FILICIDE (jury said not): Florida: Casey Anthony declared not guilty by jury

By John Stevens :  6th July 201

The sensational acquittal of Casey Anthony sparked outrage across the U.S. today with one legal expert comparing the trial’s outcome to the infamous verdict in the OJ Simpson case.With the 25-year-old defendant poised to sell her story for millions, commentators savaged the jury for failing to find her guilty of the murder of her daughter Caylee.
Former Michigan Prosecutor Carl Marlinga said the verdict was: 'Like the OJ Simpson case - a clear failure of the jury system.'
'Just because we say the jury system we have is the best, that doesn’t make it perfect.'
Meanwhile TV presenter and legal expert Nancy Grace said 'the devil was dancing' after the jury returned not guilty verdicts.

Cleared: Verdict: Casey Anthony stands with her lawyer Jose Baez as she is sensationally found not guilty of all but four lesser charges

Delighted: Casey Anthony shows her excitement as she is found not guilty

Relief: Casey Anthony celebrates with her defence lawyer after their victory, which has stunned America

Caylee Anthony: Her mother Casey has been acquitted of all charges except misleading the police investigation

No firm deals have been struck to tell Anthony's story, although talk shows, book publishers and film makers will be lining up to secure interviews and rights to a story that has gripped and fascinated a nation.
A jury of seven woman and five men took ten hours to clear her of charges of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse and aggravated manslaughter of a child.
Anthony smiled with delight as she was cleared of the murder of Caylee, after one of the most controversial verdicts in recent history.
Hundreds of people outside the Orange County Courtroom in Orlando, Florida, gasped yesterday as the verdict was made public.
Anthony had been accused of drugging her young daughter, suffocating her and dumping her body in overgrown woodland.
The verdict, which came as a surprise to many following the case, drew a dramatic line under a compelling trial, which has seen a family torn apart by accusations of rape and incest.
Speaking to the Detroit Free Press, former prosecutor Mr Marlinga said he was 'shocked.....stunned and a little bit sickened' by the jury's decision'.
He said: 'I’ve probably never seen a better circumstantial case.
'Juries have to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.That doesn’t mean beyond all doubt.'
He added the prosecution overplayed Anthony as a party girl.

 

He said: 'A guilty person would have kept a low-profile, would have immediately reported the supposed kidnapping and immediately disposed of the body.

'They tried to pretend that the weakness was a strength. Sometimes the prosecution tries to whistle past the graveyard.
'They could have painted a more coherent case that the girl died as the result of child abuse.'
Anthony, who had been facing the death penalty, hugged defence attorney Jose Baez when the jury's verdict was revealed. As the jury left, she burst into tears.

Confident: Defence attorney Cheney Mason gestures toward reporters peering through a restaurant window across the street from the Orange County Courthouse

The jury accepted Anthony's account of events that Caylee drowned in the family pool on June 16.
She had initially claimed her daughter had been kidnapped, but on the opening day of the trial, the defence team made the surprise claim that the toddler had died in an accident.
The defence accused Anthony's father George Anthony of sexually abusing her as a child, and suggested the dysfunctional relationship explained Casey's behaviour after her own daughter's death. Mr Baez acknowledged Anthony's actions as 'bizarre' and 'inappropriate'.
Four days after the defence claim Caylee died, Anthonyparaded in a 'hot body' contest at a nightclub and friends said she showed no signs of distress, anxiety or depression.
Mr Baez had told the court that Mr Anthony had a role in disposing of the body and bullied his daughter into keeping it all secret.
On the final day of the trial, ABC news reported Anthony silently mouthing either 'it's not his fault' or 'because it's his fault' while prosecutors said she was trying to pin the death on her father.
After jurors heard Anthony's mother Cindy may have left a ladder in the pool where the child allegedly drowned, prosecutors said: 'Casey Anthony would have you believe that this is all her mother's fault anyway for leaving the ladder down, let's twist the knife in my mum a little bit more.'
Casey reportedly mouthed: 'I never said anything like that, it wouldn't have been my mum.'
After such a harrowing trial it has emerged that George and Cindy Anthony are not sure if they would welcome Casey back into the family. Following the surprise verdict, they walked out of the courtroom in silence.

THE VERDICT

Anthony faced seven charges
First-degree murder NOT GUILTY
Aggravated child abuse NOT GUILTY
Aggravated manslaughter of a child NOT GUILTY
Four counts of providing false information to a law enforcement officer:
-That she worked at Universal Orlando in 2008 GUILTY
-That she left Caylee with a babysitter named Zenaida Fernandez Gonzalez GUILTY
-That she told Jeffrey Hopkins and Juliette Lewis that Caylee was missing GUILTY
-That she received a phone call from Caylee on July 15 2008 GUILTY

In a statement they said: 'While the family may never know what has happened to Caylee Marie Anthony, they now have closure for this chapter of their life. They will now begin the long process of rebuilding their lives.
'Despite the baseless defence chosen by Casey Anthony, the family believes that the jury made a fair decision based on the evidence presented, the testimony presented, the scientific information presented and the rules that were given to them by the Honourable Judge Perry to guide them.

'The family hopes that they will be given the time by the media to reflect on this verdict and decide the best way to move forward privately.'

Their lawyer said it was too early to say if they would welcome Casey back. The couple are reported to be in hiding after receiving death threats.
Dodging the larger charges of murder and child abuse, Casey was found guilty of four lesser counts of lying to investigators, which carry a maximum of one year per count.
As she has already served three years in jail, she is likely to walk free almost immediately. Last night she returned to Orange County jail, where she will wait for sentencing on Thursday at 9am.
As Casey walked into the courtroom to hear her fate at just after 2pm she looked very nervous. She bit her nails anxiously as she spoke to Mr Baez, while her parents watched quietly from the audience.
But as the clerk of the court read the verdicts, her eyes turned red as she tried to fight back the tears. Once all the verdicts were read out she hugged Mr Baez and began to cry.
Later, as the judge spoke to the jury, she could be seen mouthing 'Thank you' to Mr Baez and smiling, before the whole defence team hugged in tears as the session ended.
In a bizarre speech given after the verdict, Mr Baez appeared shaken with emotion as he shamelessly declared that his defence had 'saved a life'.

