Alcohol poisoning killed solicitor

Sally Clark, 42, was five times the drink-drive limit when found dead at her home in Hatfield Peverel, Essex, in March, an inquest heard.

The hearing was told Mrs Clark had become dependent on alcohol and suffered psychiatric problems after her release. But coroner Caroline Beasley-Murray said there was no evidence to suggest Mrs Clark had intended suicide - and recorded a verdict of accidental death.

Mrs Clark was found guilty of murdering her sons, eight-week-old Harry and 11-week-old Christopher, following a trial at Chester Crown Court in 1999. She served more than three years in prison before being cleared by the Court of Appeal in 2003.

Neither Mrs Clark's widower Stephen, also a solicitor, nor any other relatives were at the inquest in Chelmsford, Essex. The family was represented by a lawyer.

A family spokesman said after the hearing: "Sally was unable to come to terms with the false accusations, based on flawed medical evidence and the failures of the legal system, which debased everything she had been brought up to believe in and which she herself practised.

"Having suffered what was acknowledged by the Court of Appeal to be one of the worst miscarriages of justice in recent years, it is hardly surprising that her ordeal culminated in the diagnosis of 'enduring personality change after catastrophic experience', 'protracted grief reaction' and 'alcohol dependency syndrome' and that she was never able to return to being the happy, kind and generous person we all knew and loved."

Mrs Clark's children died within 14 months of each other. She was arrested in 1998 and the following year jurors were asked to decide whether the boys' deaths were natural.

The expert evidence of paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow was a focal point at Mrs Clark's trial. He told jurors the probability of two natural, unexplained cot deaths in the family was 73 million to one.

The figure was later disputed by the Royal Statistical Society and other medical experts, who said the odds of a second cot death in a family were around 200 to 1. That evidence triggered an appeal and Mrs Clark's release.