Angela Cannings walks free as murder conviction is quashed

A mother-of-three sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of her infant sons has walked free today after the Court of Appeal quashed her conviction.

In April 2002, shop assistant Angela Cannings, 40, from Salisbury in Wiltshire, was found guilty of smothering her seven-week-old son Jason in 1991 and her 18-week-old son Matthew in 1999.

The woman had always denied both charges claiming that her sons had died due to 'cot deaths' - Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Sids).

However, three Judges at the Court of Appeal in London found that Angela Cannings should not have been convicted of murder and quashed the convictions.

Ruling that the convictions were "unsafe", Lord Justice Judge said that the appeal had raised a number of issues of public interest and that they would be reflecting on the terms of the judgment.

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome remains a mystery, but if affects more boys than girls and is most likely to occur between two and six months.

During the appeal hearing medical statistics expert, Professor Robert Carpenter, testified that the two boys had a "substantially increased" risk of dying from cot death. Both had been placed face down and may have been exposed to cigarette smoke - both considered to be contributory factors in the syndrome.

The Cannings family had suffered three infant deaths. Their first child Gemma had also died in a cot death incident in 1989 when she was 13 weeks old.

(SP)