Approaching the judge: Casey and Mr Baez approach the podium to hear Judge Belvin Perry confirm that she is not guilty of murder charges

Group hug: Casey's defence team embrace each other and Casey after the tension of the six-week trial is dramatically lifted

Overwhelmed: Casey is overcome with emotion following her acquittal of murder charges. Smiling but also emotionally drained, she is helped by a member of the defence team

EVEN THE CLERK COULD NOT BELIEVE IT

The clerk who read the verdict in the Casey Anthony murder trial was left speechless today when she saw the 'not guilty' verdict.
Judge Belvin Perry handed the clerk the verdict to read to the Orlando court, saying: ‘Will the defendant rise along with counsel. Madame clerk you may publish the verdicts.’
The clerk, accepted the printed verdicts and began reading.
But she was immediately rendered speechless after seeing the jury’s verdict.
After an uncomfortable silence she appeared to regain her composure and declared Anthony not guilty.

He told the media he was 'very happy for Casey. I'm ecstatic for her and I want her to be able to grieve and grow and somehow get her life back together' but spent much of the speech focused on how the moment felt for him.
He used to opportunity to speak out against Casey's 'trial by media' and the death penalty, which he labelled 'disgusting', before saying: 'I want to thank everyone who stood behind me and supported me throughout this time.'

STATE PROSECUTOR QUITS AFTER CASE

Jeff Ashton, one of the three prosecutors who led the case against Anthony, announced tonight that he will retire at the end of the week.
Mr Ashton, 53, has prosecuted for the Orange-Osceola State Attorney's Office for 30 years.
His reputation and experience was in stark contrast to that of Jose Baez, Anthony's lead defence attorney, who was admitted to the Florida Bar only three years ago.

The speech then reached its climax as, holding back tears, Mr Baez declared that he was especially proud that when he went home that evening when his daughter 'will ask me what did you do today and I can say I saved a life'.
Prosecutors issued a pointed statement after the verdict, saying that despite the not guilty finding 'we kept our promise that we would be finding and proving the truth' about Caylee’s murder.
Appearing outside the courthouse, Lawson Lamar, state attorney in the Ninth Judicial Circuit of Florida, paid tribute to the 'precision case' compiled by his team and by investigators, but said that the six months it took to find Caylee’s remains, by which time they had decomposed, ultimately cost them the case.
He said: 'I never, ever criticise a jury. There is the task of deciding what to believe.
'Reasonable doubt goes to each and every element in a case, especially in a case like this, which is a mosaic to prove, with no smoking gun and a tiny victim who was reduced by time and the elements to skeletal remains.

Party time: Casey Anthony defence attorneys Jose Baez, left, and Cheney Mason, right, enjoy drinks with other members of the defence team

Stonefaced: Cindy and George Anthony were the first to leave the courtroom, with their attorney Mark Lippman, after their daughter was found not guilty of murder

'This was a "dry bones" case - very, very difficult to prove…The delay in recovering little Caylee’s remains worked to our considerable disadvantage.'
'We are disappointed with the verdict today and surprised, because we know the facts and we put in every piece of evidence that existed. Our team did an exemplary job.'
Despite Anthony’s claim that Caylee’s death was a pool drowning accident, Mr Lamar still referred to it as a 'homicide'.
He said: 'This case has never been about the defendant, particularly. It has always been about seeking justice for Caylee and speaking on her behalf… We kept our promise that we would be finding and proving the truth about this child homicide.'

Disbelief: Spectators react to the news that Casey Anthony is innocent

Shock: Disbelief can be seen on the faces of people in the crowd outside the Orange County Courthouse. One spectator held up a sign calling Casey a 'Baby Killer'

Aghast: Nancy Antolini looks overwhelmed after hearing the verdict as she stands outside the court house

Fascination: Crowds of hundreds gathered at the Orange County Courthouse to hear the verdict

Mr Lamarr said that lead prosecutor Linda Drane-Burdick put together a 'precision case' and colleague Jeff Ashton 'presented wonderful scientific evidence.'
He insisted that the state had 'gathered the facts' but adding nonetheless: 'I’d like to thank the jury for their contribution to justice. The task they were asked to complete was difficult.'
He said: 'We did our job. The jury did their job. This is justice in America. We go forward to fight again tomorrow with grateful thanks to all the people who have helped us do our duty.'
Jurors in the trial refused to account publicly for their verdict, leaving Orange County courthouse in a bus to head for home as the judge issued an order protecting their identities.
The members of the jury were asked by a court clerk whether they wished to speak, then left alone to decide their answer. 'When I came back, it was a universal ‘No’, the clerk explained.
A crowd of several hundred people, some carrying placards, rallied outside the courthouse chanting 'We want Casey', some expressing anger at the verdict and others relief.
As people surged forward police shouted at them to ‘back up’ and move away from the building. One young woman collapsed in the heat.
After the verdict became public, many in the crowd shouted 'Justice for Caylee' and 'Baby Killer'.
Mounted police and squad cars were also posted outside the Anthony's home as protesters gathered outside to demonstrate against the decision.

At the spot on Suburban Drive, Orlando, where Caylee’s remains were found on December 11, 2008, a stream of people arrived to lay flowers and soft toys in her memory.

Tributes: A shrine has started to be built at the place where Caylee's body was found

The verdict that shocked America: People stop to see the news announced in Times Square, New York

Some heard the verdict over the radio as they stood at the place where her skull and bones were found scattered. 'She got away with murder,' one woman said at the scene.
Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings issued an appeal for public calm. 'As a verdict has been rendered, we ask our community to respect the decision the jury and the court have made today. In doing so, we ask for your continued peaceful acknowledgement of that verdict,' he said.
'I ask this community that regardless of one’s personal beliefs about the innocence or guilt of Casey Marie Anthony, that you maintain peaceful resolve.'
The trial has captivated the country, producing some of the most sensational scenes inside and outside U.S. courts hearings in recent decades.

Fights broke out outside the court room as people queued to watch the case, and a court house spectator was jailed for six days for contempt of court after he gestured at the prosecution.

As tension built in the courtroom, both attorneys were threatened with being kicked off the case by the judge, and proceedings were stopped after the defence claimed that Casey was not mentally competent to continue.

Prosecutors claimed Casey spun an astonishingly complex web of lies to cover her tracks as she partied for a month after her daughter's disappearance.

LEGAL VIEW: HOW WAS SHOCK VERDICT REACHED?

By Professor Deborah Denno - Fordham University
Jurors are in the courtroom day after day and experience a trial in a way no other news commentator, etc can.
'Proof beyond a reasonable doubt' is a difficult standard to reach, particularly in a case that depends entirely on circumstantial evidence.
Although the news said that Casey Anthony was 'hated', the jurors of course looked at the facts differently.
The speed of their deliberation suggests that there was little if any disagreement among them.

