professor sir Roy Meadow

[darth vader]

I don't think i'm overstepping the AB warning on legal cases as he's not on trial, so my question is - Should this man be put on trial? He is now the cause of mis-carriages of justice and it seems there may be more. Or at the very least, should he be stripped of his knighthood? Or is this a huge ghastly mistake and we should let him off? views please......... http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/story.jsp?s
tory=472454

[andy hughes]

It's a tricky one isn't it? i am sure the professor has given his expert testomony in good faith, believing his answers to be correct and truthful, and I would doubt that any actual law has been broken. The moral issues raised are far more complex, and it will be interesting to see where this situation goes. Since the received wisdom is that no-one actually knows what causes cot deaths, the idea of taking a poistion of authority on which legal decisions inclduing sentencing are taken seems to me to be dubious in the extreme. We shall see.

[TRINITY]

This reminds me of my old doctor when I say old he was still practicising gp in his 70's, I had appendicites (sp) ended up bursting as my lovely doc. kept sending me home saying there's nothing wrong. In this case how can two kids die from the same=cot death he believes it's absurd. They are sticking by their opinions even though we now have medical evidence which is contrary to their belief, he believes what he was taught in his schooling days and sticks by it, we can't teach an old dog new tricks, so kindly ask him to move aside please. Nice 2 see ya darth;.)

[darth vader]

Hi trinity how's Neo? i agree we shouldn't reach for the noose just yet, but this shouldn't go unnoticed. It remains to be seen where it goes but i hope they don't prosecute him. Just seems a real pity for those that wrongly served time. I have a feeling this is going to have severe implications for expert witnesses in the courts........

[TRINITY]

neo's yummy, and the wedding bells?? anyways I'm from N.ireland and know only to well about miscarriages of justice so this may help, but yup | sure do feel sorry for all them women, not nice at all u wanna grieve and instead get banged up, such is the wheel of life.

[jenstar]

It amazed me that he ever got away with the "1 in 73 million" line in Sally Clark's trial. It brings it home just how bad maths teaching is in this country that he could trot out that statistic and apparently not one person on the jury thought there was anything wrong with it. You'd think someone involved might have enough of a grasp of probability to realise that it simply doesn't work like that. It's as if he'd stated that the natterjack toad is a marsupial and nobody questioned it.

[andy hughes]

To take up Jenstar's point - it's not the fact that the jury ignored dubious stats in the professor's answer that is the nub of the problem. The issue is that as an 'expert' witness, the professor could have recited the Rubyat Of Omar Kayam backwards in Latin as part of his evidence, and would have been listened to and heeded, not because his evidence is valid or factual, but because he is an 'expert' witness. The fact that his arguments have since been disproved does not detract from the fact that, at the time, the professor was the perceived 'expert' in this area of medicine, and that is the major dilema. Yes 'experts' can be wrong, but who can know that at the time?

[bernardo]

The "legal" answer is that he should not be prosecuted, because he is an incompetent deluded fantasist, whereas a prosecution (for perverting the course of justice) would require him to be wilfully, wittingly and maliciously giving evidence which he *knows* to be untrue or incorrect. But the "what I think should happen" answer is that he should be boiled in a vat of sewage while his arms are pulled off slowly and his toes are nibbled by a swarm of vicious microscopic piranha fish.

[incitatus]

much the same thing happened with spilsbury towards the end of his career. one of the problems is the courts reliance on one expert-particularly in the bizarre and human-rights-incompatible world of the family court system

[darth vader]

top answers everyone. I think everyone agrees this is going to have implications on the reliance of 1 expert witness in future cases. My only concern was that in a murder case they based their prosecution on ONE witness rather than a few opinions, but there you go perhaps sir RM was the only expert in this field at the time? cheers Darth

[treaclefight]

he's just the tip of the iceberg, there are hundreds and hundreds of families who have lost their children as a result of medical opinions (later proved wrong) which state that the child has been harmed, worse still when the child is then harmed in care. child abuse / murder is incredibly difficult to provide evidence for and the good intentions that underpin the attempts to find this evidence have led to thousands of tragic injustices, to say that we have to make some sacrifices to protect abused children implies that these innocent parents are merely cannon fodder for our moral / legal processes and as a mother i really dont want to condone that. i think there is an argument for continuing to push into the incredibly sensitive area sor roy meadow was 'an expert' in so that we can get some real expertise in there, but if families are going to be cannon fodder then they are going to have to be compensated for a loss that it is impossible to compensate for, we cant just cant do it. the only appropriate way left to repay these families is to give them justice and if justice is served by standing roy meadow up in court and making him account for his opinions that have devastated so many lives (and saved some too, i'm sure of that) then so be it, thats the price of being the leader of your field.

[Janetex]

Hangin's too good fer 'im. I'd like to smother him with a pillow.