Читать книгу A Life of Crime: The Memoirs of a High Court Judge - Harry Ognall, Harry Ognall - Страница 9

Sited directly opposite Leeds Town Hall, where at that time the higher courts were located, Vince’s Chambers were Dickensian in character. The rooms were on an upper floor, approached via a gloomy wooden staircase that bore the ravages of time. It was there that I undertook my pupillage, having a go at any instructions given to my pupil master, as well as (I hoped) tackling any work that came to me. I stayed there for just a few years before being persuaded to join a much busier set in the city.

My first chambers were certainly not fashionable. By that I mean that they had no real foothold in anything but the criminal courts, small civil actions in the County Court, and undefended divorces. Common law chambers in theory offer services in a wide variety of areas: criminal law, negligence (mainly personal injuries), contract, family law and (very occasionally) administrative law. Of these, personal injury litigation was by a distance the source of the largest number of cases other than crime. In the main at that time were claims for industrial injury sustained by workers in factories or in coal mines. The work flow came to the Bar either via trade unions (who were the plaintiffs) or insurers (the defendants). There was a good deal of snobbery attached to this work. In my young days, unless chambers were favoured with it, they were viewed as down-market. Certainly, a barrister without a substantial civil practice could not be optimistic about a successful career, still less about advancement to the rank of Queen’s Counsel or the bench.

Divorce as an area of practice was never for me. Matrimonial disputes often generated passions beyond all reason, and the lawyers were always cast in the role of scapegoats. I did not mind the trivia of undefended divorces before a County Court judge. They were relatively well paid, and wholly untaxing. And they had their humorous moments. I remember a petition for divorce which contained the allegation that ‘We were married on the 1st March 1961, and we separated on March 4th 1961. During that time, we gradually drifted apart.’

But when it came to disputes over money, and especially the custody of children, I cried ‘halt’. And ‘cried’ is a wholly appropriate word for the experience which proved the defining moment for me in my rooted aversion to acting any more for husbands or wives in that arena.

I represented a husband in what proved to be a highly acrimonious and emotional contest over the custody of his two infant children. He lost; his wife was granted custody, with only limited weekly access being permitted to my client. Some few days later, I opened the morning paper to read that he had availed himself of that access in the most terrible fashion. He drove himself and his children to a country lane near Leeds, connected the exhaust to the car interior and so murdered them, also killing himself. Even now, as I write these words, the anguish that came over me at the time remains with me. There are occasions when to speak of professional objectivity is to defy human experience.

It followed that the chambers where I started my professional life was on the face of it unlikely to propel me onwards and upwards. Fortunately (how often do I say that?), the criminal law to which its members were essentially confined fitted precisely with my temperament and aptitudes. I was destined for the criminal courts. As a new boy, that meant the magistrates’ courts. Then, as now, the greater proportion of criminal cases are disposed of there. Motoring offences, minor assaults, and a wide variety of petty offences of dishonesty are their lot. For a young advocate, they are an invaluable apprenticeship.

Unlike the procedure in the higher courts, the defence generally has no idea of the detailed evidence to be presented by the prosecution until the case gets to court. Thinking on your feet is an imperative. And another difference is that if (as frequently happens) things don’t go too well, the consequences for the client are rarely serious.

I recall my many appearances in those courts not for the generally trifling nature of the cases, but for so many occasions where humour took pride of place over dignity and formality. I remember the sheer fun. It came unexpectedly, but even now –more than half a century on – I remember some of them with unrestrained delight.

As it happens, the first had nothing to do with crime. Pocklington is a thriving market town in what was once the East Riding of Yorkshire, about forty miles from Leeds. It is often described as the gateway to the Yorkshire Wolds. It has a well-known public school – and a magistrates’ court.

On a cold winter’s day during my pupillage year I went there to represent a young man in Affiliation Proceedings. This process was used if an unmarried woman became pregnant and alleged that a certain man was the father. If she satisfied the magistrates as to her claim, then the man would be ordered to pay weekly maintenance for the child until it reached the age of sixteen. Of course, this was long before DNA made issues of this kind obsolete.

The tiny courtroom was heated only by a coal fire, regularly and noisily stoked up by the court usher when not occupied with other tasks such as swearing in a witness. The girl gave her account, my client having been her boyfriend. At the relevant time, they had been in her parents’ house. The parents went to bed, leaving the young couple in the sitting room downstairs. The girl alleged that it was then that they had unprotected sexual intercourse.

