Several parents convicted in connection with the deaths of their infants are pursuing appeals amid growing unease about the reliability of expert evidence presented during their trials. The focus of concern is Professor David Mangham, a distinguished British bone pathologist, whose professional conduct and conclusions are presently under review by the General Medical Council (GMC).
The GMC inquiry follows judicial criticism of Professor Mangham’s findings in a recent case, where his conclusions were set aside by the court. His testimony has also been contested by other medical experts in separate proceedings, and at least three additional defendants convicted in similar circumstances are now re-examining the role of his evidence in their cases.
Professor Mangham, aged 62, voluntarily referred himself to the GMC after a High Court judge questioned his assessment of rib fractures found on a 21-month-old child who had become entangled in a scarf. The judge criticised his finding of non-accidental rib fractures on a 21-month-old girl found accidentally strangled by a scarf.
The young child’s grieving parents were questioned over her death but a court later ruled that the fractures were likely to have been caused by a fall and the 90 minutes spent trying to resuscitate her. A few months later another mother, Laura Langley, was cleared of murdering her seven-week-old daughter after experts contradicted Mangham’s evidence about the cause of fractures to her ribs.
Langley’s defence barrister, Tana Adkin KC, said all the expert’s previous cases should now be reviewed by the Crown Prosecution Service.
She told the Times: ‘This is so serious. We are talking about murder, where people ... get a life sentence.’
Analysis from the Times found that his laboratory, Calamat Ltd, had been paid at least £1.1million by police forces in the past eight years.
Described by peers as a ‘brilliant’ pathologist, Mangham was made an MBE in 2022.
But three High Court judges have raised concerns about his workload or the quality of his evidence in the past six years, including Mr Justice Keehan’s case last year involving the girl asphyxiated by a scarf.
The judgement stated that Mangham demonstrated a ‘closed mind’ and appeared ‘overburdened with work.’
Mangham reported on up to 110 suspicious death cases each year aside his job as a consultant histopathologist at London’s Royal Marsden Hospital. There are further doubts over the evidence used to convict Muritala Olaiya-Imam, who was jailed for ten years over the death of 11-week-old Malik Goncalves, the Times reported.
Malik Goncalves was found dead with multiple injuries at his mother's flat in Harlow, Essex, in August 2020. At the time Det Sgt Mike Ferguson, of Essex Police, praised the "professionalism" of officers who "did an incredible job under the most difficult and emotional of circumstances".
Eloddie Goncalves, 33, was subject to a social services safety plan at the time, stipulating she must not drink alcohol or be left alone with Malik.
Mangham identified a partial fracture on the child’s left wrist which was dated to between three and six days before death. Last December, permission was granted for a professor Tony Freemont, a bone pathologist to review the injury. Professor Freemont concluded that the damage did not meet the epidemiological criteria for a fracture, the Times reported.
Prof Freemont is now examining evidence in the case of Abigail Palmer, convicted of manslaughter in 2019 over the death of her two-month-old daughter Teri-Rae.
Palmer claimed she woke from a sleep on the sofa with Teri-Rae lifeless on her chest. Mangham identified eight non-accidental rib fractures, but a paramedic’s report described a ‘brutal’ CPR process and the post-mortem examination claimed there had been an ‘aggressive and invasive’ resuscitation procedure.
Mangham’s evidence is still being used at trial but forces have asked Freemont to review his findings in about 20 cases, the Times stated.
A CPS spokesman said: ‘In every case the use of expert witness testimony is carefully reviewed and scrutinised by our prosecutors.
‘In light of the High Court judgement, prosecutors will consider disclosure of the judge’s comments to the defence in all cases where Professor Mangham’s expert opinion is in issue – so that any disputed matters can be robustly examined as part of a trial process.
'We work on an ongoing basis with police forces to identify a breadth of qualified experts whose testimony can be relied on to support complex prosecutions.’
Mangham did not reply to requests for comment from the Times.
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