SC1 | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division), R v Clark [2000] EWCA Crim 54, 2 October 2000. Excerpts quoted from the judgment; paragraph numbers refer to the published judgment. Public on the as-of date. Full text: https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2000/54.html

Paragraph 118, quoting the expert's notice served 7 October 1999:
"The likelihood of SIDS varies with social circumstances. The most recent estimation of the incidence in England is that for a family in which the parents do not smoke, in which at least one has a waged income and in which the mother is over the age of 26 years, the risk is 1:8,543 live births."
"Thus the chances of two infant deaths within such a family being SIDS is 1:73,000,000."

Paragraph 120:
"The trial therefore started without the defence having the assistance of a medical statistician, and in the event, no such witness was called. But the Crown had no statistical expert either."

Paragraph 122 (quoted CESDI study text):
"Since the factors will generally remain the same (with the possible exception of maternal age below 27 years) the risk of SIDS to a subsequent child in a family in which one infant has already died will range from one in 214 to one on 8,543. this does not take account of possible familial incidence of factors other than those included in Table 3.58."
"For a family with none of these three factors, the risk of two infants dying as SIDS by chance alone will thus be one in (8,543 x 8,543), ie approximately one in 73 million."

Paragraph 114 (reported trial question and answer, under the judgment's section 'The trial'):
"Q Later on in the paper does it go on to work out the risk of two infants dying of SIDS in that family by chance alone?
A Yes, you have to multiply one in 8,543 times 1 in 8,543 and I think it gives that in the penultimate paragraph, its points out that it's approximately a chance of 1 in 73 million .... It gives a chance of 1 in 73 million live births and in England, Wales and Scotland there are about, say, 700,000 live births a year, so it is saying by chance that happening will occur once every hundred years."

Paragraph 139 (the court reporting Professor Dawid's objection and its own response):
"Professor Dawid goes on to question the appropriateness of squaring 1 in 8,543 in order to produce the figure of 1 in 73 million. He notes the fact that the relevant table:
\"... does not take account of possible familial incidence of factors\" [see paragraph 122 and the penultimate quoted sub-paragraph]
and emphasises the possibility that there might be factors predisposing a family with one cot death to another. He suggests, not unreasonably, that the 1:73 million must be regarded as a \"ball park\" estimate. We do not imagine that the Crown would demur from that suggestion."

Paragraph 141:
"He also makes the obvious point that the evidential material in Table 3.58 tells us nothing whatsoever as to the guilt or innocence of the appellant."

Paragraph 160 (the court quotes the appellant's argument, then comments on the missing comparison):
"The fresh evidence of Dr Evett and Professor Dawid demonstrates that the prosecution invited the jury to adopt the figure of 73 million as having a significance in itself when in truth, without reference to the likelihood of a competing possibility, the figure has no relevance or significance at all".
"The competing possibility identified is a double infant murder by a mother. That may be capable of being expressed in terms of a statistical probability, but legally speaking the exercise is not realistic - see R -v- Denis Adams (No 2) [1998] 1 Cr App R 377, which shows that it is not an exercise the courts would perform."

Paragraph 162:
"Therefore we accept that when one is looking ex post at whether two deaths were natural or unnatural, the 1:73 million figure is no help. It is merely a distraction."

Paragraph 258:
"The appeal against conviction on each count is therefore dismissed."
