Australia needs a dedicated body for wrongful convictions

Professor David Hamer and Dr Andrew Dyer from Sydney Law School explain why Kathleen Folbigg's pardon points to the need for a Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) in Australia. The New South Wales Attorney-General Michael Daley today announced Kathleen Folbigg  has been pardoned  after having served 20 years for the murder of three of her infant children and the manslaughter of a fourth child. She has already been released, and won't serve the rest of her 30-year sentence. Daley had seen the preliminary findings of a second judicial inquiry led by former NSW Chief Justice Thomas Bathurst, which found there was reasonable doubt as to Folbigg's guilt for each of the offences. At trial, the prosecution had relied on the statistical improbability of so many of her children dying accidentally. However, at the second inquiry, this reasoning was called into question by fresh scientific evidence pointing to possible medical causes of the deaths. Her two daughters were found to have a  mutation in the CALM2 gene , which is associated with sudden infant death.