THERE can be no more heinous crime than the murder of your own children.

It is impossible to imagine the scale of the ordeal endured by Angela Cannings after being charged with, and then convicted of killing her two baby sons.

Thankfully, that torment is at an end with the quashing of her conviction by the Court of Appeal. The repercussions for our legal system, however, will endure.

This is not an isolated miscarriage of justice. It follows the decision to overturn Sally Clarke's conviction of murdering her two sons, and the acquittal of Trupti Patel on charges of murdering her three babies.

It is clear our criminal justice system has to reappraise the investigation of cases involving the sudden death of infants.

The first priority must be to review other prosecutions to ensure there are no other miscarriages of justice.

As a society we cannot tolerate the wrongful imprisonment of women who are already suffering the grief caused by the sudden death of their children.

But there must also be a sea change in attitudes to the death of babies. We hope the Government will confirm these reforms once it has taken delivery of the report it has commissioned into procedures used to investigate mothers suspected of murdering their offspring.

In Britain, around one baby in 1,600 dies of cot death each year. And the odds against a second or third infant death in the same family are not as long as we may assume.

This misconception leads to eagerness to treat all such sudden deaths with suspicion, and dilutes the notion of the presumption of innocence until proved otherwise.

While we must ensure that the guilty do not escape justice, we must resist the temptation to assume criminality in an unexplained death.