Geoffrey Dawson Lane, Baron Lane, (17 July 1918 – 22 August 2005) was a British Judge who served as
Lord Chief Justice of England from 1980 to 1992. The later part of his term was marred by a succession of disputed convictions. Lane's critics claimed that his refusal to believe that police evidence could be institutionally corrupt, and his reluctance to overturn the verdict of a jury, "represented a dangerous hindrance to justice".
[ His failure to allow the appeal of the ]Birmingham Six
The Birmingham Six were six Irishmen who were each sentenced to life imprisonment in 1975 following their false convictions for the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings. Their convictions were declared unsafe and unsatisfactory and quashed by the C ...
in 1988 led to calls for his resignation following their successful appeal in 1991; an editorial in '' The Times'' "urged him to go", while 140 members of parliament signed a House of Commons motion to that effect.
Early life
The son of a bank manager, Lane was born in Derby. He attended Shrewsbury School and Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...
where he took Firsts in Part I of the Classical Tripos before the Second World War and both parts of the Law Tripos after he was demobilized. During the war, he served as a pilot in the Royal Air Force. Initially, he flew Wellington Bombers for 104 Squadron, before being promoted to Squadron Leader to command 233 Squadron, which flew Dakota transport aircraft in D-Day and Operation Market Garden. He was awarded the Air Force Cross in 1943.
Legal career
Lane was called to the bar
The call to the bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received "call to ...
at Gray's Inn
The Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, commonly known as Gray's Inn, is one of the four Inns of Court (professional associations for barristers and judges) in London. To be called to the bar in order to practise as a barrister in England and Wal ...
in 1946. He specialised in criminal prosecutions on the Midland and Oxford circuit, and took silk
In the United Kingdom and in some Commonwealth countries, a King's Counsel ( post-nominal initials KC) during the reign of a king, or Queen's Counsel (post-nominal initials QC) during the reign of a queen, is a lawyer (usually a barrister ...
in 1962. He prosecuted some of the Great Train robbers and the murderer James Hanratty
James Hanratty (4 October 1936 – 4 April 1962), also known as the A6 Murderer, was a British criminal who was one of the final eight people in the UK to be executed before capital punishment was effectively abolished. He was hanged at Bedfo ...
in the same year, and was appointed as Recorder
Recorder or The Recorder may refer to:
Newspapers
* ''Indianapolis Recorder'', a weekly newspaper
* ''The Recorder'' (Massachusetts newspaper), a daily newspaper published in Greenfield, Massachusetts, US
* ''The Recorder'' (Port Pirie), a news ...
of Bedford
Bedford is a market town in Bedfordshire, England. At the 2011 Census, the population of the Bedford built-up area (including Biddenham and Kempston) was 106,940, making it the second-largest settlement in Bedfordshire, behind Luton, whilst t ...
in 1963.
While appearing for the defendant in the case of ''R v Morris'', he made a much-cited statement as to what constituted 'common purpose
The doctrine of common purpose, common design, joint enterprise, joint criminal enterprise or parasitic accessory liability is a common law legal doctrine that imputes criminal liability to the participants in a criminal enterprise for all reas ...
' for the criminal law, which Lord Parker of Waddington CJ adopted:
:"where two persons embark on a joint enterprise, each is liable for the acts done in pursuance of that joint enterprise, that that includes liability for unusual consequences if they arise from the execution of the agreed joint enterprise but (and this is the crux of the matter) that, if one of the adventurers goes beyond what had been tacitly agreed as part of the common enterprise, his co-adventurer is not liable for the consequences of that unauthorised act. Finally, he says it is for the jury in every case to decide whether what was done was part of the joint enterprise, or went beyond it and was in fact an act unauthorised by that joint enterprise."
He is also famous for his quote: "Loss of freedom seldom happens overnight. Oppression doesn't stand on the doorstep with toothbrush moustache and swastika armband – it creeps up insidiously... step by step, and all of a sudden the unfortunate citizen realizes that it is gone."
Judicial office
High Court
Later in 1966, Lane was appointed a Justice of the High Court, assigned to the Queen's Bench Division, receiving the customary Knighthood
A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the Gr ...
. He was elected a Bencher
A bencher or Master of the Bench is a senior member of an Inn of Court in England and Wales or the Inns of Court in Northern Ireland, or the Honorable Society of King's Inns in Ireland. Benchers hold office for life once elected. A bencher ca ...
at Gray's Inn the same year.
He delivered some notable judgments: in 1968, he awarded damages against a school for a pupil who had been injured in 'horseplay' between his peers, saying that the school had a responsibility to stop it getting out of hand; and while acting as an appeal judge, he found for the publishers of ''Last Exit to Brooklyn
''Last Exit to Brooklyn'' is a 1964 novel by American author Hubert Selby Jr. The novel takes a harsh, uncompromising look at lower class Brooklyn in the 1950s written in a brusque, everyman style of prose.
