair opinion would be
that these were apnoea attacks).
Angela�s
second cousin lost two children due to cot death, and this indicates inherited
mitochondrial mutation (inherited from the mother�s family, not from the
husband; it can bring more than one-in-four risk of infant death).
Angela is
now serving a sentence that even the judge considers to be inhuman - double life
imprisonment - to complete the misery of these events.
Judge Dame Heather Hallett, 52, who has two sons of her own, said while
passing the mandatory sentence, �There is no medical evidence before the court
to suggest there was anything wrong with you at the time of the deaths of your
children, but I have no doubt that for a woman like you to have committed these
terrible acts of suffocating your own babies, there must have been something
seriously wrong with you.�
Suggesting that post-natal depression was a factor, she continued: �This in my judgement is a classic kind of injustice that can be caused by mandatory sentencing. In my opinion you will be no threat to anyone in the future.�
It would
have been only a minor step from this almost unprecedented expression of
sympathy for the judge to have considered her innocent. The likelihood is that
Angela never has been a risk to children.
The jury
took more than nine hours to unanimously decide that the babies were smothered
(indicating that some jurors had to be argued out of their own beliefs) and in a
front-page report the Daily Mail added the words �even though medical
experts were unable to find clear proof of suffocation.�
Can
we say for certain that she is an innocent victim? No, but neither can we say that any person picked up at
random has not committed murder. Some
people are vile and evil and some of these may be involved in the case � but
if you were to ask, �Was it Angela?� we would say, �Not likely.�
She is like many other mums throughout the world who have suffered the
loss of a child or children from Sudden Infant Cot Death Syndrome - termed a
syndrome because there is no one cause that has yet been identified.
(The study of genetics is only in its infancy).
During
the last few years we have gone from a country that shared the grief of mothers
losing their infants without known cause to the situation today where we damn
them for the same tragedy. After
every sudden infant death there is now what is euphemistically called a �Death
Scene Investigation.� Its sole purpose is to see if a parent or carer can
conceivably be suspected of having committed murder.
The
doctors involved are selected because they declare belief in �thinking
dirty.� Several large-scale
studies (one published in 2001) have concluded that only three to six percent of
cot deaths result from deliberate neglect or abuse, including murder, but
�dirty thinkers� declare that 40% of cot deaths are actually murder; the
consequence is that 37 out of every 40 prosecutions for child murder are highly
controversial - even among paediatric pathologists - and yet the scales of
justice are loaded even further than this.
If
you�re a grieving mother or a nanny, shocked out of your wits by the death of
an infant, then God help you, the law is intent on ripping you apart.
The
Prosecution�s investigators use the natural instinct of the parents who want a
thorough investigation and analyse their outpouring of grief to see if there is
the slightest possibility of foul play. Have
you shaken the baby? A loaded
question, for if you say yes, you have given the prosecution a conviction for
Shaken Baby Syndrome. If you deny
it, you�re probably a liar, for all babies are shaken, if only in an
expression of happiness. If you
were not there to shake the child, you become suspected of having left the baby
alone, to suffocate.
An apnoea
alarm had been given to Angela after the first death (which was therefore
professionally believed to have been due to breathing failure).
It went off, and another death occurred.
Angela said she had failed to hear it, and presumably told the
investigators, in anguish, �If only I had been listening.�
This became additional grounds for prosecution - did she ignore the
alarm? Yet it�s only like a telephone bell; how often have you been
indoors, or nearby, and failed to hear the phone ring?
The
benefit of hindsight is remarkable. Everything
the parent does is analysed in the greatest detail for deviation from assumed
normal behaviour. How can a mother who has suffered the loss of a previous baby
have what we would imagine is normal behaviour?
After losing possibly the most precious person in your life you cannot be
normal. Everything you say or do
will be anything but normal. The
consequence is that whatever you do will be construed as strange.
Just put yourself in the position of losing a child.
Would any reaction be considered normal? Tears? They�re
crocodile. A brave face?
You�re a hard brute.�
You have
misery that no one would wish upon their worst enemy. Perhaps you decide to get rid of any sign that the first
infant ever existed � and that eventually becomes evidence of murder.