I called my teenage client, an agricultural labourer of limited intellect. ‘The girl says that on that night you had sex with her on the sitting room sofa after her mam and dad had gone to bed. Is that true?’

‘Yes I did.’

‘Did you take any precautions?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘What precautions did you take?’

‘I wedged a chair under the sitting room door knob.’

Humour (intended or otherwise) was not the monopoly of witnesses. One morning I was sitting in Dewsbury Magistrates’ Court, waiting for my case to be called. The defendant in the dock was addressed by the chairman.

‘Young man, we see that you are not legally represented.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘The charge against you is quite a serious one. We think that you should have legal aid so that your interests can be looked after.’

‘I don’t want it. The Good Lord will take care of me.’

‘The bench thinks that you would be well advised to have the services of someone who is better known locally.’

This prompts me to say that there were indeed advantages in being represented before the magistrates by an experienced local solicitor who appeared frequently before them, rather than by a member of the Bar, who might have been thought to have the edge as an advocate. I learned that lesson in my very early days. The experience still brings a rueful smile to my face.

I was instructed to represent a bookmaker in an application before magistrates at Leeds for a betting office licence. There were objections, but suffice it to say that on any impartial view of the merits, the application was bound to succeed. The objectors were represented in court by Jack Levi, a very well-known Leeds solicitor, whose extensive practice often involved his personal role in representing clients before local benches.

The appointed day came. The magistrates came into court. As protocol dictated, all those legally involved stood up until the bench was seated – in this instance, all except Jack Levi. At once, from a seated position, he addressed the chairman of the bench.

‘Please excuse my rudeness in remaining seated, Your Worships,’ he said. ‘The fact is that I have been very poorly.’ (Repeated thumping of his breast with a clenched fist.) ‘My doctor has advised me that I should take a break. But when I discovered that my opponent was to be represented by a rising young star of the local Bar, I felt that I owed it to my clients to turn up and do my very best on their behalf. I hope that you will understand.’

The chairman responded. ‘Of course, Mr Levi. We fully understand. We are concerned for you, and you may remain seated throughout the hearing of this application, whether dealing with witnesses, or addressing the court.’

Do I need to tell you the outcome of the application? I prefer not to do so, though the phrase ‘defeat from the jaws of victory’ may give you a clue.

I am unsure whether what took place is properly characterized as a demonstration of part of the art of the advocate, but (like so many other episodes during my times in those courts) it was something I never forgot!

In another court in the West Riding of Yorkshire I was before a bench renowned for its toughness. At the end of my submissions, I placed heavy reliance on the burden of proof ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. I was heard out with scarcely concealed impatience. The members of the bench put their heads together for a very short time. It was clear to me already that the lofty principles of English criminal law had come up against a brick wall.

The chairman said to my client, ‘Stand up. We have listened with great care to what your barrister has said to us. We have to say that in this case we do have a doubt – but we are most certainly not going to give you the benefit of it.’

Acting for an Alderman of the City of Leeds, stopped by the police when driving erratically home from a civic reception, a police sergeant gave the following evidence: ‘We overtook the car, and switched on our “police-stop” light. I walked back to the car. The defendant – who I see and now identify in court – was in the driving seat, alone. I opened the driver’s door. There was a powerful smell of alcohol. I said to him, “I am a sergeant of police, will you please get out of your car, sir?” The defendant smiled at me: “Why, sergeant, is there another party?”’

Acting for a youngster who had been stopped one night by a police officer in Birkenhead because his car was showing no tail lights, this was a PC’s evidence: ‘I asked the defendant to come with me to the back of his car. He did so. I pointed out that there were no illuminated lights. The defendant gave the boot of his car a hard kick, whereupon the lights came on. He then smiled at me, and said “There we are, officer, all’s well that ends well, eh?”

‘“Very good, sir,” I replied. “Perhaps you will now give your windscreen a similar kick and it will then display a valid tax disc.”’

On my side of the Pennines, vehicle rear lights also featured before Wetherby Magistrates’ Court. The police had followed a truck for some two miles. It displayed no tail lights. They stopped the truck, took the driver – my client – to the back of it, and pointed out the offence. The defendant scratched his head and said, ‘Lights be buggered. Where’s my bloody trailer?’

