28 Facts About Sally Clark

Sally Clark was an English solicitor who, in November 1999, became the victim of a miscarriage of justice when she was found guilty of the murder of her two infant sons.

Sally Clark had arrived at this figure by squaring his estimate of a chance of 1 in 8500 of an individual SIDS death in similar circumstances.

Sally Clark was released from prison having served more than three years of her sentence.

Sally Clark's experience caused her to develop severe psychiatric problems and she died in her home in March 2007 from alcohol poisoning.

Sally Clark was born Sally Lockyer in Devizes, Wiltshire, and was the only daughter of a father who was a senior police officer with Wiltshire Constabulary and a mother who was a hairdresser.

Sally Clark studied Geography at Southampton University, and worked as a management trainee with Lloyds Bank and then at Citibank.

Sally Clark married solicitor Steve Clark in 1990, and left her job in the City of London to train in the same profession.

Sally Clark studied Law at City, University of London, and trained at Macfarlanes, a city law firm.

Sally Clark's first son, Christopher, was born on 22 September 1996.

Sally Clark had post-natal depression and received counselling at the Priory Clinic, but was in recovery by the time her second son, Harry, was born three weeks premature on 29 November 1997.

On both occasions, Sally Clark was at home alone with her baby and there was evidence of trauma, which could have been related to attempts to resuscitate them.

Sally Clark was later charged with two counts of murder while the case against her husband was dropped.

Sally Clark always denied the charge, and was supported throughout by her husband.

Sally Clark was tried at Chester Crown Court, before Mr Justice Harrison and a jury.

Sally Clark was widely reviled in the press as the murderer of her children.

Sally Clark was imprisoned at Styal women's prison, near her home in Wilmslow, and then Bullwood Hall women's prison in Hockley in Essex.

Sally Clark's husband left his partnership at a Manchester law firm to work as a legal assistant nearer the prison, selling the family house to meet the legal bills from the trial and first appeal.

Sally Clark commented scathingly about the poor quality of the pathologists' work in these cases:.

Sally Clark's case was referred back to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, and her convictions were overturned in a second appeal in January 2003.

Sally Clark was released from prison having served more than three years of her sentence.

Sally Clark stated in evidence as an expert witness that "one sudden infant death in a family is a tragedy, two is suspicious and three is murder unless proven otherwise".

Sally Clark claimed that, for an affluent non-smoking family like the Clarks, the probability of a single cot death was 1 in 8,543, so the probability of two in the same family was around "1 in 73 million".

Sally Clark cited 'legal advice' and 'professional etiquette' as the reasons for the delay.

Sally Clark was reinstated in 2006 after he appealed and the court ruled that his actions in court had amounted to misconduct though not serious enough to warrant him being struck off.

In June 2005, Alan Williams, the Home Office pathologist who conducted the postmortem examinations on both the Sally Clark babies, was banned from Home Office pathology work and coroners' cases for three years after the General Medical Council found him guilty of "serious professional misconduct" in the Sally Clark case.

Sally Clark failed to give any good reason for this change in opinion and his competence was called into question.

Sally Clark's conduct was severely criticised by other experts giving evidence and opinion to the court and in the judicial summing up of the successful second appeal.

Sally Clark was given the opportunity to address the court to explain his decision to withhold the laboratory results.