It was
devastating evidence (used against Angela) that she was at home alone with the
children when they died. Surely all
mothers ARE alone with their infants for much of their life?
It is
considered evidence of crime to have further children only months after a death
. . . but isn�t this evidence that a devastated mother has unsatisfied
maternal longings that she cannot endure? If
in fact it had become intolerable living with one baby, so that she had been
driven to murder, how on earth could this give need for a second pregnancy?
How does
a mother know what has happened to cause the loss of a child when cause of a
first death is recorded as unknown?
There are
various possibilities. The baby may
have been too hot or too cold, or placed face-down; the parents smoke, the
mattress or quilt was too soft, the child could slip down beneath blankets.
These are just a few of the many factors that parents have been warned
about.
The
Cannings were warned that their smoking might have caused a child�s death. So
they gave up smoking to avoid any more losses. It didn�t work for them. It was
not the fatal factor. They may have
lost babies because of toxicity � one possibility is that the mum herself
carried toxicity and was feeding a slow death to her infants.
In Asia parents have the lowest cot death rate in the world, yet babies are put to sleep in the more dangerous positions. In short there are no easy answers. In Hong Kong for example the death rate was 0.04 whereas in New Zealand it stood 100 times this rate at 4.00 � all per 1,000 live births. Doctors claim subtle differences in using hard mattresses, not smoking, changing the angle at which babies lie, but the change in the rate of cot death is less than 10 percent of the regional variation around the world. Something does not add up. Something is clearly not right.
At
Angela�s trial, the defence argued that two babies other than
Gemma and Jason had died within two years in the tiny hamlet of Winterbourne
Gunner - �a very unusual event and there may be something in the evidence
about Winterbourne Gunner that tells you about the toxins inside a baby and
toxins in the environment.�
The
Guardian reported: �The
Wiltshire hamlet is near the Ministry of Defence nuclear biological and chemical
centre at Porton Down, and the defence is expected to argue the deaths could be
connected to residues of materials or poisons left at the site.�
�Earlier the court
heard from Group Captain Ian McPhee, a former commandant of the nuclear
biological and chemical centre, who said an independent civilian survey [How
independent?] had found �no gross contamination of the land or
the water table� and had detected no chemical or nerve agents.
�But the officer
added that during an operation to clear the land between November 1998 and July
1999, 1,088 munitions were recovered to add to a previous total of 108 [ten
times as many - presumably after the �independent civilian survey�].
Of the earlier discoveries, two munitions contained mustard and lewisite
blister agents that would cause breathing difficulties, and one of phosgene - a
pulmonary agent that attacks the lungs and causes the victim to �dry drown�
as the lungs reduce.�
Porton
Down is a place dedicated to delivering death as quickly and as undetectably as
possible to an enemy. In fact at the same time as the Wiltshire Police were
prosecuting and convicting Angela there was a parallel investigation into death
at this establishment. Curiously
the death of Ronald Maddison, which happened in the 1950�s, is still being
investigated while that of Angela�s children who died up to forty years later
has just reached a successful conclusion. (Successful
if you like to lock up an innocent person for two lifetimes.)
For
Ronald Maddison the charge could result in the UK Government and the scientists
being charged with murder. This of
course cannot be allowed to happen.
Our claim
is that Angela�s children died because of the chemical insidiousness of a
group of chemicals chosen as the weapon of choice to terminate life � all
forms of life. These chemicals are called nerve toxic organophosphates � made
by man to destroy the nervous system of all animal life with a nervous system
inside them � our nervous system is 95% similar to that of a fly.
The data of the killing power of these chemicals is awesome � you
cannot imagine how dangerous they are. With
old nerve toxins dumped for 80 years in the field next door, the risk to her
children was incalculable.
When you
ask what OP flame retardants are in mattresses, the answer is that this is a
trade secret. In 1969
cancer-inducing, nerve-destroying life-taking chemical was put into
nightclothing for infants between the ages of one month and six months �
because this was the age they were vulnerable to catching their nightclothes
alight and dying of burns from an open fire.
The flame retardants were perhaps more lethal than the original risk.
The number of cot deaths has multiplied.