A witness before the Bradford bench: ‘I drove along the M602, heading for the centre of Bradford. I lost my way, and at the end of the motorway I saw a man walking his dog and asked him if he knew the Bradford turn-off. “Know it?” he replied. “I bloody do. I’ve been married to her for thirty years.”’

An important factor in some instances is for the court to know whether the witness before them is giving his or her testimony freely or under compulsion. Hence this exchange in York Magistrates’ Court between prosecuting solicitor and witness:

‘Is your appearance here today due to a witness summons?’

‘No, I’m very sorry. I was late this morning and I didn’t have time to shave.’

I must acknowledge with sadness that the room for joyous experiences like those is almost certainly no longer to be found before a bench of lay magistrates. The ethos has changed. There is an increasing emphasis on professionalism in the training of those who sit. It is no longer enough for a legally qualified clerk to advise the bench on matters of law; the bench must now be inherently ‘judicial’ in doing the job. There are also complex legislative restraints on their powers, for example regarding juvenile offenders.

In my own experience, this has deterred many who might otherwise have sought appointment – and caused some who have sat for many years – to quit. Common sense, maturity and worldly experience were in my day the criteria for appointment and continued fitness for office. Nowadays, it seems to me that a Justice of the Peace is treated as though he or she had a legal education and background. But they are not so equipped, and I dare to suggest that it is their ‘lay’ status that gives them the qualities that should matter. Since the huge majority of offences in our country are disposed of before magistrates’ courts, those who visit them (under compulsion or otherwise) should be encouraged to find a community between themselves and those who sit in judgement on the less serious offences that form the calendar. Ordinary folk should be dealt with at this level by other ordinary folk. It makes for a less resentful, and therefore less divisive and better-ordered society.

Well, those were happy days, and a vital part of the learning curve of any aspiring advocate. I look back on them with gratitude and huge affection. But they soon fell away as I began to gain a toehold at Quarter Sessions and even sometimes at Assizes, when visiting High Court Judges sat for periods of some weeks in all the major cities on my circuit. This period of my life contained two events that came as a great relief to me.

The first was that the Homicide Act of 1957 marked the beginning of the end for capital punishment in this country. By 1965, hanging as a form of punishment was abandoned, and in 1969 it was abolished. The burden of defending someone who faced the death penalty if convicted fell only upon Queen’s Counsel, and I was and still am eternally grateful that I never had to bear that dreadful responsibility. I remember talking to some who had the traumatic experience of going down to the cells after the judge had put on the black cap, and saying a literal goodbye to their client.

I ought also to acknowledge that for a judge presiding over a murder trial, the duty imposed on him to pass sentence following a conviction must for many – if not all – have proved an equally fearful burden. The defendant, surrounded (and often physically supported) in the dock by prison officers, was confronted by the judge, who wore a black silk square placed on his wig. The High Sheriff and his chaplain (both robed) were alongside. The judge was then enjoined to address the defendant in these archaic terms, which were only slightly modified in 1947:

[Name], you have been convicted of the crime of murder. You will be taken hence to a lawful prison, and thence to a place of execution and there be hanged by the neck until you are dead. Thereafter, your body be buried within the precincts of the prison. May the Lord have mercy upon your soul.

The chaplain endorsed this incantation with an ‘Amen’.

It is difficult for me to imagine the pressure that participation in this macabre ritual must have imposed on all those involved. In at least one instance of which I am aware a very distinguished QC (Gerald Gardiner – later Lord Chancellor under a Labour administration) declined appointment to the High Court for fear that he would be called upon to pass the death sentence.

I must say something more about capital punishment, not least because in these most troubled times, where acts of terrorism are our constant companions, it would be remarkable if there were not a groundswell of public opinion in favour of restoring the death penalty. I do not share that view. My approach is founded both upon pragmatic considerations, born of a lifetime in the law, and upon a strongly held personal conviction. As to the former, I offer the following.

First, there is the well-rehearsed risk of a miscarriage of justice – and one that is beyond repair. However rare such cases may be, I find it impossible to reconcile myself even to one such instance.

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.

