Maxine Robinson

Last updated
Maxine Robinson
Born1968 (age 55–56)
MotiveUnable to cope with her children
Criminal penalty Life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of 10 years (1995), three years imprisonment (2004)
Details
Victims3
Span of crimes
1989–1993
CountryUnited Kingdom
Date apprehended
1995 (for two murders)

Maxine Robinson (born 1968) is an English woman who murdered all three of her children between 1989 and 1993. [1] Convicted of murdering two of the children in 1995, Robinson unsuccessfully appealed against her convictions, claiming their deaths had been natural. However, in 2004, she admitted killing them and further revealed that she had, in 1989, murdered her first-born child, whose death until then had been considered a cot death. Her trial judge observed that Robinson's case was a "timely" reminder that "not all mothers in prison for killing their children are the victims of miscarriages of justice."

Contents

Murders

In 1989, Robinson's nine-month-old daughter, Victoria, died suddenly at the family home in Pelton, near Chester-le-Street, County Durham. [2] [3] The death was not considered suspicious at the time and was judged to be a cot death. [2] In 1993, both Robinson's 19-month-old daughter, Christine, and five-month-old son, Anthony, also died suddenly. [2] Suspicion fell on Robinson because she had not employed the resuscitation training she received after Victoria's death. [1] Robinson denied any wrongdoing and claimed the children also suffered cot death. Some experts called by the defense at her trial agreed with her claims that the deaths were natural, [2] [4] though a Home Office pathologist testified that the deaths were consistent with suffocation. Robinson was convicted of their murders at trial in 1995 by a narrow majority verdict. She appealed the verdict, but her conviction was upheld. [4] [1]

Confessions

Robinson's conviction had in part been based upon the evidence of paediatrician Roy Meadow, who had devised a statistical theory that said that more than one unexplained child death in a family was suspicious, and more than two indicated murder. [5] Meadow's work was subsequently discredited and several convictions based upon his evidence were quashed, such as in the Angela Cannings, Trupti Patel and Sally Clark cases. In January 2004, the Attorney General ordered Robinson's conviction, along with many others based on Meadow's evidence, to be reviewed as potentially unsafe. [6] [5] [7] [8]

Before a review could occur, however, Robinson told a prison 'listener' at HM Prison Durham that she had killed all three of her children, revealing that they had been smothered in their sleep. [2] [4] [1] She was charged with Victoria's murder in April 2004. [2] Although advised by her defence to plead guilty to infanticide with diminished responsibility, Robinson instead pleaded guilty to murder, saying she had smothered the baby with a deflated balloon. [3] [2] [4] She said she had killed Victoria as she had been unable to cope with her, was depressed at the time and was criticised by her mother. [3]

Robinson was already serving a life sentence for the murder of her two younger children when she pleaded guilty to murdering the oldest. The judge increased her minimum term by three years, remarking that the case was a "timely" reminder that "not all mothers in prison for killing their children are the victims of miscarriages of justice." [3]

See also

Related Research Articles

Infanticide is the intentional killing of infants or offspring. Infanticide was a widespread practice throughout human history that was mainly used to dispose of unwanted children, its main purpose being the prevention of resources being spent on weak or disabled offspring. Unwanted infants were usually abandoned to die of exposure, but in some societies they were deliberately killed. Infanticide is generally illegal, but in some places the practice is tolerated, or the prohibition is not strictly enforced.

Sally Clark was an English solicitor who, in November 1999, became the victim of a miscarriage of justice when she was found guilty of the murder of her two infant sons. Clark's first son died in December 1996 within a few weeks of his birth, and her second son died in similar circumstances in January 1998. A month later, Clark was arrested and tried for both deaths. The defense argued that the children had died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The prosecution case relied on flawed statistical evidence presented by paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow, who testified that the chance of two children from an affluent family suffering SIDS was 1 in 73 million. He had arrived at this figure by squaring his estimate of a chance of 1 in 8500 of an individual SIDS death in similar circumstances. The Royal Statistical Society later issued a statement arguing that there was no statistical basis for Meadow's claim, and expressed concern at the "misuse of statistics in the courts".

Sir Samuel Roy Meadow is a British retired paediatrician infamous for facilitating several wrongful convictions of mothers for murdering their babies. He was awarded the Donald Paterson prize of the British Paediatric Association in 1968 for a study of the effects on parents of having a child in hospital. In 1977, he published an academic paper describing a phenomenon dubbed Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSbP). In 1980 he was awarded a professorial chair in paediatrics at St James's University Hospital, Leeds, and in 1998, he was knighted for services to child health.

Meadow's Law is a discredited legal concept in the field of child protection, intended to be used to judge cases of multiple cot or crib deaths – Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) – within a single family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angela Cannings</span> British woman, wrongfully convicted of murder

Angela Cannings was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in the UK in 2002 for the murder of her seven-week-old son, Jason, who died in 1991, and of her 18-week-old son Matthew, who died in 1999. Her first child, Gemma, died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in 1989 at the age of 13 weeks, although she was never charged in connection with Gemma's death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chester Turner</span> American serial killer (born 1966)

Chester Dewayne Turner is an American serial killer and sex offender who was sentenced to death for sexually assaulting and murdering fourteen women and an unborn baby in Los Angeles between 1987 and 1998.