A friend who
worked in the ambulance service through the 1980�s tells me of the build up in
cases in a small village to the point where there were three deaths in one week.
Not all
cot deaths are due to a particular OP nerve toxic, of course.
Carbon monoxide is a similar acting toxin. Drugs can kill, thalidomide
kills as well as disables. A whole group of phenothiazines have been proven to
cause cot death. Phenothiazines and tobacco smoke kill, but are relatively
non-toxic in comparison to OP�s and are used in lesser amounts. Then you
don�t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that OP nerve toxins designed
to kill fleas, etc., and used in large amounts around infants presents a clear
and present risk.
As we
write this, a recent court ruling means hundreds of people suffering from
mesothelioma, a cancer caused by asbestos, can no longer claim compensation
because they may have become contaminated at any one of scores of sites.
Years ago
a hard-working doctor showed that thalidomide had a less than desirable effect
on new-born babies � they had defective arms or legs.
In less than two years he was struck off the medical register.
A director of the company that supplied this drug got a knighthood. I (John Fryer) know a thalidomide victim.
She was born with a defective hand.
Her twin brother was a deformed thalidomide victim born dead.
There was just one problem � although my friend�s mother took
thalidomide, she could not prove it. So
she is not recognized as a thalidomide case and does not show up on the
government figures. Neither does
the twin brother; he was a bit of waste down the hospital sluice, just part of
the after-birth.
We do
have a peer-reviewed paper showing that an 80% death rate among children is
possible in a small village next to a source of OP nerve toxins.
This is not Winterbourne Gunner, of course, but a small European village
called Rinya, where the population availed themselves of some easy-to-catch
fish. They did not know that the fish had been made ill by an OP product, and a
carnage of infants followed.
In
fairness, when it was recognised that risk existed around Porton Down, men in
space-suits cleared up a lot of mess. They
claimed that the 100 or so glass phials found were intact, complete with
life-destroying nerve agents sealed in safely. They were less forthcoming about
1,000 remnants of phials picked up at the same time.
Angela
can be seen to have at least four exposures to nerve-destroying toxins:
1.
The chemical establishment
2.
The dumped of nerve agents
3. At
home she used OP flea spray on her dog � diazinon or chlorpyrifos, one
withdrawn and the other banned for use in the home - perhaps because of
experiences like Angela�s but not admitted.
4.
In the mattress used by Matthew there was an OP flame retardant �
probably TCP or tricresyl phosphate. In
1932 a few drops spilled on to a worker; he died, but production and sales went
ahead.
Fire risk
has diminished with the open coal fire; children�s clothes do not
spontaneously burst into flame when near a radiator.
Clearly
OP�s are a risk and it seems that babies are more sensitive than adults.
Angela to
this day may have OP�s still in her body, as a result of time spent at
Winterbourne Gunner, bringing possibility of death to any child she suckled.
If she is
to serve two life sentences in prison this can hardly matter.
But she told the court, when asked how she felt after Matthew died:
�I really did not know what I had done in my life to deserve to lose my
children. Each time I felt empty
inside and wondered why it had all happened.
�Throughout
all of this it has been a struggle, but my husband Terry and I are still
married. We are still as together
as we can be - and he fully supports me.
�The
one thing that I have regretted since I have lost Matthew was that I had
arranged to be sterilised early in my pregnancy with him. To this day I would still try again for another baby if I
hadn�t been sterilised.
�It is nothing to do with replacing the babies that I have lost. I don�t understand how or why or what I have done to deserve all this sadness.�
Was Prof
Roy Meadow giving deliberately false evidence when claiming Angela was a
murderess for example simply because she lost Matthew at 9.30am and not 7.30am
when she was not alone with the child? Of course not. Was Professor Berry a liar
when he found �every sign of cot death� and asked for murder charges to be
brought if justified? Of course not. But neither should we accept what they say
as being evidence of murder when other expert evidence could contradict them.
Helping
to convict Mrs Sally Clark of supposedly murdering two of her three children,
Meadow solemnly assured the jury that odds against a single cot death in an
affluent family were 1,850 to one, therefore for two deaths the odds became 1 in
73 million. This has been met with
derision by mathematicians and paediatricians.