After a campaign led by Bentley’s sister for nigh on half a century, in 1995 Bentley was granted a royal pardon, expunging the death sentence – but not overturning the conviction. In 1998, an appeal court did just that. The Chief Justice, stating that the trial judge, Lord Goddard, had failed to direct the jury adequately on the issue of joint enterprise, in respect of whether Bentley’s cry just before Craig fired the fatal shot meant that, whatever his original intentions, Bentley wanted no further part in the criminal enterprise.

Bentley’s sister had died one year earlier. What comfort was it to her in the last year of her life to know that her brother should never have been hanged, or to die not knowing that at last he was to be exonerated of murder?

In that immediate context, it is especially interesting to note that, in R v Jogee in 2016, the doctrine of joint enterprise in homicide was the subject of a substantial reappraisal by the Supreme Court. The court held that the doctrine had been wrongly interpreted and applied inappropriately in directions to juries for over thirty years. How fortunate it is that no one had been hanged on the basis of joint enterprise as wrongly understood by the lower courts during that period because, of course, capital punishment had already been abolished.

I also remind myself that for some years after 1957 the death penalty (although substantially abolished) was still in force for those, for example, who killed ‘in the course or furtherance of theft’. You may have thought that the words ‘course or furtherance’ were plain English, and brooked of no ambiguity. If you did think that way, you would be wrong. It led to repeated argument in the Court of Criminal Appeal, on which the issue of whether or not the guilty party should hang depended on the study of etymology as much as upon the evidence. The confusion that successive decisions created was a powerful factor in leading ultimately to the total abolition of capital punishment. What did I say about the nuances of language?

As to the deterrence argument, my experience suggests that very few murders are the product of true premeditation. The killer rarely considers the consequences before the fatal act. And – going back to where I started – the terrorist actively seeks martyrdom.

Finally, and irrespective of all the above, I reject the principle of ‘an eye for an eye’. It is a matter for each one of us to examine our consciences and ask whether we find state-authorized killing a justifiable exception to the injunction that ‘Thou shalt not kill’. You know where I stand on that.

The second source of relief was a purely personal one for someone like me, who in those days, if defending, generally did so under the auspices of legal aid. In the early 1960s, the level of legal aid fees was greatly increased. With a wife and burgeoning family now to support, that was very good news for me.

The 1960s passed for me with a rapidly growing and increasingly demanding workload, mostly standing on my own feet, but on many occasions being led by a QC. To listen to the best advocates conducting a case to which I was privy gave me a wealth of experience, and growing confidence.

Two cases of my life as a junior are perhaps worth recall. Their status in my recollection is in part due to their circumstances, but also because I was led in the first by Gilbert Gray QC (‘GG’), and in the second by Peter Taylor QC. They were the two colossi whose advocacy – in utterly different ways – provided my exemplars in my first years as a jury advocate. As I note elsewhere, Peter Taylor ultimately became Lord Chief Justice. That is surely quite enough to serve as a testimonial to his prodigious talents. GG receives his own special mention much later in this memoir, and he is the subject of my first account.

KEITH KITCHING AND GEOFFREY ELLERKER

Bully boys in blue

The defendants were both officers in the Leeds City police – our client, Kitching, a uniformed sergeant; Ellerker a uniformed inspector. Both were stationed at Millgarth Street police station in central Leeds. (Quite separately, Ellerker was to serve a prison sentence for assisting in a cover-up involving a police superintendent who had committed the offence of causing death by dangerous driving.) They were tried before Mr Justice Hinchcliffe and a jury at Leeds, I think in 1970.

The prosecution was led by John Cobb QC. He was an exceptionally able and hard-working Silk, later to be appointed to the High Court, but sadly to die shortly afterwards. Tall, thin and of ascetic demeanour, his written opinions frequently contained the phrase, ‘I have given this matter long and anxious consideration.’ It is perhaps not surprising that in those circumstances he soon became known among his colleagues as ‘long and anxious Cobb’.

I digress. David Oluwale was a Nigerian vagrant who in the late 1960s was well known in Leeds city centre. He slept where he lay, in shop doorways or other such areas as might afford him shelter. He was classed as a dullard, and in 1965 he had been hospitalized for a time after a diagnosis of schizophrenia. He had been before the courts on several occasions for the sort of offences you might expect – drunkenness and breach of the peace. To most citizens he was a nuisance, but one which was tolerated. But not to our client or his co-accused inspector. The evidence showed that they detested him, and took a sadistic pleasure in harassing and humiliating him. If Kitching found him sleeping rough, he would summon Ellerker and the pair would assault him. On two occasions, they took him in a police van and dumped him on the far outskirts of the city. In the last twelve months of his wretched existence Oluwale was arrested five times. In each instance Kitching or Ellerker (or both) were involved in some way. Shortly put, they had it in for him.

