Wrongfully jailed for 20 years, Australia’s ‘most hated woman’ likely to receive record compensation

Lee Duna@lemmy.nz to World News@lemmy.world – 235 points –
Wrongfully jailed for 20 years, Australia’s ‘most hated woman’ likely to receive record compensation
theguardian.com
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Holy cow. Meadow's law sounds like it's for punishing people with genetic diseases or the worst luck

Meadow’s Law – a controversial and now discredited precept that three or more sudden infant deaths in one family were murders until proven otherwise.

This is like the insidious logic applied in the name of terrorism and pedophilia — "innocent until proven guilty... unless 3 infants die... Then it's zero-evidence auto-murder, and may god have mercy on your soul".

Meadow’s Law sounds like something a James Bond villain would say. Because it is. It’s based on this quote from Goldfinger:

Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.

Being burned for witchcraft seems worse.

Excellent anti-death penalty here. A place like Texas would have already executed her.

For what it's worth, Meadow's law is described by the article as a "precept" because it was never an actual legislated law. Just a concept thought up by a now-discredited British paediatrician. Even taking it on its own terms, it's a "law" in the way "Betteridge's Law" or "Cunningham's Law" are laws.