Yet he was still allowed to give evidence convicting Angela.
By his peculiar maths, three deaths would involve odds of one in 129,500
billions - more children than have ever been born.
Coming
back to reality, Ms Michelle Horton, of Northfield, Birmingham, lost three
infants to cot death, all in fairly identical circumstances to Angela, but could
not be prosecuted because one of the deaths occurred in hospital when she was
nowhere near. (She still had
the word �murderer� daubed on her door by someone with similar mentality to
Meadow).
Another
expert view concerning Mrs Clark came from Professor Emeritus of Medical
Genetics Brian Lowry, of Calgary, who wrote that �while most [cot death] cases
are non-genetic or of unknown origin, nevertheless a few are genetic.
Mrs Clark�s risk of a second affected child could be 25 percent, or
even higher in the case of a mitochondrial mutation.
There was a case in the US a few years ago where a mother was convicted
of murder based on a cot death. She
was pregnant when she went to prison and gave birth there; the baby was removed
and placed in foster care. This
baby subsequently died under similar circumstances to the first.
Investigation of the first baby�s death disclosed that the experts who
said the death was due to glycol (anti-freeze) poisoning had made a mistake.
The mother was subsequently released.
�These
parents had a 25 per cent risk of subsequent children having the same disorder
and dying suddenly in infancy.�
There is
a huge amount of material on the world-wide web showing that cot deaths - even
multiple ones - are likely to be natural. A
BBC report, April 16, 2002, describes Sudden Infant Death Syndrome as �a
mysterious condition for which the cause is not known.
It is estimated that seven babies die for no apparent reason every week
in the UK. �Certainly second cot
deaths can be true cot deaths, where all other causes have been excluded.�
And this is the rub - for �think dirty� evidence will bring
together every other conceivable cause of death, and induce jurors (knowing
nothing of the subject) to believe there must have been murder.
Epidemiologist
Professor Jean Golding, a senior expert in patterns of disease and illness, told
the Salisbury jury there could be inherited genetic
flaw. �I couldn�t see where they were coming from in thinking there
was any pattern that would mean this was not a natural set of deaths.�
She had
identified one potentially significant pattern in the family. A distant cousin
in Ireland had experienced a series of four cot deaths and near-death
experiences. �It is intriguing that they seem to show the same pattern�
putting the family at greater risk.
�Genetics
is in its infancy and there are new discoveries all the time.
Things that we had no idea about are being revealed everyday, and I think
the Cannings family is going to be a very intriguing one to look at further.�
She gave
the opinion that paediatricians had become too ready to suspect foul play where
more than one child had died in the same family.
Criticising
Prof Meadow�s conclusion that the Cannings case was typical of smothering,
Prof Golding described his collection of case notes on smothering as the
equivalent of a �stamp collection� and of little relevance.
�There
are none of the patterns one would usually see in the background of someone who
was out to murder her children.�
Vivian
Howard, a prominent toxico-pathologist, listed a number of ways in which the
babies might accidentally have been exposed to potentially dangerous levels of
organo-phosphates (OPs); originally
developed as chemical weapons, at the time of the infant deaths they occurred in
diluted form in insecticides, in agricultural use and within the home as
fly-killers and flea powders for pets.
The
Cannings� home at Horse Barrow not only lay close to farmland and rail lines,
both of which could have been sprayed with organophosphate preparations, but was
also not even a hundred yards from the Porton Down Site.
She was in the habit of walking a dog and the babies around the village
every day, allowing the dog to run in the fields.
OPs were
semi-volatile; they could evaporate into the atmosphere and recondense
elsewhere, particularly on absorbent surfaces such as bedding.
In recent
years [particulary since the children�s deaths] they had become more sparingly
used but some infants might be exceptionally vulnerable to toxins in the
environment. �They live rather
closer to the edge than adults.� Babies
under six months old were particularly vulnerable to OPs because they had not
yet developed the capacity to metabolise toxins.
After
this evidence, unfortunately, the jury took an Easter break before returning to
give their verdict [and to forget
inconvenient facts].