On 18 April 1969, shortly after 5 a.m., two uniformed policemen were seen by an early-duty bus conductor in The Calls, a part of Leeds that in those days was semi-derelict. His attention was drawn by the fact that they were apparently chasing another man in the direction of a road called Warehouse Hill. At one end that road was a cul-de-sac, bounded by the River Aire. I am not consciously playing with words when I say that the road was a dead end; it was for David Oluwale.

The compelling inference is that it was he who was fleeing from the two policemen, and that in so doing he fell into the river and was drowned. Three weeks later, his body was recovered from the river some miles downstream. Its condition by then precluded any assessment by the pathologist of whether, when still alive, he had been assaulted in any way.

At the subsequent trial, with characteristic and scrupulous thoroughness John Cobb’s team established that all the police officers on duty in Leeds on that night could say exactly where they were at the time spoken of by the bus conductor – that is to say, all except Kitching and Ellerker.

The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) decided, on counsel’s advice, that both men should not only be charged with other offences of assault on Oluwale (and with a related offence, in one instance, of perjury), but that there was sufficient evidence to charge both with manslaughter of the unfortunate man. The basis for that charge lay in the argument that it was they who had chased Oluwale into a place from which they knew he had no escape, and that they recognized that his death in the river was the likely outcome.

It is unnecessary for me to set out the legal or evidential reasoning that led to what followed. Suffice it to say that the judge directed the acquittal of both men on the charge of manslaughter, as well as of perjury. In the end, however, they were both convicted of two offences of assaulting Oluwale in order to occasion him actual bodily harm. Kitching was sentenced to twenty-seven months’ imprisonment; Ellerker to three years.

The case came at a time when public confidence in the city’s police was at a low ebb, and subsequent events showed that the prosecution was a timely and effective deterrent to any further misconduct of this nature. It was also, no doubt, a very early signal to our society that racially engendered prejudice would be rooted out and punished.

On a personal note, it was an education to me to see both Cobb and Gilbert Gray in action for some days, along with a close understanding of the issues. Cobb – angular, meticulous, studied, ruminative and grave; Gray – avuncular, instinctive, colourful and ever the pre-eminent thespian. I learned much from both, and was ever grateful.

In November 1972, again at Leeds, I was led by Peter Taylor QC in what was to be my last major trial as a junior. I took Silk the following April. Since it was my last case of note in which somebody else’s guiding hand was on the tiller, I suppose that even if it had not been intriguing with respect to its own facts (which it was), it would still deserve inclusion here.

JOHN MICHAEL AND SHIRLEY ELIZABETH REED

The elusive motive

One of the fundamental principles of English criminal law is to be found in the classic definition of the concept of intent. Juries are invariably directed to bear in mind the clear distinction between, on the one hand, motive, and, on the other hand, intent. The example I used to adopt in this situation when I was sitting was to say to the jury, ‘Suppose that you saw a man point a loaded gun at his victim’s head at close range and pull the trigger. You may have no idea at all of his motive, but you will have no difficulty at all in deciding his intent.’ The terms of that direction have an uncanny application to the facts in R v Reed (JR) and Reed (SE).

Before I summarize the facts, I want to say this. Obviously, serial murders are in a wholly different category of depravity by virtue of their repetition – if for no other reason. But that said, in the times of which I write, this case is as chilling a story of a brutal death as can be imagined.

John Reed had a long criminal record, with a string of convictions for dishonesty. They included two for robbery with violence. For the latter of those, in 1966, he had been sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment, from which he was released on licence after four years. His wife, Shirley, had no convictions.

At the time of the murder their home was in Oldham, but (importantly) they had for some few months in the past lived in Halifax. The evidence suggested that they were in the habit of using taxis to get around.

