She was convicted of killing her children. Now she wants a retrial.

In 2003, a woman by the name of Kathleen Folbigg was convicted of killing her four tiny children.

The jury found that, over a period of 10 years, she had smothered her babies – 19-day-old Caleb, eight-month-old Patrick, 10-month-old Sarah and 19-month-old Laura – in fits of rage because she was “unable to cope” with the demands of motherhood.

Folbigg – whose own father fatally stabbed her mother when Folbigg herself was an infant – maintains that her children’s deaths were caused by natural phenomena, including Cot Death.

But the NSW Supreme Court found her guilty of three counts of murder and one count of manslaughter, sentencing her to 40 years’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of 30 years.

Now, her lawyers are pushing for the conviction to be reviewed even as Folbigg’s sister Lea Bown has spoken out against the child killer, saying Folbigg should “never be released”.

A “miscarriage of justice”?

Folbigg, who has maintained her innocence from the outset, already appealed against her conviction in 2005 and had her sentence reduced to 30 years’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of 25 years.

But now Folbigg’s lawyers are calling for further judicial review of the case, claiming there has been a miscarriage of justice.

Director of Newcastle Legal Centre Shaun McCarthy, who’s currently preparing the petition for judicial review, says expert evidence should be reconsidered in light of “scientific and medical advances since 2003”.

“We’ve approached a number of world-class domestic and international experts in various fields to review the transcript, the evidence that was led at trial by the experts,” he said.

The ABC reports that McCarthy’s legal team has briefed a forensic pathologist to review the children’s autopsy reports, as well as a psychologist to review the diary entries.

The team has also engaged a medical statistician to report on cases where three or more deaths from natural causes have occurred in the same family, which would lend support to Folbigg’s claim that the deaths were caused by Cot Death and, in her daughter Laura’s case, myocarditis.

Even though Folbigg has already appealed against the conviction once, post-conviction requests for review of a conviction are allowed in NSW under the 2001 Crimes (Appeal and Review) Act. This legal issue is somewhat controversial, though, because the High Court has said that, for constitutional reasons, it cannot accept the fresh evidence in the case which shows that they have been wrongly convicted.

Folbigg’s sister: ‘She’s guilty.’

“I think it’s wrong. She was found guilty by 12 jurors over a period of seven weeks… She was found guilty and she’s had two to three tries at trying to get out and have a new trial and it was knocked back.”

She added:

“It’s about the kids. Somebody’s got to speak up for the kids. The kids can’t rest in peace while there’s so much uncertainty and all this garbage going on about her being a lovely person and that she’s innocent. You know, somebody’s got to speak up.”

Comparisons to Lindy Chamberlain

But others insist that she was wrongfully convicted, even drawing comparisons to the case of Lindy Chamberlain, who was jailed for murder after a dingo killed her baby Azaria in 1980.

Folbigg supporter Helen Cummings, for example, says it was Folbigg’s mothering that was put on trial.

“A woman is entering her 11th year in prison for the murder of her four children – her four babies – there was no evidence to show she had smothered any of them,” Ms Cummings said.

She describes the case as a miscarriage of justice “probably even worse” than that suffered by Chamberlain.

“Lindy served two years and she shouldn’t have. Kathleen is serving a lot more time. Lindy was on trial because she didn’t cry at the right time.” she said.

Alana House, a former schoolmate of Folbigg’s, has also spoken out in Folbigg’s defence. She wrote for Mamamia in 2012:

“Kathy’s trial had shades of Lindy Chamberlain to it. She was accused of being cold, not showing enough emotion. Like Lindy Chamberlain, people decided she was guilty before the trial even started. Unlike Lindy Chamberlain, most people still hold that opinion…

People are wrongly convicted all the time. In Kathy’s case, I think there’s reasonable doubt. You don’t throw away the key when there’s reasonable doubt. You make sure an innocent woman isn’t behind bars. Don’t you?”

The petition for a judicial review is expected to be lodged in May with the NSW Attorney-General.

Have you been following the Kathleen Folbigg case? Do you think Folbigg will have any success with her attempt to have the case reviewed?