Kathleen Folbigg says she will always grieve for her children and has called her pardon and release from prison after 20 years, a victory for science and truth, as questions turn to the legal lessons to be learned and reforms enacted in its wake.
In a video from the home near Grafton of her longtime friend and advocate, Tracy Chapman, Folbigg said she was extremely humbled and grateful.
“My eternal gratitude goes to my friends and family, especially Tracy and all of her family and I would not have survived this whole ordeal without them,” she said in the video which shows her placing a bouquet of roses in a vase in Chapman’s kitchen.
“Today is a victory for science and especially truth.
“And for the last 20 years I have been in prison I have forever and will always think of my children, grieve for my children and miss them and love them terribly.”
After two decades in prison over the deaths of her four children, Folbigg was pardoned and released on Monday after a decision of the New South Wales attorney general, Michael Daley.
The decision was made after new scientific research was able to throw reasonable doubt on Folbigg’s guilt, prompting calls for an independent body with powers to investigate claims of wrongful conviction in Australia.
The Australian Lawyers Alliance criminal justice spokesperson, Greg Barns, said such a body would provide a “valuable safeguard against terrible miscarriages of justice” and prevent cases like Folbigg’s.
“An independent body that has the freedom and the power to thoroughly investigate would take the responsibility for appeals away from the convicted person and their friends and family and provide an important protection against wrongful convictions,” he said.
Advocates – including Folbigg’s legal team – have pointed to similar bodies in New Zealand and the UK.
The NSW premier, Chris Minns, has not ruled out such reforms but said the work of the inquiry headed by former state chief justice Thomas Bathurst had led to “the right decision” in this case.
“There are many layers of judicial review as a result of those existing appeal mechanisms being in place,” he said.
“The circumstances related to this case were obviously new evidence, effectively around a genetic mutation that was discovered only recently … by eminent scientists and the law is not going to be perfect.”
The NSW Greens’s justice spokesperson, Sue Higginson, called for the government to establish an inquiry into how miscarriages of justice are dealt with in NSW.
“We need to see if there’s a way to bring these important protections and powers into a more modern context,” she said.
Mehera San Roque, an associate professor of law at the University of NSW, agreed there should be an inquiry, but said it shouldn’t be limited to NSW.
“It may be more appropriate at a federal level given that miscarriages are occurring in a range of different jurisdictions,” she said.
Folbigg’s lawyer, Rhanee Rego, has also called for a change to the appeals process to deal with fresh scientific evidence.
Barrister Felicity Graham was among those calling for changes to the law that means the power to show mercy in such cases rested with the governor who can only act upon the advice of the attorney general.
“Across Australia, we need to reform our systems for dealing with potential miscarriages of justice. The current safeguards are not sufficiently robust, nor sufficiently responsive to the urgency and the horror of someone being wrongly convicted,” she said.
Folbigg, who has always maintained her innocence, had served 20 years of a 25-year sentence since being convicted in 2003 of murdering three of her children and the manslaughter of one child.
Bathurst told Daley in a summary of findings from an inquiry into Folbigg’s convictions that he had reached “a firm view that there was reasonable doubt as to the guilt of Ms Folbigg for each of the offences for which she was originally tried”.
Chapman told reporters on Tuesday morning Folbigg’s first night of freedom was the first time she had slept properly in 20 years.
“She slept for a first time in a real bed, had a cup of tea in a real crockery cup, real spoons to stir with,” she said.
“That sounds basic to you all, but she’s grateful.”