They claimed Casey drove around for several days with Caylee's body in her car trunk and then dumped the remains in woods near the Anthony family home.
Caylee was last seen on June 16, 2008, when Casey left the family home with her, but it was not until a month later that police were notified that she was missing.
Prosecution evidence suggested Casey lied to friends and family about Caylee's whereabouts while she spent time hanging out with her boyfriend, dancing at nightclubs, shopping and getting tattoos.
The single mother gave her parents various excuses as to why they could they could not see Caylee, including: that the girl was with a nanny named Zanny; that she and her daughter were spending time in Jacksonville with a rich boyfriend; and that Zanny had been hospitalised after an out-of-town accident and they were spending time with her.
Finally on July 15 after hearing her daughter's car had been towed, Cindy Anthony confronted Casey and called 911 to report her daughter missing.
In in a distressed call she told the operator that her granddaughter had been missing for a month and that she had found her daughter's car that days and 'it smells like there's been a dead body in the damn car.'

When Casey got on the phone, she claimed that her nanny, Zenairda Fernandez-Gonazalez, who was later shown not to exist, had taken Caylee.
She said that she had not reported her missing sooner because she was trying to find her herself, which she admitted was 'stupid'.
The kidnap claim triggered a national search for the toddler and on October 14 2008 Anthony was indicted for murder.
Then on December 11, 2008, the search for Caylee ended when her skeletal remains were found in woods with duct tape hanging from her skull.

Throughout the trial, the public had become fascinated by every move of Casey as they tried to decide could this woman have killed her own two-year-old daughter.
They wanted to hear her testimony but, on day 32 of the trial - as the defence team rested its case - Casey told the judge that she would not be taking to the witness stand.

MEET THE JURY: THE TWELVE PEOPLE WHO CLEARED ANTHONY

The jurors' identities have been protected and they have been sequestered in an Orlando hotel because of the profile of the case, but there are some details to who are these men and women who ultimately decided if Casey Anthony lived or dead.
Juror 1: A female retired nurse who is married with two children
Juror 2: A male information technology worker who is married with two children
Juror 3: A female nursing school student who is single and has no children
Juror 4: A single woman with no children whose occupation is unknown
Juror 5: A female retired hospital nurse's aide who is divorced with three children
Juror 6: A male chef and restaurant equipment company representative who is married with two children
Juror 7: A female child welfare administration assistant who is divorce and has no children
Juror 8: A female Verizon service representative who is married with two children
Juror 9: A male unemployed former logger who is single and has no children
Juror 10: A male Verizon retention specialist who has no children. It is not known if he is married
Juror 11: A male high school PE teacher who is single and has no children
Juror 12: A female Publix cook who is married with two children

Ripped apart: What next for the Anthonys?

Torn apart: The family of George and Cindy Anthony has been torn by the accusations

At the centre of the trial has been a family ripped apart by accusations of incest, rape, adultery and murder. George and Cindy Anthony have always been torn by their roles as both family members of the victim and the parents of the accused, but the shock allegations made during the opening of the trial have completely rocked the family.
Casey's parents, who have been married for 30 years, publicly supported their daughter from her initial arrest in 2008, as they continued to lead the search for their missing granddaughter, to the start of the murder trial.
They have funded Casey's defence lawyers, despite facing threats of foreclosure on their Orlando home - where they have lived since 1989. The couple have sold home videos and photographs of Caylee, which reportedly sold for around $200,000, to organisations including ABC News to help pay for fees.
But the defence accused George Anthony of sexually abusing his daughter from the age of eight, a claim he has strenuously denied.
Defence lawyer Jose Baez also suggested Mr Anthony had a role in disposing the body of little Caylee, aclaim Mr Anthony also denies.
During the trial, the defence also questioned whether tests had been conducted to determine whether Casey Anthony's brother Lee was in fact the father of Caylee.
The judge ruled that no evidence of sexual abuse was presented and prohibited both sides from mentioning the issue in their closing arguments.
The family have denied the defence's account of events that Caylee drowned in their pool.

Cindy Anthony was accused of lying under oath to protect her daughter from the death penalty, when she testified that it was her who had made repeated Google searches for chloroform and neck injuries on the home computer not daughter Casey.
Prosecutors rebutted the claims, citing testimony from Casey's employer, which they claimed she logged on to her computer at work at the time of the searches.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2011560/Casey-Anthony-trial-verdict-Not-guilty-just-like-OJ-Simpson-case.html#ixzz1RKJJEHhs

INFANTICIDE: England (Leicester): Jodie Pick charged

Jul 1 2011

A MOTHER on trial for the manslaughter of her baby claimed the youngster was strangled when her bib slipped, a court heard.
Jodie Leigh Pick, denies unlawfully killing seven-week-old Courtney Jacques at home in Broughton Astley, on May 1 2009.
Opening the prosecution case at Leicester Crown Court on Tuesday, Sally Howes QC said the baby was born six-and-a-half-weeks premature and spent 13 days in a hospital neonatal unit.
“She made good progress, gained weight satisfactorily and gave no cause for concern,” she said.