On
resumption, Paul Dunkels QC, prosecuting, asked the jury to ignore �the
combination of medical reasons offered by the defence.�
[Surely jurors should not
ignore such evidence]. The
common factor was that Jason and Matthew had the same mother and each baby was
alone with her when he died. [Warning
to women: never have more than one child; never be alone with it.]
�Jason�s
scare on June 4, 1991, when he stopped breathing and had to be resuscitated, and
his death nine days later both occurred after her husband had gone to work.�
[Husbands, don�t go to work, shops or pub, or there�s be murder.]
Organophosphates
at Winterbourne Gunner could not have affected Matthew because the family lived
in Salisbury during the baby�s lifetime.
[But they could have collected in the mother�s body and been passed on
in her milk.]
These are
cockeyed arguments on which to base murder convictions, but with jurors who know
nothing of cot death, they succeed.
Mike
Mansfield QC, in his closing speech for the defence, said sudden infant death
has its origins in the bible. Because
it remains a mystery does not mean there has to be a scapegoat.
There was no haemorrhaging of the eyes, no pressure marks, no bleeding
from the nose and mouth [all regarded as indicators of smothering], no rib
fractures, no old injuries.
�Matthew�s
so-called life-threatening event was no such thing. It was a vomit attack, misinterpreted by the mother as
something threatening life.� He
was immune-deficient and becoming susceptible to various infections.
After the verdict, Angela has not been found guilty of murder; she�s guessed to be guilty. Lawyers are preparing an appeal.
The
entire legal system is heavily loaded against a defendant.
The suspect is escorted into the dock, having been held in jail perhaps
for more than a year among inmates filled with hate for a monster who (the press
informs them) is likely to have killed a baby, or two or three; in court,
perhaps in handcuffs, with police or prison officers on each side, accused,
allowed to speak only when voice is demanded, already identified to jurors over
a period of many months in local and perhaps national or world media as an
accused child-killer; and those jurors must be strangers to her and cannot know
anything to her credit.
She
stands on display in the dock, to be denounced and declared guilty by lawyers
who paint in thick vivid daubs, producing images in stark black and white with
huge crimson splashes of blood. There
is not the slightest doubt that you are evil, they declare.
The
innocent victim was a helpless baby who must have been shaken for several
minutes then dashed to the ground with force equivalent to a 15ft fall on to
concrete, or cold-bloodedly suffocated.
All
this is beyond question for there is no other way the killing could have taken
place, declare the �think dirty� experts, while other equally qualified
medical men attempt to suggest that possibly there may be doubt.
Is
it in any way remarkable that mistakes are made, when the jurors called upon to
decide have no knowledge of what the expert witnesses are arguing about, and
they might as well be speaking in Mandarin Chinese, Farsi or Urdu?
There
is little or no chance that jurors fully understanding vital evidence in these
trials unless they themselves possess understanding of medicine; for accurate
verdicts the defending counsel should have the right to demand that every juror
is a General Practitioner or possess a doctorate in medicine.
Here
is the far more civilised Florida solution for bringing people to trial:
�Cutting edge - murder two,� on Channel 4, on November 3 and 4, 1998,
gave a day-to-day picture of the murder trial in Florida of a Lancashire midwife
who had made immediate admission to police of shooting her husband six times.
The
defence secured her release on bail; she was given care of her baby to bring
normality and calm to her life during the months of waiting; she received
psychiatric counselling to prepare her for the ordeal of trial; a mock trial
took place before students of law, to obtain opinion upon the best line of
defence; there was a mock cross-examination, so that she could learn to appear
calm, steadfast, confident, and aware of legal trickery which might infer that
she had intended to kill; a group of perhaps twenty lawyers, psychologists and
medical experts met for a round-table discussion on how best to outwit the
prosecutor. There was even an
attempt to persuade a judge to declare her first hysterical confession to be
inadmissible evidence.
All
this on legal aid, with a highly experienced former chief prosecutor now turned
defence counsel to lead the massive team.
It
sounds ridiculous, yet does no more than put the defendant more nearly in
equality with her accusers. And the
defence, unsurprisingly, was successful.
