Why her case matters for the Letby review
The Angela Cannings case sits alongside the Sally Clark case and the Donna Anthony case as the three major post-Meadow miscarriages of justice. In each case, a mother was wrongly convicted of infanticide on:
- Statistical evidence (misapplication of the “rare therefore suspicious” pattern).
- Paediatric-pathology evidence (retrospective reinterpretation of previously-explained deaths).
- Sir Roy Meadow’s expert testimony.
In each case, the exoneration on appeal drove the Royal Statistical Society to publish guidance that directly applies to the Letby shift-rota chart. Understanding the three cases together is understanding the framework Prof. Richard Gill, Prof. Peter Green, the Bar Council signatories and the October 2025 CCRC application materials are applying.
The facts of her case
- Mother from Salisbury. Her first son died at seven weeks; a second son died at 18 weeks; a third son died at 19 weeks.
- Convicted in April 2002 of the murder of the second and third sons.
- Central expert evidence: Sir Roy Meadow, whose “multiple cot deaths in one family is suspicious” framing had already been discredited (but not yet withdrawn from practice) by the time her appeal was heard.
- Genetic testing subsequently identified a familial pattern consistent with a genetic predisposition to sudden infant death.
- Acquitted on appeal in December 2003. Her acquittal triggered a Court of Appeal warning against relying on paediatric expert evidence where other experts reasonably disagree.
The Court of Appeal’s principle
The Cannings Court of Appeal judgment articulated a specific principle of direct relevance to the Letby case: where reputable medical experts disagree about the cause of a death, and the medical evidence is the sole or principal basis for conviction, the conviction is unsafe.
The post-Panel expert record in the Letby case is a record of reputable medical experts disagreeing with the Crown’s causation opinion on every indicted case. The Cannings principle therefore applies directly.
Why this biography is on the site
The Cannings principle is a specific Court of Appeal formulation that the CCRC review of the Letby case has available to it. Readers who know the Sally Clark case but not the Cannings case are missing half of the statistical-evidence miscarriage framework. This biography supplies the reference.