But, added Miss Howes, Pick was concerned that the baby vomited after food – and there had been times when the youngster appeared to stop breathing.
She said: “Various friends and members of the family witnessed such episodes.”
Miss Howes said the cause was not known and the child’s mother seemed to have the episodes under control.
A doctor, worried that the vomiting might result in dehydration, referred the baby to Leicester Royal Infirmary. No sign of dehydration was found and the baby was discharged but, added the prosecutor, “interestingly” no doctor at the hospital was told about the breathing problem.
On the day the baby died, her mother returned from the garden and found her “apparently lifeless” in her Moses basket with her bib around her neck.
“She suffered a catastrophic collapse and, despite all the efforts of the staff at the Leicester Royal Infirmary, they were unable to resuscitate and Courtney died that same day.”
Twenty-four-year-old Pick, who has two other children, slapped the youngster’s back to try and revive her, and called the baby’s father. Courtney was due to spend the weekend in Skegness.
Pick told a 999 operator: “My baby’s dead. She was in her Moses basket but I sat her up because she chokes on her sick.
“Her bib strangled her and I can’t get her to breathe.”
Miss Howes said: “It is very likely that the baby had been strangled by her bib. The operator talked her through steps to revive her.”
Paramedics took the baby to hospital, accompanied in the ambulance by her mother. She was not breathing and had no detectable pulse.
Pick told an emergency care practitioner she “went out to put the washing out” and found Courtney had collapsed when she returned.
The baby died later that morning.
A pathologist found “no natural cause of death,” added Miss Howes. Experts carried out further tests, which revealed the baby had a combination of head, brain and spinal cord injuries, together with an eye injury to the retina “in keeping with a non-accidental slap injury.”
Miss Howes said there were “tell-tale signs” from the post-mortem that would indicate it is “highly likely that the cause of that combination of things is as a result of shaking.”
During a police interview, Pick suggested her daughter had vomited and collapsed – and she shook her to revive her.
Miss Howes said pathologists’ opinion “is that although shaking might account for some injuries” evidence does not support the account given by Pick that her daughter collapsed.
The barrister said if Pick shook the baby in an attempt to revive her that was not unlawful killing. “However, if Jodie Pick due to momentary loss of temper did shake Courtney, that’s unlawful.
“She does not have to intend to kill her. The fact that Courtney died is sufficient.”
Miss Howes told the jury: “The Crown’s case was that there was indeed an unlawful killing. Courtney had not collapsed.
“You have to ask yourselves has the prosecution satisfied you so that you are sure that the defendant did not shake [the baby] if an effort to resuscitate. In other words, are you sure that Courtney collapsed as a result of the shaking?”
Health visitor and qualified midwife Leigh Gregory, who is employed by Leicestershire Partnership Trust and works from Orchard Medical Practice at Broughton Astley, told the jury about Courtney and the family’s history.
“There was no suggestion of any violence between the children and the mother of the children”, she said.
“Apart from the fact that Courtney was premature, there were no other concerns.”
Pick did not attend court on Wednesday due to illness.
Judge Michael Pert QC discharged the jury until today, when the trial is due to resume.
http://www.hinckleytimes.net/news-in-hinckley/local-news/hinckley-news/2011/07/01/leicestershire-mum-denies-killing-her-own-baby-105367-28978761/

FILICIDE: Canadian cases reviewed

Joseph Shapiro : June 30, 2011

Medical and legal experts often disagree on how to determine the cause of a child's unexpected death. One result is that parents sometimes are wrongly accused of murder and sent to prison. No place has uncovered a bigger problem — or dealt with it more directly — than Ontario, Canada. That change can be seen in the arc of Tammy Marquardt's life.

Joseph Shapiro/NPR Tammy Marquardt, now 39, spent 14 years in prison for a crime she didn't commit.

A Guilty Plea?

In 1993, Marquardt was sleeping in her apartment in Oshawa, Ontario, when her 2-year-old son, Kenneth, cried out for her. When she got to his crib he was tangled in the sheets, and by the time the emergency workers arrived, he had stopped breathing.

Marquardt, then 21, was charged with smothering and killing her son. When she insisted she was innocent, no one believed her.
Marquardt, who was pregnant again, was sentenced to life in prison. When she got there, she was told not to tell anyone why she was incarcerated.
"A baby killer would basically get the living daylights beaten out of them," she says. "A baby killer is classified as one of the lowest on the lowest in the totem pole in prison."
So she lied and said she was in prison because she had killed her husband.
But that lie didn't protect her for long. Soon, her case was on television and reported in the newspapers. And from that day on, she had to fight, push and kick when other women attacked.
Marquardt is tiny — about 5 feet tall and weighing just 85 pounds. Her red hair, in a pixie cut, frames her hollow cheeks.
She spent 14 years in prison — then was released on parole.
This past February, Marquardt nervously faced a wall of reporters and photographers outside a courthouse in Toronto after an appeals court overturned her conviction. Justice Marc Rosenberg told her there had been "a miscarriage of justice" and that she had been convicted because of a "flawed" and falsified autopsy report that found she had smothered her child.
Marquardt told reporters she still grieved for the son who died and for her two other boys who were taken from her and put up for adoption when she went to prison.
She has never seen them since.
"Try having your heart ripped out and someone squeezing it right in front of your face," she told the reporters outside the courthouse. "There is no real words for it. It is just a lot of pain and hurt that cannot be fixed."
'Thinking Dirty'
Marquardt is one of at least a dozen people prosecuted for killing children in Ontario based on what later turned out to be tainted medical evidence. Courts in just the past few years have overturned several of those convictions, and more are under review.
"People were wrongly convicted, yes," says Stephen Goudge, a justice on Ontario's Court of Appeal.

Courtesy of Frontline Stephen Goudge, a Canadian judge, led an inquiry into what went wrong in a number of pediatric death rulings.

He led a government inquiry that stunned Canada — particularly what it turned up about Charles Smith, a pediatric pathologist who conducted many of the autopsies in Ontario's child abuse cases.

"He really grew to an iconic stature in the field in Canada," Goudge explains.
Smith had been so highly respected that defense attorneys told their clients they couldn't win if Smith testified against them.
"Partly because of his reputation, partly because of what he told juries, a number of convictions probably were based in significant measure on his opinions," Goudge says.
But as Goudge's inquiry discovered, Smith was trained to study disease in children. He had no training to study cases when a crime was suspected. Even worse: Smith lied, hid evidence and used junk science. He did what it took to get a conviction.

More From This Investigation

Q&A About The Child Cases Investigation

The Child Cases: Guilty Until Proved Innocent

Flawed work by forensic pathologists in pediatric death cases may be sending innocents to prison.

Rethinking Shaken Baby Syndrome

The man credited with first observing the syndrome is concerned about its use in child abuse cases.

Flawed Autopsies Send Two Innocent Men To Jail

In Mississippi, two men spent a combined 30 years in jail for crimes they didn't commit.

Post Mortem: Death Investigation In America

Unlike what you see on CSI, many suspicious deaths aren't properly investigated.

