Sally Clark has died aged 42. Another victim of British Justice.

For those of you who don't know, Sally was imprisoned for the murder of her two children and then released three years later when forensic experts changed their mind and realized that important parts of the prosecution case were based on dubious science. For a full run down of the case check it out on the BBC here.

The question I want to raise here though is not about miscarriage of justice. It is about how society treats people that have done wrong.

First I need to stress that Sally Clark did no wrong. She did not kill her children. They died of natural causes. However, every year some people do kill their own children. This, in my opinion, is not a crime.

Killing your own children is not a crime.

Let's imagine a hypothetical situation involving infanticide committed by a mother. Two young children are found dead in their beds, apparently smothered in their sleep.

Naturally the hospital need to establish cause of death, and when a pathologist finds that it wasn't cot death (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) the police become involved. This is all correct, unnatural deaths need to be investigated.

Skip forward a week or two and it has become clear that the mother was to blame. Maybe she even admits to it.

Two important things happened now:

• The press become scandalized
• Society is disgusted

By and large, the mother is then presented as being some kind of evil witch, an otherworldly satanic whore. When she stands trials it is as a common-or-garden murderer. This demonisation was rife in 1999 and lead to Sally Clark's conviction.

When she was found guilty, Robin Spencer QC, prosecuting, told the court that Sally Clark's actions:

"strike at the very core of everything natural and wholesome in the relationship between mother and child".

It was widely circulated that Sally Clark blamed her children for ending her successful law career. This was all conjecture, and the prosecution, media and police seemed to be seeking vengeance for the death of the children. Rather than feel any human compassion for someone who they thought was deranged enough to kill her own flesh and blood they wanted society to be rid of someone so unwholesome and disgusting. It was as if they could punish her for being supposedly mentally ill and make society better.

Vengeance and Punishment

There doesn't seem to be any differentiation in the eyes of the law, barristers, police and judges, or indeed the media, between a football hooligan stabbing someone to death and a mother killing her children. So at the time, when everyone believed Sally Clark to be guilty, it was as if she were a armed robber, a drunk driver, or an extortionist. In other words she was seen as a common criminal of the worst kind and not as a fragile and disturbed human being (remember that this is what they thought at the time, of course in the end she turned out to be innocent and sane).

People who kill their own children aren't normally criminals

A woman that kills two young children, her own children, clearly has psychological problems. That is obvious. It is true that any future children she might have will need protection from her, it is also true that some others in society might need protection from her and she might need to be incarcerated in a secure hospital for a period of time. Under no circumstances, however, should that woman be thrown into the criminal justice system to languish alongside drug dealers and thieves. All that does is make the police and gutter press reading class sleep more easily, it doesn't actually serve us as a society at all, it doesn't make children safer, and it doesn't help those people who recognize that they need help for postnatal depression but are afraid to talk to someone about it. It makes our society a colder and less caring place, an environment perversely in which mental illness that occasionally leads to infanticide can thrive.

This post has concentrated on the farce of a criminal justice system that punishes the sick and mentally ill. Therefore, even though they thought Sally Clark had killed her children it was ridiculous to send her to prison. Just to reinforce the fact, Sally Clark never killed anyone. 

The main players in the Sally Clark case

Robin Spencer QC - prosecuting barrister works at the Ballyard legal practice in London. The Sally Clark Case is not listed on his personal biog on the site.

Det. Insp. John Gardner - who lead the police investigation and was "pleased" when Sally Clark received two life sentences for something which she hadn't done works for Cheshire Police.

No journalist who ever took part in the Sally Clark witch hunt has ever uttered a word of remorse.

Interesting links

Stolen Innocence: The Sally Clark Story - A Mother's Fight for Justice