BMJ  2005;331:1355 (10 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7529.1355-a

News

Sally Clark pathologist removed from Home Office list

BMJ

Alan Williams, the forensic pathologist who failed to disclose the results of microbiology tests about Sally Clark's second son at her murder trial, was last week struck off the list of home office accredited pathologists.

A pathology disciplinary tribunal for the Home Office ruled that Dr Williams "fell short of the standards required of a Home Office accredited forensic pathologist in failing to refer in his postmortem report to the microbiological tests which he had commissioned."

Mrs Clark's conviction for killing her two baby sons, Christopher and Harry, was quashed on a second appeal in 2003 after she spent three and a half years in jail for murder. Dr Williams' failure to disclose test results which showed the presence of Staphylococcus aureus in tissue samples from Harry's body, raising the possibility that he had died from natural causes, was the main ground for allowing her appeal. Flawed statistical evidence from the paediatrician Roy Meadow was only a secondary ground.

Last June, Dr Williams was barred for three years by the General Medical Council from working for the Home Office or coroners, although he was allowed to continue as a consultant histopathologist at Maccles-field General Hospital. He is appealing against the ban.

The three man home office tribunal—a QC, a pathologist, and a senior police officer—said that its ruling would not preclude Dr Williams permanently from reapplying for accreditation. "If he were to make such an application then it should be considered by the appropriate authority on its merits, giving such weight as is considered appropriate to the findings of this tribunal and Dr Williams's response to them," the panel said.

The tribunal found that Dr Williams had not intended to mislead, but held that his action in not disclosing the microbiology results was "deliberate and not the result of an oversight." Nor was it an isolated lapse, the tribunal said, because on several occasions before and during the trial he should have disclosed the results but failed to do so.

Dr Williams told the tribunal that he thought the results were irrelevant at the time and still thought so, though he now accepts that he should have disclosed them.

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