Milton Walker was a Halifax man. He worked as a taxi driver from a rank in Bull Green in the town. On 29 March 1972 he was working a night shift. Having been seen in his Ford Cortina taxi on the rank at about 11 p.m., he was never knowingly seen alive again. The evidence was to disclose that the ‘Taxi’ sign on the roof of the car had been removed before the vehicle was finally recovered.

Around 1 a.m. the following morning a car that was almost certainly the taxi in question was seen by a witness close to the place where subsequent discoveries were made. A man and a woman were inside it. There was no taxi sign on the roof.

Within minutes, an explosion was heard. At 2.15 a.m. a man and a woman were seen on foot in the open countryside nearby. Shortly afterwards, the couple turned up, still on foot, at an isolated farmhouse (Doldrums Farm) on the moorland near Halifax. John Reed asked to use the phone, and summoned a taxi to take the pair to Oldham.

The next morning, the burnt-out remains of the Cortina were discovered. That same morning, a walker found the body of Milton Walker in (or close to) a disused quarry at Denshaw, high on Saddleworth Moor, some five miles from Oldham. His wrists and ankles had been bound with washing-line cord. He had been fatally shot through his forehead. Close by lay a spent .410 cartridge.

From the back of the Cortina was recovered a fairly old .410-calibre shotgun of Canadian manufacture. Its barrel had been shortened. Investigations established that the weapon had been bought by John Reed for a trifling sum a week before the murder from a pub acquaintance named Hickling, whose account of the deal was strenuously disputed at the trial but was obviously accepted by the jury. (John Reed had at first denied to the police any knowledge of the shotgun, and later pointed the finger at Hickling.)

At the Reeds’ home was found a hacksaw that had been purchased a short time before by Mrs Reed. Swarf recovered from it by a forensic scientist matched the metal on the barrel of the recovered shotgun. In witness statements to the police made by each of them in May 1972, they firmly denied any involvement in the death of Milton Walker.

So there, in sum, we had the locality, the chronology, the sightings of a man and a woman, their appearance at Doldrums Farm, and the weapon and the hacksaw. Taken together, they presented a formidable case against the two accused.

At the trial, evidence was also given by a fellow remand prisoner who was facing a charge of unlawful possession of a firearm. He said that John Reed had told him that he too was charged with an offence involving a gun, and that he had admitted that in his case he had pulled the trigger.

After the prosecution evidence had been heard, it was submitted on behalf of Shirley Reed that she had no case to answer, or (alternatively) that the evidence implicating her was so tenuous as to make it dangerous to leave the case to the jury. The judge rejected that submission. Both were convicted. Both applied for leave to appeal. In October 1973 John Reed withdrew his application. I believe that he then made a statement to the police acknowledging his guilt, but seeking to exculpate his wife.

I say ‘I believe’ because although that is my information, I never saw the statement. Tellingly, after the Appeal Court granted Shirley Reed leave to appeal and heard her full appeal, no such statement was referred to by her counsel before the court. Giving the judgement, Lord Justice Megaw said that the court was satisfied that on the totality of the evidence more than one person must have been involved in the murder. Concluding that the trial judge was correct to reject the submission that he should stop the case against Shirley Reed, they dismissed the appeal.

So much for a précis of the facts. Now I must return to the beginning of this account. There can be no doubt at all that if it was proved that John Reed shot Milton Walker through the head and was abetted in that action by his wife, then both intended to kill him. It was akin to an execution. Both were thus undoubtedly guilty of his murder. But what was the motive for that dreadful act? Although motive is irrelevant in proof of guilt, this case is one of the very few – if not perhaps the only one in my own experience – where motive remains highly elusive. That there was a motive cannot be in doubt, and it must have been a powerful one. This conundrum is in itself sufficient to merit the inclusion of the case in my collection.

The police theory was that on that date the two were set upon committing a serious crime in Halifax, or thereabouts, and that for the purpose, they equipped themselves with the cord and the shotgun. At some stage, they wanted to leave Halifax. They went to the taxi rank and got into Milton Walker’s Cortina. Then something went seriously wrong. The police believed that Walker, in the course of casual conversation, must have told the Reeds that he recognized them. Their nefarious purpose demanded their anonymity. That set in train his trussing, kidnapping and killing.

I have many doubts about this, not least because I remain unaware of any recorded serious crime committed in or near Halifax at the relevant time. It is true that there was some evidence that on the night concerned Reed may have had in his possession a suitcase or package, but this takes us no further. Moreover, I find it difficult to accept that, even if the Reeds were leaving the scene of a crime, they would choose to do so by taxi.