Goudge says Smith and other medical experts and prosecutors were infected with a mindset called "think dirty," which presumes guilt first.
" 'Think dirty' reflects a cast of mind that was prevalent often with the child care community in the 1990s," Goudge explains. "That is, injuries observed were deliberately inflicted — that's the presumption to be disproved."
The Goudge Commission found the actual words "think dirty" in instructions from Ontario's chief coroner to coroners, pathologists and police chiefs in 1995.
At the time, there was reason to fear that some cases of children being murdered were being missed and sometimes classified instead as sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS. That's a category for deaths when the cause can't otherwise be determined.
But by "thinking dirty," pathologists and prosecutors often ignored other reasons the children may have died.
"A common feature of all these cases is that there were always very good explanations for why each of these children died," says James Lockyer, the Toronto lawyer who represents Marquardt and several others whose convictions have been overturned.
"I mean, it wasn't complicated to work out how these children died," says Lockyer, the founding director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted. "They had pre-existing conditions, whether it was an epileptic condition or some other kind of condition."
Lockyer says Marquardt's son died from an epileptic seizure. Doctors had put the boy on two drugs to control epilepsy. But at trial, Smith and other prosecution medical experts minimized his epilepsy, even though, over the two years of his life, the boy's medical records showed many seizures and multiple trips to the emergency room. Prosecutors argued that these were just common seizures among young children that result from a high fever.

Case Profiles

As part of an ongoing look into the troubled state of death investigation, ProPublica, NPR and PBS Frontline identified nearly two dozen cases in the U.S. and Canada in which people have been accused of killing children based on flawed or biased work by forensic pathologists and then later cleared.

Courtesy of Frontline Monea Tyson was accused of killing her 22-month-old son and spent nearly two years in jail before her acquittal.

EXPLORE THE CASES >

Smith claimed in his testimony that he could tell the boy had been smothered, probably with a pillow. (We tried to contact Smith. He hung up without comment when we reached him on the phone.)
Lockyer says there was something else that was common among the people he has helped exonerate. "Most of the victims of Smith, if not all of them, were easy, easy marks," says the attorney. "And Tammy was a good example of an easy mark. She was a young, single mother. She was impoverished, she was on welfare."
In his autopsy report, Smith speculated that Marquardt had killed her child because she had acted out of anger over the chaos in her own life. She was a teen mother with a history of substance abuse and troubled relationships with men. That day, her boyfriend had gone to be with a woman who was giving birth to his child.
But the pathologist's emphasis on this — which became the prosecution's theory — was pure speculation, not science.
Dinesh Kumar's Story
When Dinesh Kumar's 5-week-old son, Gaurov, died, Smith did the autopsy and concluded that the baby was a victim of shaken baby syndrome, and that the father, who was caring for the boy at the time of his death, must have been responsible.

Dinesh Kumar

Joseph Shapiro/NPR Dinesh Kumar looks down at a portrait of his son, who died when he was 5 weeks old.

Kumar was charged with murder.

He says his lawyers told him to take a plea deal from prosecutors because he'd have no chance of winning in court against Smith. "He's like a god," Kumar says his lawyer said of Smith. "Nobody can challenge his report."
So Kumar pled guilty to criminal negligence causing death, even though he says he didn't kill his infant son. He took the plea because, he says, he felt there was little choice.
Prosecutors offered him 90 days of community service. That allowed Kumar and his wife to keep their other son, Saurob, who then was just a year old.
Otherwise, Kumar was told, Saroub would be placed in foster care and put up for adoption. If there was a conviction, Kumar, who had immigrated to Canada from India just one year before, could be deported.
"This is the hardest decision I have in my life," Kumar says of taking the plea deal. "Lots of my friends, my relatives, they know I'm innocent," Kumar says. But others, including some at his temple, assumed, since he'd taken a guilty plea, that he must have been responsible for his son's death. "They talk in back of me: 'This is the guy who killed his own son.' "
That was 1992. Today, medical experts understand that just because the child went into distress in his father's arms doesn't mean the injury happened at that moment. Now it's thought that Gaurov died from bleeding on the brain due to an injury at birth.
This January, the Ontario Court of Appeal exonerated Kumar, too.
Another Smith Mistake
Journalist and attorney Harold Levy says warning signs about Smith were ignored for years. One reason, he says, was that prosecutors and police knew they could get an autopsy report from Smith that would help them win their prosecutions. "Because of all the guilty pleas, because he almost guaranteed convictions," says Levy, "and it took the load off them."
Levy says alarms about Smith went back to one of the first people to be charged. In 1988, a 12-year-old baby sitter, reported that she had dropped the 16-month-old girl she was caring for on the stairs. The child later died in the hospital.

Harold Levy

Courtesy of Nicolas Jolliet Harold Levy, a former Toronto Star reporter, reported and now blogs about the Judge Goudge inquiry of pathologist Charles Smith. Smith concluded from the autopsy that the babysitter had shaken the baby violently, and she was charged with manslaughter. But in 1991, the trial judge, Patrick Dunn, acquitted the girl and wrote a decision that was scathing in its criticism of Smith's sloppy work.

Levy, who wrote about the case for the Toronto Star, says there had been nothing in the 12-year-old baby sitter's past to suggest "that this girl could ever be violent to any child. She loved that child. And yet Smith 'thought dirty' and tried to turn her into something akin to a murderer."
Smith, he says, took cases of ordinary people and "turned them into murderers."
Ontario's Learning Lessons
Ontario is trying to improve forensic examinations to make sure Smith's mistakes are never repeated.
The change is visible on a tour of Ottawa Hospital with Christopher Milroy, a new forensic pathologist for Ottawa but a veteran pathologist from England who also worked on Ontario's investigations of pediatric autopsies.
Milroy opens the door to the new forensic suite, the room where he conducts autopsies in criminally suspicious deaths.
This autopsy room is just a year old. More money is being spent on forensic pathology now — for equipment, modernized space and salaries — to try to raise the profession.

Web Resources

Inquiry Into Pediatric Forensic Pathology In Ontario

The Charles Smith Blog by Harold Levy

Advances in science mean pathologists need to be better trained than ever. They conduct more tests for rare metabolic disorders and genetic diseases. They order X-rays, CT scans and MRIs.
Ontario has changed the rules for how to do an autopsy — and who does them. "We've gone beyond the era where you have self-trained, self-taught people," Milroy says. "You wouldn't want your surgeon to be self-trained and self-taught. Why should you have your forensic pathologist not certified?"
There are lessons that American policymakers can also learn from Canada about how to improve child autopsies. Some of those solutions require spending more money. But others are simple.
Canada — just like the U.S. — lets doctors do autopsies even without board certification. Ontario now expects forensic pathologists to get better training, or it will hire new ones from countries that demand a lot of training — like Milroy, who came from the United Kingdom.
Great Britain reviewed its child death cases in 2003 after courts released three women who had been jailed for killing their babies. It turned out that they were convicted largely on one medical expert's flawed testimony. The review, completed in 2006, found three more British parents and caregivers who also may have been wrongly convicted.
The investigations in Canada, which turned up Charles Smith's flawed autopsies, concluded that the problem went deeper than one rogue pathologist. So now all autopsy reports in criminal cases are done by teams and are peer reviewed.
Milroy says there's another big change: It's in the way courts, police and even pathologists themselves see the role of the forensic pathologist. "We think the truth," Milroy says. "What can I say about this case — truthfully? What cannot I say about this case truthfully? One of the things that is important as a forensic pathologist is that you are not — and this is where again Smith erred — you are not part of the prosecution team."
There are still disputes in Canada over unexpected child deaths just as there are in the United States.

