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A court of appeal on Thursday overturned the conviction of a woman once labeled Australia\u2019s worst female serial killer by the tabloids for the deaths of her four young children<\/a>.<\/p>\n The woman, Kathleen Folbigg, 56, was found guilty in 2003 of killing the children<\/a> and sentenced to 30 years in prison. But Australia\u2019s scientific community rallied around her, citing genetic evidence that indicated the children had most likely died of natural causes.<\/p>\n All four of Ms. Folbigg\u2019s children died before the age of 2: Caleb, at 19 days, in 1989; Patrick, at 8 months, nearly two years later; Sarah, at 10 months, in 1993; and Laura, at 18 months, in 1999.<\/p>\n Andrew Bell, the chief justice for the state of New South Wales, told a court that there was \u201creasonable doubt\u201d of Ms. Folbigg\u2019s guilt, based in part on \u201can extensive body of new scientific evidence\u201d that had not been available at the time of her sentencing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt is appropriate that her convictions be quashed,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Ms. Folbigg received a pardon<\/a> in June and was freed after an official inquiry found there was a reasonable probability that three of the four children had died of natural causes, and that prosecutors had relied on \u201ccoincidence and tendency evidence\u201d that no longer held up. <\/p>\n The Court of Criminal Appeal in Sydney on Thursday threw out her conviction, potentially opening the door to compensation from the state. Speaking to reporters outside the court, Rhanee Rego, Ms. Folbigg\u2019s lawyer, suggested that compensation could be \u201cbigger than any substantial payment that has been made before.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Folbigg, who has long maintained her innocence, thanked supporters and criticized the \u201cdisbelief and hostility\u201d she said she had suffered for almost a quarter century. \u201cThe system preferred to blame me rather than accept that sometimes children can and do die suddenly, unexpectedly and heartbreakingly,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n At the time of her conviction, prosecutors argued that she had smothered her children, though there was no medical evidence of it, and all four had been in poor health before they died.<\/p>\n A doctor who served as an expert witness testified that he had never seen a case of four children dying in the same family, and prosecutors argued that four siblings\u2019 dying so young within a decade would be so spectacularly unlikely as to be impossible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThere has never, ever been in the history of medicine any case like this,\u201d one prosecutor said in closing arguments. \u201cIt is not a reasonable doubt; it is preposterous.\u201d<\/p>\n But the Australian Academy of Science, which acted as an independent adviser to the investigation, described<\/a> the case as \u201cAustralia\u2019s greatest miscarriage of justice\u201d and said the outcome showed that the inquiry had \u201ccomprehensively listened to the science.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n