So, there it is. Something we may never determine, but something of real gravity and moment, prompted a fatal reaction in Milton Walker’s last taxi fares on that night. It is impossible, isn’t it, to imagine the sheer terror suffered by that poor man as he was driven, a bound and helpless prisoner in his own car, up to that bleak moorland. Did he know what fate shortly awaited him? That is why I say that this was a case of wickedness unlike almost any other in my encounters with evil.

With that, I shall leave the junior Bar behind me, and move on.

The Courts Act of 1971 abolished the old structure of Quarter Sessions, Assizes and Recorders, and replaced it with Crown Courts. Most Queen’s Bench judges and Circuit judges sit in those courts to try crime. But a large part of the work is undertaken by Recorders – part-time judges in practice at the Bar, and a few solicitors with the relevant experience. I applied to become a Recorder under the new system, and was appointed in 1972.

The office of Recorder is of some antiquity. Until 1971 it was the perquisite of any city to appoint a practising member of the Bar of sufficient seniority to be its Recorder. In that office, he sat for some few weeks a year in the Quarter Sessions, dealing with crimes above magistrates’ level, but excluding High Court work. In the counties, there were similar Quarter Sessions, presided over by a Chairman or Deputy Chairman. The Recorder (or Chairman) could invite any barrister called seven years or more ago to sit as one of his assistants. My first sitting was at the invitation of the Recorder of Middlesbrough, and I did the job a few times both there and elsewhere.

After the passing of the Courts Act of 1971, appointment to the office was at the instance of the Lord Chancellor’s Department (now the Ministry of Justice). When, in 1972, Assizes and Quarter Sessions were replaced by Crown Courts, many suitably experienced barristers – juniors or Silks – were appointed Recorders on a nationwide basis (I suppose they would have numbered around 300). Their jurisdiction was much the same as that I have just described. Hence I found myself faced with trying alleged crime up to a very serious level (for example, causing serious bodily harm with intent, an offence carrying a maximum sentence of fourteen years’ imprisonment). It was part-time, although there was an obligation to sit for at least four weeks per year. Generally, we sat on the circuit of which we were a member. In my case, however, for my first sitting in 1972 I was dispatched to Liverpool, where I sat in a building in Nelson Street, an adjunct to the main court premises in the grand St George’s Hall. It was a memorable time for me, and not solely because it was my first sitting as a Recorder.

Two years later, Edward Heath, as Prime Minister, was to call a general election in a desperate effort to put an end to the industrial strife that was paralysing the country’s industry. He was rash enough to take as his rallying cry the question ‘Who governs Britain?’ Well before then, the mineworkers, led by Arthur Scargill, had given him a resounding answer. They pulled the plug. For two weeks of winter in that dingy courtroom in Liverpool, we sat by candlelight. Heath lost the next election.

Most of that, my first sitting as an officially appointed judge, was occupied with a trial in which the defendant was represented by Rose Heilbron QC. An able, attractive and charming lady from Liverpool, she would become only the second of her sex to be appointed to the High Court. I came to know her and her delightful husband very well, when later each of us became Masters of the Bench at Gray’s Inn. I was very relieved to learn that after her client’s conviction she did not seek to challenge either my summing up or the sentence I had passed. Not that it should have mattered to me, or to any judge in the same position, but still, as a new boy …

One other case in those days served as a timely warning about the dangers of what the Bar knows well as ‘Judgeitis’. It is when someone finds the bench an increasingly suitable vehicle for pomposity, or worse. In this instance, I was to sit with two lay magistrates (as sometimes happened). The case involved an appeal against the refusal by a chief officer of police of an application to renew a firearms certificate. The issue raised was purely a matter of law. In those circumstances, the matter was solely for me to decide, as the legally qualified member of the troika. The magistrates could play no part. After the arguments were concluded, we adjourned so that I could consider my ruling. I carefully prepared a written one. As no more than a courtesy to the two magistrates, I showed it to them before we went back into court. It transpired that one of them was a school headmaster. ‘Well, sir,’ he said to me, ‘of course I can say nothing about the legal correctness of your ruling, but your grammar is very poor.’ Enough said.