KATHLEEN Folbigg’s diary entries that helped convict her of killing her four babies are a key point of difference between the legal team challenging the guilty verdicts and lawyers assisting an inquiry into the 2003 convictions.
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At a directions hearing in Sydney today counsel assisting the inquiry, Gail Furness, SC, said a fresh interpretation of the diary entries by a clinical psychologist who found “no real admission of guilt” in them did “not sufficiently raise an issue” that challenged the jury’s 2003 guilty findings.
During the trial 15 years ago the Crown argued the diary entries contained admissions of guilt by Folbigg after four of her infant children died at Singleton between 1989 and 1999.
The diary entries included “She left, with a bit of help”; “With Sarah all I wanted was her to shut up. And one day she did”; “After everything that’s happened. I suppose I deserve to never have kids again” and “What scares me most will be when I’m alone with baby. How do I overcome that? Defeat that?”
Ms Furness told former District Court Chief Judge Reginald Blanch that the clinical psychologist “questioned the interpretations placed on the diary entries by the Crown” during the 2003 trial.
But while “opinions may well differ as to the meaning of the diaries”, the inferences to be drawn from them were presented to the jury at the trial in addition to other evidence, Ms Furness said.
She argued the clinical psychologist’s review of the diary entries and Folbigg’s application did not raise an issue warranting a fresh examination of the diaries at the inquiry.
It was ordered by Attorney General Mark Speakman in August after a University of Newcastle Legal Centre team petitioned the NSW Governor for the inquiry in 2015 after a two-year investigation of the Folbigg case.
The investigation focused on the lack of evidence the babies were suffocated and the incidence of three or more baby deaths in the one family from unidentified natural causes.
Mr Speakman said the inquiry would focus on evidence relating to multiple child deaths in one family attributed to natural causes, after the university petition raised “a question of the evidence that led to Ms Folbigg’s convictions in 2003”.
“That question concerns evidence as to the incidence of reported deaths of three or more infants in the same family attributable to unidentified natural causes,” Mr Speakman said.
During the directions hearing today Ms Furness said the fresh evidence to be considered included three reports on the causes of death of the four Folbigg children – Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura – and the diary entry report.
Each child died suddenly and unexpectedly because of “cessation of breathing”, but in a report to the inquiry internationally respected Monash University forensic pathologist Professor Stephen Cordner found “no forensic pathology support for the contention that any or all of these children have been killed”.
The inquiry was told Dr Cordner’s findings were backed by Ontario chief forensic pathologist Dr Michael Pollanen who prepared a five-page report.
Ms Furness said the inquiry should be directed to any new research or medical evidence relevant to the causes of death of each children, and any new research or evidence on the deaths of three or more children in the one family from unidentified natural causes.
Mr Blanch said it was unlikely a public hearing would be held until late February or early March.
Newcastle barrister Robert Cavanagh, for Folbigg, said Legal Aid this week approved funding for a senior counsel to be appointed to represent Folbigg at the hearing.
A further directions hearing is proposed for November 15 but is yet to be confirmed. A location for the hearing is yet to be determined.
Deeper reading: The case of Kathleen Folbigg
Petition calls for Folbigg child murder conviction review (July 2, 2015)
Kathleen Folbigg case review bid challenges SIDS evidence (October 6, 2014)
Legal centre in push for judicial inquiry (October 25, 2013)
Kathleen Folbigg's family says she deserves jail time (February 11, 2013)
The crusade to free Kathleen Folbigg (Feburary 4, 2013)