Levy, who continues to write daily on his blog, shows a construction site in Toronto where a massive five-story building is going up. It's the new Forensic Services and Coroner's Complex that will have state-of-the-art space and equipment.

The autopsy rooms — which traditionally are tucked away in dark basements — will be placed in large open areas with high windows and a lot of natural light. Still, Levy says, "I'm a little skeptical, because governments love to have palaces, and so they can show concrete — no pun intended — but concrete things that they have built and make people forget about the past."
Real reform, he says, will only come if Ontario never forgets this past.
Marquardt Exonerated
Tammy Marquardt can't forget. She's a mother raising a child again. Her daughter Tiffany was born last August.

Enlarge Joseph Shapiro/NPR Tammy Marquardt with her fiancee, Rick Hanley, and their daughter, Tiffany.

Joseph Shapiro/NPR

Tammy Marquardt with her fiancee, Rick Hanley, and their daughter, Tiffany.

Marquardt, now 39, lives in a small house in Toronto with her baby, her fiancee, his mother and his teenage daughter.
In June, she won total exoneration when prosecutors announced they won't reopen her case.
She thinks about her son who died. And she wonders about her other two sons, who were put up for adoption when she went to prison — especially when she's in a crowd and sees teen boys, she says.
"Like, especially around that age, I sit there and go: 'I wonder: Could that one be mine? Could that one be mine?' For all I know, I could be sitting next to my son on the subway and not even know it."
Charles Smith never faced charges. Earlier this year, a medical board stripped him of his license and ordered him to pay a $3,650 fine.
The regulatory board also ordered Smith to appear in person to hear its reprimand.
Marquardt was there to see it, but Smith didn't show up.
Sandra Bartlett and Anne Hawke of NPR News Investigations contributed to this report.
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/30/137507575/the-child-cases-lessons-from-canada

FILICIDE: Cases reviewed

LAUREN SHER and KRISTIN BRASWELL

July 1, 2011

Nobody can imagine why seemingly loving, devoted mothers would ever harm their own flesh and blood. But more than 200 women a year kill their children in the United States, according to the American Anthropological Association.
The shocking and unimaginable crimes of child-killers have gripped the nation for decades. Here's a look back at the famous cases of mothers accused of murder.
Diane Downs
Long before the infamous cases of Casey Anthony, Susan Smith and Andrea Yates, the nation was gripped by the story of Diane Downs, who shot her three children, killing one.
In 1983, Downs, a 27-year-old divorced postal service worker, told police that a "bushy-haired stranger" flagged down her car and shot her three children on a back road near Springfield, Oregon.
Her daughter Cheryl, 7, was dead on arrival at the hospital, and her other children -- Christie, 8, and Danny, 3, were clinging to life.

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Downs' story about the stranger did not add up. Reading through her secret diaries, police found a motive: an obsession with a married man who didn't want her children. In February 1984, nine months after the shootings, they arrested her and charged her with one count of murder and two counts of attempted murder.
Downs' trial was a national spectacle that was later depicted in the TV movie "Small Sacrifices," starring Farrah Fawcett as Downs.
She was sentenced to life in prison plus 50 years. She was denied parole in December 2010 and will not be considered for parole again for ten years, when she will be 65.
Watch the full story on "20/20" tonight at 10 p.m. ET.

Casey Anthony
Casey Anthony, 25, is on trial in Orlando, Fla. on first-degree murder charges in the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. She has pleaded not guilty and has been held in a Florida prison since the summer of 2008.
Caylee lived with her grandparents and her single mother, Casey. Caylee disappeared in June 2008, but was not reported missing until a month later. Anthony told police she left Caylee at the apartment of a babysitter named Zenaida Fernandez Gonzalez, and that both were missing when she returned. Police found, among other discrepancies in Anthony's story, that the apartment had been vacant for more than 140 days.
Investigators said Anthony repeatedly misled and lied to police in the course of their work. She was named a suspect in her daughter's disappearance and charged with the Caylee's murder in October 2008.
After a six-month-long search, remains of Caylee's body were found in Orlando, Florida, in December 2008.
Casey Anthony's defense team has argued that the toddler accidentally drowned in the family pool and that George Anthony, Casey Anthony's father, helped dispose of the body.
The defense has accused George Anthony of sexually abusing Casey Anthony. They have argued that Casey Anthony hid her daughter Caylee's death in the same manner that she hid the molestation.
In his testimony before the court this week, George Anthony denied the defense's claims.

Susan Smith
In October 1994, Susan Smith drowned her two young sons, buckling them into their car seats and pushing the car into a South Carolina lake. The car sank with the sleeping children in the back.
Smith initially told police that a black man had hijacked her car and abducted the children. Americans desperately searched for the boys for nine days until Smith confessed that she killed her sons, Michael, 3, and 14-month-old Alex.
She was convicted of the two murders in July 1995 and sentenced to life in prison. A judge rejected Smith's appeal in March 2010. She is eligible for parole in November 2024.

Andrea Yates
In June 2001, Andrea Yates methodically drowned her five children in the bathtub in their Houston home. The case shocked the American public.
Yates told police and psychiatrists after the crime that Satan had ordered her to kill sons Noah, 7; John, 5; Paul, 3; Luke, 2; and 6-month-old daughter Mary, to save them from eternal damnation.
Yates, a former nurse and high school valedictorian, suffered from mental illness for years -- depression with bouts of psychosis, suicide attempts and hospitalizations.
In tapes of Yates' psychological evaluation, released exclusively to ABC's "Primetime" in 2006, she recalled details of the morning she murdered her kids, describing how she waited until her husband left the house to start filling the tub. "Drowning them" was "all I thought about," she said.
Yates was convicted of capital murder in March 2002, but an appeals court later overturned the verdict. In 2006, Yates was retried and found not guilty by reason of insanity. At the time, she was committed to a state mental hospital.
June 20 marked the 10-year anniversary of the Yates murders. Yates is now being treated in a minimum-security mental hospital in Kerrville, Texas. Her longtime lawyer, George Parnham, said he's "highly optimistic" she will be released after her recommitment hearing in November.
Encouraged by the case, Parnham formed the Yates Children Memorial Fund in June 2002 to educate women, their families and their doctors about postpartum psychosis and similar illnesses.

