Kathleen Folbigg, once labelled as the nation’s worst female serial killer, has had her convictions for killing her four children quashed by the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal.
Now 56, Ms Folbigg spent 20 years in prison after being found guilty of killing her four young children. They were just babies or toddlers when they died between the years of 1989 and 1999 in the Hunter region.
She has always maintained her innocence but was convicted at trial of three counts of murder and one of manslaughter.
Source: Kathleen Folbigg has convictions for killing her four children overturned, live updates – ABC News
US research indicates that women are more likely to be wrongly convicted. This many may find astonishing for the cases mostly publicised are those of men wrongly convicted on DNA evidence – that is, where DNA evidence technology now is able to refute a conviction imposed before the DNA reached current stages of development. Perhaps also women are/may be more likely to languish in prison without attention paid. Canada some years ago did a major review of cases of women convicted of unlawful killings – this followed R v Lavallee [1990] https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/1990/1990canlii95/1990canlii95.html … Following the Challen case in the United Kingdom the Criminal Case Review Committee CCRC said it would undertake a review of cases of women convicted of unlawful killings … it is unclear whether this review has been undertaken or completed. Question: where is the Australian review? This is a matter for the states in that criminal law is under state power principally – however, the matter is so significant that joint state-federal royal commission is needed here. The Kathleen Folbigg is likely to be one only of a number that have resulted in wrongful prosecutions and wrongful convictions. Women need to rise up and demand this review. The circumstances are clear in Australia (and globally) that women are victims of criminal assault at home resulting in murder (too often pleaded down to manslaughter if prosecuted at all) and where it results in the woman’s survival only because she has had to save herself by killing the perpetrator, inevitably she will be prosecuted, tried, convicted of murder. Similarly when it comes to child killing – what happens to the men who engage in this, and what happens to the women?