Gender, Genes and Wrongful Convictions: Implications of the Kathleen Folbigg Case
Join our panel of experts as they discuss the wrongful conviction of Kathleen Folbigg and her subsequent pardon twenty years later.
What can be learned from Ms Folbigg’s case, now recognised as one of Australia’s worst miscarriages of justice. Our panel will delve into the evidence and implications of the case- from conviction, to appeal, to the two recent Inquiries, and the cutting-edge genetic evidence that led to Ms Folbigg’s release.
The panel will raise crucial questions, including:
The Panel
About the Folbigg case
On 21 May 2003 Kathleen Folbigg was found guilty of the manslaughter of her first baby (Caleb) and the murder of her three infant children (Patrick, Sarah and Laura). Twenty years later, on 5 June 2023, after multiple appeals and two separate Inquiries in 2019 and 2022/3, Katheen Folbigg was granted a free pardon in respect of all of her convictions. In announcing the pardon, the NSW Attorney General accepted the advice of the Hon. Tom Bathurst AC KC (Commissioner for the 2022 Folbigg Inquiry) that reasonable doubt now exists as to the guilt of Ms Folbigg.
While new developments in the genetic evidence altered the evidentiary landscape of the second Inquiry, the emergence of novel medical and scientific evidence alone cannot explain the starkly different conclusion reached at trial, on appeal and in the 2019 and 2022 Inquiries. Nor can it explain why Folbigg’s case was treated so differently to comparable cases, such in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, in the early 2000s.
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