Dear Sir/Madam,

 

Although not very familiar with the case of Sally Clark, who was falsely convicted of murdering two of her young children, what I have learned from recent reports makes me think that the British judicial system, which I was taught was the best and most just in the world, is seriously flawed (My nightmare is over, says mother cleared of baby killings, 30 January 2003).

 

Those who knew Sally Clark, I have learned, knew that it was unthinkable for her to have murdered her two sons. Yet their testimony was ignored in favour of “experts” who did not know her from Adam and, as it turns out, were grossly (perhaps criminally) incompetent at their well-paid jobs (the Home Office pathologist, who was mainly responsible for this miscarriage of justice, will no doubt take early retirement and enjoy his fat pension as reward for all the suffering that his incompetence has caused).

 

The prosecution claimed that the probability of the two deaths being the result of an unfortunate coincidence were more than 70 million to one, a claim that, understandably, strongly influenced the jury’s guilty verdict. Yet this claim was completely false. The prosecution acted incompetently and irresponsibly in making it, while Sally Clark’s defence and the Judge proved themselves incompetent by not challenging it.

 

The prosecution, it seems, was not primarily interested in justice, but in a “successful” prosecution.

 

I am reminded of the case of the English au pair, Louise Woodward, who was tried for murder in Boston, USA, in 1997. The court proceedings were shown live on satellite TV and was the first trial of any sort that I had ever witnessed. I was horrified at the way in which the prosecutor sought to convince the jury of Louise Woodward’s guilt. He damned her character and made an emotional and irrational appeal to the Jurors to convict her of first degree murder. And to my further horror and astonishment, in his summing-up the Judge praised both the defence and the prosecution for conducting themselves so well and so fairly. I was dumbfounded. The Prosecutor had gone after Louise Woodward in the most appalling and unfair manner.

 

It occurred to me at the time that the lawyers on both sides saw themselves as championing their particular cause: the defence for Louise Woodward, the prosecution against her. One of the defence lawyers was well-known for having helped a rich and famous - defendant - so it was widely believed - get away with murder.

 

Truth and justice, it seems, are not the primary concern of either set of lawyers, but winning their case - like jousters in a medieval tournament.

 

Since the American judicial system is modelled on our own, could it be that both are similarly flawed?