CHILDMINDER CHALLENGES EXPERTS IN APPEAL AGAINST CONVICTION
The safety of the conviction of a childminder for shaking to death a baby in her care has become a battle for the 'middle ground' in expert evidence.
Three Court of Appeal judges have heard legal argument and fresh evidence as Keran Henderson, who has always protested her innocence, fights to have her conviction for manslaughter quashed.
The prosecution case at her trial in 2007 was that injuries suffered by eleven-month old Maeve Sheppard two years earlier were caused by violent shaking, but Henderson, who had seven years'experience as a childminder, claimed that the child had a seizure while she was changing her nappy.
She was in sole charge of the infant when Maeve was taken to hospital unconscious and critically ill with brain injuries in March 2005, two months after being hired to look after her.
A jury at Reading Crown Court convicted Henderson of manslaughter by a majority of 10 to two at the end of a five-week trial. She has since completed her three-year sentence.
Prosecutor Joanna Glynn, who is opposing the appeal, told jurors at the trial: "It is our case that Mrs Henderson violently shook Maeve and the medical evidence is that act caused Maeve's death."
But, Lord Justice Moses, Mrs Justice Rafferty and Mr Justice Hedley heard from consultant pathologist Professor James Morris that in his opinion "the features in Maeve Sheppard's death are consistent with, but not diagnostic of, shaken baby syndrome".
The judges heard that he also advanced the "proposition" that Maeve's cause of death "could have been due to one of the natural disease processes" which can cause an acute life-threatening event or "sudden unexplained death in infancy".
Professor Morris said that in the context of a sudden unexplained death "one cannot exclude natural, unknown disease".
He told the court: "There is a body of evidence which has been accumulated over many years that bacterial toxins can cause sudden collapse and sudden death in infancy."
Professor Morris, who gave evidence in the appeal of solicitor Sally Clark, is regarded as one of the country's leading experts in bacterial toxins in cases of cot death.
His evidence contrasted with the medical experts called at the original trial by the Crown Prosecution Service who had said that injuries to the baby were caused by her neck being violently snapped back and forth.
Michael Topolski QC for Mrs Henderson, told the appeal court that at trial she had faced a "formidable medical case via the thirty two witnesses called by the prosecution". The case needed to be formidable "not least because of the abundance of evidence as to the positive good character" of Henderson, he said.
Henderson's legal team are now calling into question the evidence given by medical experts during the trial.
The three judges have announced that their decision is reserved until two other similar cases have been heard.
ENDS