Friends and supporters of convicted child killer Kathleen Folbigg are calling for her immediate release from jail after a bombshell finding by a judicial inquiry.
Folbigg was jailed in 2003 for killing her four children – Sarah, Caleb, Laura and Patrick.
She is serving a 25-year minimum sentence after being found guilty of three counts of murder and one of manslaughter, but has always maintained her innocence.
Former NSW chief justice Tom Bathurst KC is heading the judicial inquiry, which began hearing closing submissions on Wednesday.
“On the whole of the body of evidence before this inquiry, there is a reasonable doubt as to Ms Folbigg’s guilt,” counsel assisting Sophie Callan SC said.
After Ms Callan’s submission, Folbigg’s best friend and long-time supporter Tracy Chapman said it was good to hear “the truth and the facts finally aligning”.
“It’s everything we ever hoped for,” she said.
“It’s an injustice that we’ve kept an innocent, grieving mother in prison for 20 years.”
University of British Columbia law professor Emma Cunliffe – who wrote a book about Folbigg’s convictions – said Wednesday’s submission had been “a long time coming”.
“It’s a very important step in the process of exonerating her,” she said.
Mr Bathurst will prepare a report for the governor on whether to exercise the royal prerogative of mercy, a power the Department of Communities and Justice describes as “rare and exceptional”.
Folbigg’s case is similarly rare and exceptional.
She was jailed in 2003 for killing her four children and is serving a 25-year minimum sentence after being found guilty of three counts of murder and one of manslaughter.
Ms Callan said the case against Folbigg remained circumstantial, not to be looked at in a “piecemeal fashion”.
Folbigg claims Laura, Sarah, Caleb and Patrick died of natural causes between 1989 and 1999. She and her two daughters were later found to carry a rare genetic variant, casting doubt and triggering the second inquiry into her convictions.
The CALM2-G114R variant impacting the calcium-binding calmodulin protein was a “reasonably possible cause” of Sarah and Laura’s deaths, according to cardiology and genetics experts.
Myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, was also a reasonable possible cause of Laura’s death.
“Persuasive expert evidence” submitted Patrick may have died from an underlying neurogenetic disorder such as epilepsy, which could have also hospitalised him before his death, Ms Callan said.
Reasonable hypotheses on the deaths of three children undermines the tendency reasoning used to convict Folbigg of Caleb’s manslaughter.
“The cause of Caleb’s death at 19 days remains undetermined,” Ms Callan said.
Folbigg’s journal entries were presented as admissions in the circumstantial case at trial, however expert psychological evidence before the inquiry “uniformly indicates that it would be unreliable to interpret the entries in this way”, Ms Callan said.
Folbigg consistently explained to police and a previous inquiry the entries reflected feelings of failure and inability as a mother after three of her children died.
In one entry, she fears “it happening again”.
“She doesn’t suggest she killed them, rather something happened to these children,” Mr Bathurst said.
The use of the word “it” contained no suggestion she played a hand in what happened, Ms Callan agreed.
Read in context and regarded alongside expert evidence and Folbigg’s own, the entries ought not be regarded as admissions, she said.
Guilt and self-blame were typical for someone suffering a major depressive disorder and “maternal grief” after successive deaths of their children, the inquiry heard.
“This casts Ms Folbigg’s expressions of guilt and responsibility for the deaths of her children in her diary and journal entries in a very different light,” Ms Callan said.
Other submissions argued compelling reasons to continue treating the entries as admissions of guilt, but overall, the evidence undermined the probative value of the journal entries, tending to render them neutral, she said.
The Director of Public Prosecutions accepts it is open to the inquiry to conclude a reasonable doubt about Folbigg’s guilt.
New and additional evidence had emerged and “altered the balance” since her 2003 conviction, Ms Callan said.
Submissions on Folbigg’s behalf urged Mr Bathurst to go as far as finding “a strong probability” of innocence.
The inquiry continues.
-with AAP
