Short abstract
BBC 1, 22 February, 9 pm
Rating: ★★★
This drama-documentary on the case of Angela Cannings takes its title from the words of the judge who sentenced her to life imprisonment for the murder of her two baby sons, Jason and Matthew, who died in 1991 and 1999 respectively. Eighteen months later, in December 2003, Mrs Cannings was freed on appeal in a judgment that will have far-reaching implications for the way suspected baby killings are dealt with in future.
“I have no doubt that for a woman like you to have committed the terrible acts of suffocating your own babies there must have been something seriously wrong with you,” Mrs Justice Hallett told Mrs Cannings when sentencing her after the original trial. “All the evidence indicates you wanted the children, and apart from these terrible incidents you cherished them.
“So in my layman's view, it is no coincidence that these events took place within weeks of your giving birth. It can, in my view, be the only explanation for why someone like you could have committed these acts when you have such a loving and supportive family.”
Figure 1.
Sarah Lancashire and Timothy Spall in the BBC's version of the Angela Cannings story
Credit: BBC
Was the judge suggesting that she thought it was a case not of murder, but of infanticide, the crime a mother commits when she kills her own infant within 12 months of birth “at a time when the balance of her mind was disturbed by reason of the fact that she had not fully recovered from the effect of giving birth”? Infanticide, if recognised, usually attracts treatment rather than a prison sentence.
Mrs Cannings was originally also charged with the murder of her first baby, Gemma, but the charges were dropped. Gemma and the two baby boys had died within weeks of their birth. Jason and the Cannings' surviving daughter, Jade, now 9, had also experienced acute life-threatening events. Matthew had suffered a “worrying episode,” in the appeal court's words, nine days before his death. The crown case was that on each occasion Mrs Cannings was smothering, or attempting to smother, her babies.
Professor Roy Meadow, retired paediatrician and prosecution witness, certainly thought so. We see a reconstruction of the conference with crown prosecutors where his diagnosis of smothering starts the ball rolling inexorably towards prosecution, conviction, imprisonment, and devastation of the lives of the couple and their daughter. How accurate the reconstruction is we can only guess. The programme is a collaboration between the drama and current affairs departments of the BBC, with the co-operation of Angela Cannings (who is played by Sarah Lancashire) and her husband, Terry (played by Timothy Spall), but how far other protagonists co-operated is unclear.
The result is a fairly even handed and unhistrionic retelling of the saga, which paints a true to life picture of the way such cases unfold. But the limitations of the drama-documentary in telling a tale of this sort are apparent from the beginning. “This is a true story,” we are told. “Some names and circumstances have been changed.”
The trouble is that in such cases the truth is something we can never know beyond doubt. All we can say for sure, as expert witnesses should when evidence is equivocal or missing, is that the cause of the deaths is “unascertained.” Mrs Cannings should never have been convicted on the basis of disputed medical testimony when there was no other evidence, as the court of appeal stated when it quashed her conviction. Her family tree was full of cot deaths, which could suggest an unknown genetic problem. But whether baby Matthew's death happened exactly as portrayed in the opening scenes is surely not something within the programme makers' knowledge.
The story ends with the family's joyful reunion when Angela Cannings is released from prison, but media interviews the couple have given since then reveal that there has been no “happy ever after.” Terry Cannings gave up his job as a baker to look after Jade when Angela was barred from living at home and then sent to prison, where she was reviled by other inmates. He had a breakdown when she was in jail and says he was nearly sectioned under the Mental Health Act. The couple lost their house and neither has a job now. Their daughter refuses to go to school and is having therapy to restore her confidence.
The Cannings case should mark a turning point in the way investigations of sudden infant deaths are handled. A joint working party of the royal colleges of paediatrics and pathology has recommended a new national protocol to ensure that all unexpected baby deaths are thoroughly investigated, and that expert witnesses' opinions are based firmly on evidence, not on their past experience. But even those mothers who do kill their babies rarely murder them in cold blood. Isn't there a case for a more humane system altogether?