A Life of Crime: The Memoirs of a High Court Judge
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The Hon. Sir Harry Ognall is a retired judge of the High Court, Queen’s Bench Division. For many years, he enjoyed a formidable reputation as an advocate at the criminal Bar. As counsel, and later as judge, he was involved in numerous high-profile trials, both here and abroad.Among many cases as a QC, he prosecuted Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called ‘Yorkshire Ripper’. He successfully defended six officers of the Air Force of Zimbabwe at their trial in Harare, where they faced a charge of treasonable sabotage.As a judge, he presided over the trial of Colin Stagg (the alleged ‘Wimbledon Common murderer’), the trial arising from the Lyme Bay canoe tragedy, and the trial for the first time in the United Kingdom of a doctor’s alleged involvement in euthanasia.Thoughtful and provocative, Sir Harry has advice for the aspiring young advocate, and invests this penetrating memoir with warmth, humour and understanding. His frank portrait of a lifetime in the criminal law offers unique perspectives on some of the most notorious cases of the 20th Century, and fascinating insights into a colourful professional life and the burdens and responsibilities that come with the privilege of high judicial office.
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To Sally, for so many reasons.
‘That’s it, then’
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By way of notable example, many will still recall the case of Regina v Craig and Bentley, tried before Lord Goddard, Chief Justice, at the Central Criminal Court in 1952. It may be an extreme example, but I remind myself of the aphorism that ‘hard cases make bad law’. Christopher Craig was sixteen years old; Derek Bentley was a mentally retarded nineteen-year-old, an epileptic with a reading age of four who had been adjudged unfit for military service due to mental retardation. Both burgled a warehouse. Craig had a loaded pistol. (Significantly, Bentley was carrying a knife supplied to him by Craig, but never produced it at any stage.) The pair were confronted by a number of policemen on the rooftop of the building, one of whom urged Craig to hand over his weapon. The evidence that was obviously accepted by the jury was that at about this juncture Bentley shouted to his accomplice, ‘Let him have it, Chris.’ Craig fired the pistol, and killed one of the police officers, PC Miles.
Both youths were charged with and convicted of murder, on the basis of joint enterprise. The law, however, was that nobody under eighteen could be hanged for a capital crime. So it was that Craig was sentenced to life imprisonment (and was released after serving ten years). Despite the jury’s plea for leniency, the Home Secretary declined to intervene. Nineteen-year-old Bentley (who did not fire the shot) was hanged. What did ‘Let him have it, Chris’ mean? Did it mean ‘shoot’, or did it mean ‘Do as the bobby says, and hand over the gun’? On this nuance of language, Bentley went to the scaffold.
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