Compare
this with trials elsewhere (and normal British procedure).
Every nuance that might conceivably hint at guilt is presented as hard
evidence. Louise Woodward had
�dropped,� not �popped,� a child down; Tricia Muff had �whip-lashed�
a baby�s head; Helen Stacey had
used force �equivalent to an injury in a road traffic accident�;
Manjit Basuta �banged a child�s head repeatedly on the floor�
inflicting �very catastrophic injuries� (without leaving a bruise); Sally
Clark was at fault in two directions - she had screamed hysterically in the
ambulance, �diverting paramedics from their attempts to revive the child,�
yet had �superficial� reaction according to a doctor who broke the news of
the child�s death. [Advice for any mother accused of murdering a child:
don�t show grief; don�t fail to show it.]
The accused parent or
carer is left to choose a defence solicitor from her own small town, possibly
while she is already held in custody. She
has no possible means to assess his skill. It may be the first murder trial he has ever attended; almost
certainly it will be his first child-murder case and he has no experience of
refuting �dirty thinking� expert witnesses; he may be chosen during
interrogation because this was the only lawyer on duty or whose name was known
to the defendant (perhaps he once helped her buy a house). There is no possibility to grieve and calm herself -
unprepared for a situation in which the whole panoply of justice puts her in a
bewildered starring role of �the prisoner at the bar,� she is unrehearsed,
ashamed, frightened, under cross-examination, with a highly proficient
Prosecutor doing his utmost to bring a pause, a hesitancy, a lack of verbal
fluency, appearance of doubt, the slightest apparent contradiction.
She has had no
mock-trial, no rehearsal of interrogation, no psychiatric counselling, and, in
the appalling role of suspected child-killer, there is the knowledge that an
adored baby (or several) died in a manner she cannot begin to understand, no
doubt having feared for months that by some slight error or omission in
mothercraft she had involuntarily caused the death(s).
The
chance of acquittal in such a totally one-sided contest, experienced heavyweight
against badly injured novice pigmy? It�s like an amateur lightweight in a 12-round encounter
with Mike Tyson.
Furthermore,
there is a huge flaw in the modus operandi of trial by jury:
the requirement that they get together to agree their verdict.
There are many cases
(such as Angela�s) in which no one other than God and the accused can know for
certain whether there is culpability.
We are not allowed to
know what goes on behind the doors of a jury room - but can we speculate?
Some jurors, given a
dreadful and almost impossible task, might prefer a verdict of not-proven, but
outside Scotland the law does not allow it.
The judge wants unison, for it�s so much more satisfactory, removing
(or disguising) all appearance of doubt. If
there can�t be unison, he might agree to accept a 10-2 majority conviction
(conveniently regarding this as �guilty beyond reasonable doubt� despite the
16.8% belief in innocence). And if
the jury is split 9-3 he might order a retrial to bring the illusion of
certainty next time.
What are the thoughts
of the jurors during protracted argument, knowing that until they agree,
discussion may go on for days longer, growing more heated and more futile with
every hour, for there is nothing new emerging?
One
Alf Garnett among them - prejudiced, loud-mouthed, highly opinionated, incapable
of seeing any other viewpoint - can gradually force the other eleven to forget
their scruples and convict. A
passionate member of the hang �em, flog �em, lock �em up for life brigade,
he cannot be argued with; he knows wrong from right, and that�s that.
The police have made an arrest, there�s been questioning and a charge
was laid, so it�s obvious that they know more than they can say.
Other
jurors, wishing to dissent, have the choice of fruitless squabbling for the next
several hours or days, or giving way to duress and blackmail (denial of their
wish to get it over and go home). Is
it inconceivable that eleven jurors, placid by nature, unused to pub brawls and
arguments, could be forced to suppress their own doubts and convict under the
inflexibility of one?
There may be just one
or two jurors capable of real understanding when a complex medical issue is
involved, but let�s suppose they are unaccustomed to heated bar-room
disputation: it creates a situation
in which, to quote an old saying, �The best lacking all conviction while the
worst are full of passionate intensity.�
Faced with one or two others, more forceful and opinionated, brushing
aside technicalities, which view is likely to predominate?