China Arnold
China Arnold was accused of killing her 3-week-old daughter in a microwave oven in Dayton, Ohio, on Aug. 30, 2005. Investigators said the baby, Paris Talley, was burned to death in the oven after Arnold and her boyfriend had an argument over who the child's biological father was. Arnold was sentenced to life in prison without parole Sept. 8, 2008. Judge Mary Wiseman told Arnold during the trial, "No adjectives exist to adequately describe this heinous atrocity. This act is shocking and utterly abhorrent for a civilized society."

Michelle Kehoe

Michelle Kehoe, 36, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on charges of first-degree murder in the death of her 2-year-old son Seth, and an attempted-murder charge related to her 7-year-old son, Sean.
Kehoe and her sons were reported missing by her husband, Eugene Kehoe, after the boys and their mother reportedly left to go visit relatives in Sumner, Iowa, on Oct. 26, 2008. The next morning, Kehoe walked into the home of residents in Littleton, Iowa, and told them that her sons were in danger.
Seth was found dead outside the family's van. Autopsy results revealed the boy had died from severe cuts to his neck. His older brother, Sean, was found struggling for his life inside the vehicle and had suffered similar cuts.
According to the arrest warrant affidavit, Kehoe falsely claimed that her children had been abducted. "She stated that she couldn't explain why she had done it. She stated that she couldn't face anyone. She stated that she wanted to die or be locked up where she couldn't hurt anyone else," the affidivit read.
At the trial in October 2009, Kehoe pleaded not guilty. Her attorneys argued that she suffered from extreme mental illness. An Iowa jury heard a tape of her surviving son telling police how his mother covered his eyes, nose and mouth with duct tape, slashed his throat, and then did the same to his younger brother. On Nov. 5, 2009, she was found guilty of first-degree murder, attempted murder and child endangerment causing serious injury. The following month she was sentenced to life in prison and an additional 25 years.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/infamous-convicted-alleged-mommy-murderers-infamous-cases-andrea/story?id=13956527&singlePage=true

FILICIDE: New York City: Kim Crawford beat the boy who broke the TV

Rocco Parascandola and Kevin Deutsch
June 20th 2011,

 Florescu Viorel for News

Kim Crawford, 21, is charged with murdering her son, after 5-year-old Jamar Johnson was discovered to have died from blunt trauma to the chest.

A Bronx mom said she beat her 5-year-old son to death  because he broke the television while playing Nintendo Wii, prosecutors said Monday.
Kim Crawford, 21, smacked Jamar Johnson in his back and stomach on June 13 "harder than I've ever hit him," she told cops.
Crawford watched him vomit and complain of agonizing pain for five days as his internal injuries got worse. She never took him to the hospital because she feared getting arrested, she told investigators.


Jamar (r.) and Heaven Johnson, whose mother Kim Crawford is charged with murdering Jamar (Family Handout).

"I was worried they'd see the bruises and I'd get in trouble," she told cops.
Jamar died of an infection to his lacerated pancreas and intestine at Montefiore Medical Center late Friday.
Prosecutors charged Crawford with murder and manslaughter. She was ordered held without bond Monday.
"I can't believe this," Jamar's dad said outside court.
The petite single mom told cops several different stories about how Jamar was injured before finally admitting the truth, prosecutors said.
First, she claimed he simply got sick, went to sleep and never woke up, prosecutors said. She then claimed he fell while playing in the park and injured himself.
After hours of questioning, she finally admitted becoming enraged at Jamar when he told her he broke the television, prosecutors said.
"I hit Jamar twice in the back and twice in the stomach," she told cops.
On Friday night Crawford "held Jamar's hand and it was cold," she told cops. "He wasn't moving."
Crawford's lawyer, Camille Abate, said the mom should not have been charged with murder.
"The facts do not establish at all that this mother tried to kill her child," Abate said. "I have no idea whether hitting someone with their hand causes these kinds of injuries. It's clear that for two days she was worked over by police."
Jamar's heartbroken family called his death "inexcusable."
"Whether or not she did it on purpose doesn't matter, because my beautiful grandson is gone and he's not coming back," said Jamar's grandmother, Betsy Johnson. "It's a tragedy. It's inexcusable."
Crawford has previous arrests for drugs and assault, police sources said, and a long history of domestic incidents with the boy's father.
Police were called for domestic incidents between the pair nine times since 2006, sources said. Crawford had an open warrant for violating probation at the time of her arrest.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2011/06/20/2011-06-20_mother_charged_with_murder_of_her_5yearold_son_in_bronx_no_arrests_in_homicide_o.html

