text: Clark was convicted in November 1999. The convictions were upheld on appeal in October 2000, but overturned in a second appeal in January 2003, after it emerged that Dr Alan Williams, the prosecution forensic pathologist who examined both of her babies, had failed to disclose microbiological reports that suggested the second of her sons had died of natural causes.[4] She was released from prison having served more than three years of her sentence. Journalist Geoffrey Wansell called Clark's experience "one of the great miscarriages of justice in modern British legal history".[5] As a result of her case, the Attorney-General ordered a review of hundreds of other cases, and two other women had their convictions overturned. Clark's experience caused her to develop serious psychiatric problems and she died in her home in March 2007 from alcohol poisoning.[2][6]
  Clark was tried at Chester Crown Court, before Mr Justice Harrison and a jury.[7] The prosecution, led by Robin Spencer QC, was controversial due to the involvement of the paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow, former Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Leeds, who testified at Clark's trial that the chance of two children from an affluent family suffering cot death was 1 in 73 million. He likened the probability to the chances of backing an 80–1 outsider in the Grand National four years running, and winning each time.[4]
  Clark was convicted by a 10–2 majority verdict on 9 November 1999,[4] and given the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. She was widely reviled in the press as the murderer of her children. Despite recognition of the flaws in Meadow's statistical evidence, the convictions were upheld at appeal in October 2000.[7] She was imprisoned at Styal women's prison, near her home in Wilmslow, and then Bullwood Hall women's prison in Hockley in Essex.[8] The nature of her conviction as a child-killer, and her background as a solicitor and daughter of a police officer, made her a target for other prisoners.[8] Her 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.[8]
  Successful second appealEdit
  ^ "Alcohol killed mother Sally Clark". BBC News. 7 November 2007. Retrieved 11 February 2011.
  ^ "UK | England | Essex | Alcohol killed mother Sally Clark". BBC News. 7 November 2007. Retrieved 25 September 2013.