Lawyer supports salt death appeal

A retired solicitor involved in the cases of Sally Clark and
Angela Cannings is backing an appeal by a couple jailed for the
manslaughter of a boy they planned to adopt.

John Batt said he believed the case of Ian and Angela Gay was a
“massive miscarriage of justice”.

The couple were given a five-year sentence in January this year
for poisoning three-year-old Christian Blewitt with salt.

Batt said the Gays’ case “rang alarm bells” when he first heard
about it. He described them as “normal, respectable and loving”
adoptive parents. “They were vetted by social services for eight
months, yet they were suddenly accused of this so-called salt
poisoning of a three-year-old boy,” he said.

Batt added there was “no doubt” that there were thousands of
similar cases decided on the basis of “highly controversial” expert
evidence.

“It is all too easy for the emotions of juries to be swayed in
the case of a dead child and to wrongly convict the parents,” he
said.