Unnatural Causes

by Dr Richard Shepherd

The day I became a fully qualified forensic pathologist was the day I turned from a not very sure trainee who still probably had a thing or two to learn, into an expert who can never put a foot wrong.

Why must I now always be right when it is the human condition to be wrong sometimes? Answer: because the adversarial nature of our criminal justice system has no room for ‘perhaps’ or ‘maybe’ or ‘possibly’.

I had to ask myself was not whether this was murder or manslaughter but whether the baby had died at all. Because a baby who has never lived cannot die. Nor be killed. And, in the legal sense, a child in the womb has not lived.