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Abstract
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"Science has been heard," says Carola Vinuesa after mother jailed for killing her four kids was pardoned and released.
Carola Vinuesa woke up early yesterday in London, around 3 a.m., when colleagues from Australia called the clinical geneticist with big news: Kathleen Folbigg, who on only circumstantial evidence was famously convicted of killing her four young children and jailed 2 decades ago, had just been pardoned by New South Wales and set free.
Her freedom is in large part due to the efforts of Vinuesa and other scientists who had amassed genetic evidence they said likely explained the children’s deaths. The pardon “was so exciting, so beautiful. I was so happy, for Kathleen first of all, but for science [too],” says Vinuesa, who now runs a lab at the Francis Crick Institute. “It’s a day to celebrate that science has been heard and has made a difference. And not just to this case, I think.” She told ScienceInsider that the Australian Academy of Science played a crucial role as an independent science adviser to the new inquiry into the Folbigg verdict, and Vinuesa hopes that becomes a model for how legal systems address complex science.
Folbigg was convicted after her two sons and two daughters, ranging in age from 19 days to 18 months, died mysteriously at home. The original guilty verdict rested primarily on the apparent unlikelihood of four children in one family dying naturally and ambiguous writing in Folbigg’s diary that the prosecution suggested betrayed a guilty conscience. ...
Language: en |