Murder is an offence under the common law legal system of England and Wales. It is considered the most serious form of homicide, in which one person kills another with the intention to unlawfully cause either death or serious injury. The element of intentionality was originally termed malice aforethought, although it required neither malice nor premeditation. Baker, chapter 14 states that many killings done with a high degree of subjective recklessness were treated as murder from the 12th century right through until the 1974 decision in DPP v Hyam.

Kathleen Megan Folbigg is an Australian woman who was wrongfully convicted in 2003 of murdering her four infant children. She was pardoned in 2023 after 20 years in jail following a long campaign for justice by her supporters, and had her convictions overturned on appeal a few months later.

Trupti Patel is a qualified British pharmacist from Maidenhead in Berkshire, England, who was acquitted in 2003 of murdering three of her children, Amar, Jamie, and Mia.

Donna Anthony is a British woman from Somerset who was jailed in 1998 after being convicted of the murder of her two babies. She was cleared and freed after having spent more than six years in prison.

Charles Randal Smith is a former Canadian pathologist known for performing flawed child autopsies that resulted in wrongful convictions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amelia Dyer</span> English serial killer (1837–1896)

Amelia Elizabeth Hobley, popularly dubbed the Ogress of Reading, was an English serial killer who murdered infants in her care over a thirty-year period during the Victorian era.

<i>Cherished</i> (film) British TV series or programme

Cherished is a single British true crime drama, written by acclaimed screenwriter Gwyneth Hughes, that first broadcast on BBC One on 22 February 2005. Starring Sarah Lancashire as protagonist Angela Cannings, the drama is based on Cannings' wrongful conviction for the deaths of two of her infant children, Jason and Matthew. Directed by Robin Sheppard, the drama also stars Timothy Spall as Angela's husband Terry, Emma Cunniffe as Angela's sister Claire; and Ian McNeice as her defence barrister; Bill Bache. The drama was a joint production between the BBC's drama and current affairs wings. 5.18 million viewers tuned in for the initial broadcast. Similarly to other true-life BBC productions of the time; Cherished has never been released on DVD.

Peter Connelly was a 17-month-old British boy who was killed in London in 2007 after suffering more than fifty injuries over an eight-month period, during which he was repeatedly seen by the London Borough of Haringey Children's services and National Health Service (NHS) health professionals. Baby P's real first name was revealed as "Peter" on the conclusion of a subsequent trial of Peter's mother's boyfriend on a charge of raping a two-year-old. His full identity was revealed when his killers were named after the expiry of a court anonymity order on 10 August 2009.

Victoria Elizabeth Marie"Tori"Stafford was a Canadian girl who was abducted, raped, and murdered by Michael Rafferty and Terri-Lynne McClintic. Her body was found three months later in a wooded area in rural Ontario. The subsequent investigation and search were the subject of massive media coverage across Canada.

Fetal abduction refers to the rare crime of child abduction by kidnapping of an at term pregnant woman and extraction of her fetus through a crude cesarean section. Dr. Michael H. Stone and Dr. Gary Brucato have alternatively referred to this crime as "fetus-snatching" or "fetus abduction." Homicide expert Vernon J. Geberth has used the term "fetal kidnapping." In the small number of reported cases, a few pregnant victims and about half of their fetuses survived the assault and non-medically performed cesarean.

Events from 2003 in England

Infanticide in 19th-century New Zealand was difficult to assess, especially for newborn indigenous Māori infants. Resultantly, many New Zealand women who might otherwise have been sentenced to penal servitude or capital punishment had their sentences commuted to the lesser charge of "concealment of birth" under the Offences Against the Person Act 1867. However, the relative leniency extended only to mothers of concealed or hidden infants who subsequently died. Fathers, grandparents and "baby farmers" like Minnie Dean, the only woman to be executed in New Zealand history, and Daniel Cooper in the 1920s were viewed as more culpable for the death of such infants.

From 1996 to 2006, Megan Huntsman, an American woman, murdered six of her newborn children shortly after giving birth to them in Utah.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Emma Grace Cole</span> 2019 child murder in Smyrna, Delaware

Emma Grace Cole was an American murder and torture victim from Bloomington, Indiana, whose burnt skeletal remains were discovered near a softball complex in Smyrna, Delaware, on September 13, 2019. She remained unidentified for over a year and was known as "Baby Elle", "Jane Smyrna Doe 2019", and "Smyrna Doe" until her identification in October 2020. The murder has gained significant attention and media coverage due to the brutality of Emma's death and her former status as an unidentified murder victim. She was murdered by her mother, Kristie Lynn Haas, who pleaded guilty to murder in 2023.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Clixby, Hilary (23 April 2004). "Murdered by their mother". Newcastle Journal. Retrieved 5 March 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Mother admits killing third baby". BBC News. 22 April 2004. Retrieved 5 March 2023.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Three extra years for baby killer". BBC News. 18 June 2004. Retrieved 5 March 2023.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Carter, Helen (23 April 2004). "Mother says she killed third child". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 March 2023.
  5. 1 2 "Mother defies lawyers to admit killing baby". The Times. 23 April 2004. Retrieved 30 April 2023.
  6. ↑ "Minister orders review of 285 cot death 'murders'". The Independent. 20 January 2004. Retrieved 30 April 2023.
  7. ↑ Lister, Sam (23 April 2004). "Confusion on sudden infant deaths". The Sunday Times. Retrieved 20 April 2023.
  8. ↑ Dyer, Owen (2004). "Five cases of child murder to be reopened". BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.). 328 (7449): 1154. doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7449.1154-a. PMC   411128 . PMID   15142904.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.