FILICIDE: Arizona: Jennifer Jansma called CPS for help

June 25, 2011, The Arizona Republic : Laurie Roberts

The call to the Child Protective Services hotline came in on Aug. 3, 2004: a mother was thinking of killing herself and her young son.
Within a day, CPS decided the boy was in no danger.
Instead of doing an actual investigation – things like pulling her psychiatric records or contacting the boy's father – the case manager and his supervisor decided that what the mother really needed was better coping skills.
And so, after three months of working with a parent aid, CPS pronounced the mother a much improved coper and closed the case.
Almost three years to the day later, Jennifer Jansma tried to kill herself and succeeded in killing her 8-year-old son Jordan – exactly as she'd described that she would.
Now, the state is asking a judge to toss out the father's lawsuit, saying there's no proof that CPS fell below “the appropriate standard of care.”
This was the appropriate standard of care?
Explains a lot, doesn't it?
Jansma had brought her son to Phoenix from Colorado early in the decade, after splitting with her boyfriend, Woody Drummond, who has since changed his name to Iacovetta. The couple had had a turbulent relationship and a bitter custody battle. A judge gave Jansma custody but ruled that Iacovetta must be promptly informed of major decisions about the boy's health or welfare.
On Aug. 3, 2004, 26-year-old Jansma put 4-year-old Jordan in respite care and checked herself into a mental hospital, explaining that she was thinking of killing herself and her son with an overdose of morphine.
A day later, she was back home when CPS came calling. Jansma, who had morphine on hand to deal with pain from an amputated leg, explained that she was overwhelmed by her son's behavior problems. The boy had recently been kicked out of preschool for spitting on teachers and punching children.
After a thorough investigation – read: a chat with Jansma and another with Jordan and his respite care provider – CPS found no evidence that the boy was at risk.
Of course, they found no evidence of risk. They didn't go looking for any.
They didn't contact anyone about Jansma's mental illness, despite knowing that she was bipolar and suffered from depression and was a client of Value Options, which at the time provided services to the seriously mentally ill in Maricopa County.
They didn't contact CPS in Colorado, despite Jansma telling them that authorities there had been called to check on Jordan.
And they didn't make any attempt to contact the boy's father, despite finding his name in their own computer system.
Instead, they referred Jansma to a non-profit agency that provided a parent aid to help her with coping and parenting skills. After 31 visits, CPS closed the case on Dec. 3, 2004.
Three years later, Jansma drugged her son with allergy medicine and adult sleeping pills then covered his back with patches containing Fentanyl, a drug more powerful than morphine.
Jordan was dead by the time they were discovered in a Tucson Holiday Inn. She is now serving 25 years in prison.
Woody Iacovetta sued the state in 2009, contending his son would still be alive had CPS notified him about Jansma's 2004 threat. Iacovetta told me he would have immediately filed for emergency custody.
“They cost him his life,” Iacovetta said. “Had they just stepped up to the plate and contacted me and made me aware of these problems. She didn't tell me about it. My son, he didn't know what was going on.”
The Attorney General's Office, which is representing CPS, declined to comment. Assistant Attorney General James Bowen has asked Superior Court Judge Edward Burke to dismiss the case. He says CPS did its job.
“CPS has neither the means nor the manpower to conduct extensive manhunts for absentee parents,” he wrote. “Because CPS could not substantiate any abuse or neglect and did not seek to place (Jordan) outside his home, there was no reasonable purpose to consult a father who lived hundreds of miles away in another state and who had a history of domestic violence.”
Actually, I can think of three reasonable purposes for CPS to pick up the darned phone and call the child's father.
1. The law requires you to conduct “prompt and thorough investigation”.
2. Maybe the story that Jansma, the mentally ill woman who killed her son, told about Iacovetta wasn't quite the whole story. You might have found that Jordan's father and grandmother had long been worried about his safety.
And 3. It just might have saved a little boy's life.
(http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/LaurieRoberts/132450

FILICIDE: Wales: Yvonne Freaney discharged by compassionate judge

 01 Jul 2011

Mother-of-four Freaney also tried to kill herself but botched her attempts to slash her wrists - and was found alive by ambulance crews. Photo: WALES NEWS SERVICE

Devoted Yvonne Freaney, 50, admitted she killed her son Glen, 11, with a coat belt in an airport hotel room.

Freaney told police she killed Glen so "no one could point fingers at him" when he was in heaven.

Mother-of-four Freaney also tried to kill herself but botched her attempts to slash her wrists - and was found alive by ambulance crews.

She was cleared of murder but admitted manslaughter by diminished responsibility. Judge Mr Justice Wyn Williams allowed her to walk free with a supervision order.

He said it was "the most difficult sentencing" he had ever had in his career.

Mr Justice Wyn Williams told her: "You have already been punished enough.
"The only sensible and credible explanation is that your state of mind was truely abnormal.
"At the end you genuinely but irrationally believed that no-one but you could care for Glen and, since you were intent on killing himself, you had to kill him first.
"Not withstanding the fact that your crime was to kill a child, your culpability was very low.
"There could be no doubts you were completely devoted to Glen throughout his short life and showered him with love and affection.
"You cared for him with the best of your ability, day in and day out. He was very demanding but you never let that deflect from putting his best interests above those of your own."
John Charles Rees, defending, said: "She was undoubtably a loving mother to all her children and killed Glen out of love not malice.
"There was never any dispute as to the facts of this case. The issue was a medical one. She was suffering from a personality disorder.
"This is a wholly exceptional case we've heard, for reasons quite a distressing and haunting.
"She went through experiences that no one should ever have to go through.
"She needs to be reintroduced into the community and back into her family, that can't happen over night but can happen in a supervised and controled way.
Freaney was discovered in the Sky Plaza hotel room near Cardiff Airport with multiple knife wounds after a botched suicide attempt.
As she was being arrested, Freaney said: "He was laughing when I was strangling him. That is when I knew he was happy.
"I had to do it because now no-one can point fingers at him. He is in heaven now. I killed him. I was frightened about who would look after him."
The court heard "loving and devoted" Freaney was facing a lifetime of one-to-one caring for Glen after the breakdown of her abusive marriage.
The jury heard how Glen could walk, run and ride a bike and communicated through a computer by tapping on symbols on the screen. But he was not toilet trained and still wore nappies.
Prosecutor Greg Taylor QC said: "Glen was a young boy who suffered from severe autism - he was diagnosed when he was aged four.
"He was generally fit and well and had a normal life expectancy but he was totally dependent on adult care.
"He needed help, dressing, washing, brushing his teeth and feeding."
Mr Taylor told the court Freaney and her husband Mark had a marriage "filled with problems" and she moved out of the family home about a month before Glen's death.
The jury was told how 17-stone former RAF serviceman Mark attacked his wife on numerous occasions at their home in Barry, South Wales.
Police were called several times to the family home after alleged domestic violence. Freaney was examined by doctors for injuries but never pressed charges against her husband.
The court heard Mr Freaney had told social services: "I'm a wife beater and proud of it. She deserves it."
Freaney must be supervised by the probation service, attend mental health meetings, live in approved accommodation and not have contact with children under 18 without supervision.
Following the trial Freaney's husband Mark called Glen's death "a tragedy".
He said: "The outcome of the trial, whatever the verdict reached will not bring Glen back to us.
"The tragedy of his death still causes us great pain. He was a wonderful friendly boy and very much loved by us all and we miss him deeply."
Her daughter Carla said: "I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has helped and supported us through this very hard time.
"The conclusion of the trial will help give closure for us all and allow us to move on. I love my mother and will remain supportive of her."
Detective Chief Inspector Richard Jones said: "Any investigation into the death of a child is distressing for everyone involved.
"This was a very difficult case but it was only correct that the facts were presented at court. We note the decision of the court today and extend our sympathies to the family."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/wirecopy/8610747/Mother-walks-free-from-court-after-strangling-autistic-son-with-belt.html