And is it necessarily the truth?
As one reform (writes
Tom Watkins, of the Portia Campaign), jurors should be required to account for
their views in writing, to show they had undertaken the task fairly.
It would force them to take a responsible attitude, and if it became
apparent that there was prejudice or misunderstand, this would give grounds for
appeal. Because they would need to
take notes, there would be less likelihood of minds wandering.
And if jurors were put
into 12 separate rooms, out of contact with others while making their decisions
and writing in explanation, those with dominant views (either way) could not
influence the opinions of others.
This, however, would certainly not please Home Secretary David Blunkett who has already complained that there are too many acquittals.
The establishment, actually, doesn�t give a monkey�s cuss whether or not Angela is falsely convicted - either way she has served the purpose by deterring other parents and carers from killing babies. It�s a logical, valid argument, of course, and applies to many other types of crime. Except that, having the largest proportion of prisoners in Europe, you would logically expect a dramatic decline in crime.We
can speak only for cases involving child death.
There is no dramatic decline; this would come only if tragedies such as
Angela�s were scientifically investigated, genetic defects and toxins
detected, and treatment given.
Years ago
a hard-working doctor showed that thalidomide had a less than desirable effect
on new-born babies � they had defective arms or legs.
In less than two years he was struck off the medical register. A director
of the company which supplied this drug got a knighthood.
I (John Fryer) know a thalidomide victim.
She was born with a defective hand. Her twin brother was a deformed
thalidomide victim born dead. There was just one problem � although my
friend�s mother took thalidomide, she could not prove it.
So she is not recognised as a thalidomide case and does not show up on
the government figures. Neither does the twin brother; he was a bit of waste
down the hospital sluice, just part of the after-birth.
We do
have a peer-reviewed paper showing that an 80% death rate among children is
possible in a small village next to a source of OP nerve toxins. This
is not Winterbourne Gunner, of course, but a small European village called Rinya,
where the population availed themselves of some easy-to-catch fish. They did not
know that the fish had been made ill by an OP product, and a carnage of infants
followed.
In
fairness, when it was recognised that risk existed around Porton Down, men in
space-suits cleared up a lot of mess. They
claimed that the 100 or so glass phials found were intact, complete with
life-destroying nerve agents sealed in safely. They were less forthcoming about
1,000 remnants of phials picked up at the same time. Angela had at least four
exposures to nerve-destroying toxins:
1.
The chemical establishment
2.
Dumped nerve agents
3.
She used OP flea spray on her dog � diazinon or chlorpyrifos, one since
withdrawn and the other banned for use in the home - perhaps this was because of
experiences like Angela�s although such a link has never been admitted;
4.
In the mattress used by Matthew there was an OP flame retardant �
probably TCP or tricresyl phosphate. In
1932 a few drops spilled on to a worker; he died, but production and sales went
ahead.
Fire risk
has diminished with the open coal fire; children�s clothes do not
spontaneously burst into flame when near a radiator.
Clearly
OP�s are a risk and it seems that babies are more sensitive than adults.
Angela to
this day may have OP�s still in her body, as a result of time spent at
Winterbourne Gunner, bringing possibility of death to any child she suckled.
We have
knowledge that phenothiazines lead to the symptoms and findings of Cot Death �
we can therefore be sure that the completely unacceptable risk of what Angela
used in her home, the unfortunate OP in the babies mattresses added to her
choice of where to live presented her with the lot to lose 75% of her live born
babies plus the first one that never made it.
She has
suffered what other people can scarcely imagine: to lose all your children and then face the shame and
humiliation of being accused of their murder and given life sentences. It
is sickening to think that so-called humans could have built up the distorted
case against her, presumably for the betterment of their own careers.
Angela is
not a murdering monster. Much more
likely, the case proves that a chemical designed to kill does really KILL.
Published
by the Portia Campaign
The
Croft, West Common, Bowness-on-Solway
Cumbria
CA7 5AG
(016973
51820)
(email:
[email protected])
Website:
www.portia.org
Read
�The Lynch-Mob Syndrome� (from www.infinityjunction.com
- �4.49)
for
further false convictions of parents and carers