Why her case completes the sequence
The three major post-Meadow exonerations — Sally Clark (acquitted January 2003), Angela Cannings (acquitted December 2003), Donna Anthony (acquitted April 2005) — together form the sequence that dismantled the Meadow framework from the inside and established the canonical principles the Letby CCRC review now applies.
Each case featured: retrospective reinterpretation of previously-explained infant deaths; Sir Roy Meadow or related paediatric-pathology experts; statistical arguments misrepresenting natural-cause probabilities. Each exoneration added a layer to the framework: Clark produced the RSS guidance, Cannings produced the principle, Anthony consolidated them.
The facts of her case
- Mother from Yeovil, Somerset. Her first child (a son) died in 1996 at four months; her second (a daughter) died in 1997 at eleven months.
- Convicted of both murders in November 1998.
- Central expert evidence: Sir Roy Meadow.
- First appeal dismissed in 2000.
- After the Clark (2003) and Cannings (2003) acquittals, the Criminal Cases Review Commission referred Anthony’s case back to the Court of Appeal.
- Acquitted on appeal in April 2005.
- Died in 2010 at the age of 36.
The CCRC route
The Anthony case is significant for how it reached the Court of Appeal. Unlike Clark and Cannings, Anthony’s case was referred by the Criminal Cases Review Commission — the same statutory body now considering the October 2025 Letby application. The Anthony referral established the CCRC’s role in correcting the post-Meadow miscarriages even after first appeals had been dismissed.
Mark McDonald KC’s October 2025 application to the CCRC is the direct procedural counterpart of the application that led to Donna Anthony’s acquittal. The procedural route is the same.
The personal cost
Sally Clark died in 2007 at 42, four years after her exoneration. Donna Anthony died in 2010 at 36, five years after hers. Both had served substantial prison sentences on convictions that were ultimately quashed. Wrongful convictions served under severe sentences have a documented pattern of producing catastrophic personal consequences, including on life expectancy after exoneration.
This is part of why timely CCRC review matters. The institutional pace is slow; the personal cost is high.
Why this biography is on the site
The Donna Anthony case completes the sequence that established the legal-medical framework the Letby CCRC review applies. Readers who know the Clark and Cannings cases but not Anthony are missing the CCRC-referral step of the framework. This biography supplies the reference.