According to Dr Cavanagh, Ms Folbigg’s lawyer and a barrister with decades of experience in criminal law – including coronial inquests and matters involving infant deaths – the case should never have proceeded to trial. The 2003 conviction of Ms Folbigg went ahead despite a lack of forensic pathology evidence of smothering for each of the four children.
In the submission to NSW State Coroner Magistrate Teresa O’Sullivan, Ms Rego and Dr Cavanagh specify the scientific evidence to refute the prosecution’s case that Ms Folbigg smothered her four children. In short, they are asking for findings to be made of natural causes of death for each of Ms Folbigg’s children. Importantly, they added that none of the children had a coronial inquest at the time of their deaths.
During the 2003 trial, the prosecution put forward the arguments that there could be no such thing as three or more infant deaths in one family from natural causes and that selected diary entries written by Ms Folbigg were “virtual admissions”. These claims and more have been debunked by leading scientists working pro bono.
Ms Rego said that asking for a coronial inquest does not bring an end to the pardon petition that Mr Speakman has had since March last year. Although the details of the petition – written about here or accessed here – have been before Mr Speakman for over a year now, he has yet to make a decision.
In a letter to the Attorney-General on 4 March 2022, three Nobel Laureates and the outgoing and incoming presidents of the Australian Academy of Science said there was no “justifiable reason to keep Ms Folbigg incarcerated”, given the overwhelming evidence that she was not responsible for the deaths of her four children.
Ms Folbigg should never been taken to court about the death of her infants, because it was never treated as a normal tragedy from putting small infants (who cannot move their heads!) on their tummy to sleep, which smothers the infant and ends in tragic deaths due to lack of air! This form of potential death of small enfants was long known in Western Europe(since 1948!), which is why babies younger than 6 months are never put to sleep on their belly, but always on their sides with a bedroll behind their backs so they cannot turn onto their belly!