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Sally Clark

Sally Clark (August 1964 – 15 March 2007) was a British solicitor who, in November 1999, became the victim of a miscarriage of justice when she was found guilty of the murder of two of her sons. Although the conviction was overturned and she was freed from prison in 2003, she developed serious psychiatric problems and died in her home in March 2007 from alcohol poisoning.Clark's first son died suddenly within a few weeks of his birth in September 1996, and in December 1998 her second died in a similar manner. A month later, she was arrested and subsequently tried for the murder of both children. The prosecution case relied on statistical evidence presented by paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow, who testified that the chance of two children from an affluent family suffering sudden infant death syndrome was 1 in 73 million. He had arrived at this figure by squaring 1 in 8500, as being the likelihood of a cot death in similar circumstances. The Royal Statistical Society later issued a statement arguing that there was "no statistical basis" for Meadow's claim, and expressing its concern at the "misuse of statistics in the courts".Clark was convicted in November 1999. The convictions were upheld at appeal in October 2000, but overturned in a second appeal in January 2003, after it emerged that the prosecutor's pathologist had failed to disclose microbiological reports that suggested one of her sons had died of natural causes. She was released from prison having served more than three years of her sentence. The journalist Geoffrey Wansell called Clark's experience "one of the great miscarriages of justice in modern British legal history". As a result of her case, the Attorney-General ordered a review of hundreds of other cases, and two other women had their convictions overturned.