Critics and fellow writers praised ...
'' who had been convicted of publishing an obscene book, because of faults in the trial Judge's summing-up. He was chosen to head the inquiry into the Staines air disaster in 1972, and concluded that the underlying cause was an undiagnosed heart condition of the pilot which impaired his judgement, coupled with the pilot's known bad temper which led to his junior crew being unwilling to challenge him.
Appellate courts
Lane was made a Lord Justice of Appeal
A Lord Justice of Appeal or Lady Justice of Appeal is a judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, the court that hears appeals from the High Court of Justice, the Crown Court and other courts and tribunals. A Lord (or Lady) Justice ...
in 1974. He was one of the appeal judges in Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council's appeal to keep its Grammar Schools rather than be forced by the government to adopt a comprehensive system, and joined in the judgment that found for Tameside and brought a halt to comprehensivisation. Lane's judgment was personally critical of Fred Mulley
Frederick William Mulley, Baron Mulley, PC (3 July 1918 – 15 March 1995) was a British Labour politician, barrister-at-law and economist.
Early life
Mulley attended Warwick School between 1929 and 1936. He served in the Worcestershire Regime ...
, the Secretary of State for Education and Science for being "far from frank" about his reason for intervening in Tameside.
In another high-profile case in 1977, Lane joined in dismissing an appeal against deportation from Mark Hosenball, an American journalist working for the ''Evening Standard
The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format.
In October 2009, after b ...
''. In 1978, Lane found for the Labour Party and against its dissident members ( Paul McCormick and Julian Lewis) who tried to win control of Newham North East Constituency Labour Party from the party's National Executive.
Lane became a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary
Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, commonly known as Law Lords, were judges appointed under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876 to the British House of Lords, as a committee of the House, effectively to exercise the judicial functions of the House of ...
on 28 September 1979, receiving as a Law lord additionally a life peerage
In the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the peerage whose titles cannot be inherited, in contrast to hereditary peers. In modern times, life peerages, always created at the rank of baron, are created under the Life Peerages ...
as Baron Lane, ''of St Ippollitts in the County of Hertfordshire''. He had been appointed by the new Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, soon after Margaret Thatcher won the 1979 general election. His appointment was welcomed in the legal profession, where Lane was regarded as a genial figure ("Geoffrey Dawson, Baron Lane. Good to have you back again."[Lane's entry in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.]), but eventually not welcomed by Lane himself, who disliked the work. The overdue retirement of Lord Widgery
John Passmore Widgery, Baron Widgery, (24 July 1911 – 26 July 1981) was an English judge who served as Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 1971 to 1980. He is principally noted for presiding over the Widgery Tribunal on the events o ...
, whose physical ill-health and increasing dementia had become a suppressed scandal, led to Hailsham picking Lane to follow him as Lord Chief Justice from 1980.
Lord Chief Justice
Shortly after taking over as Lord Chief Justice, Lane attracted political controversy when he called for a general reduction in prison terms. His appeal judgments frequently cut the length of sentences and he was known to be a member of the Prison Reform Trust
The Prison Reform Trust (PRT) was founded in 1981 in London, England, by a small group of prison reform campaigners who were unhappy with the direction in which the Howard League for Penal Reform was heading, concentrating more on community punish ...
. He had served as deputy chairman of the Parole Board from 1970 to 1972. After the publication of lengthy interviews with members of the jury in the trial of Jeremy Thorpe, Lane supported moves (later made in the Contempt of Court Act 1981
The Contempt of Court Act 1981 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It codifies some aspects of the common law offence of contempt of court
Contempt of court, often referred to simply as "contempt", is the crime of being disobe ...
) to ban any publication of reports from within the jury room. Lane also opposed the proposal to extend rights of audience in the higher courts to solicitors.
One of the areas of crime in which Lane did not support shorter sentences was rape. In 1982, Lane stated that sentences for rape should include immediate prison time, except in the most exceptional circumstances, which was taken as an implied rebuke for a Judge who had attracted controversy for fining a rapist £2,000 and saying that the victim was "guilty of a great deal of contributory negligence
In some common law jurisdictions, contributory negligence is a defense to a tort claim based on negligence. If it is available, the defense completely bars plaintiffs from any recovery if they contribute to their own injury through their own negl ...
". Lane made it clear he rejected the general concept that victims of rape could have given their attackers an excuse. Much later in his career, Lane was responsible for a judgment in the case of ''R v R
is a decision in which the House of Lords determined that under English criminal law, it is a crime for a husband to rape his wife.
In 1990, the defendant, referred to in the judgment only as R to protect the identity of the victim, had been ...
'' which for the first time held that a husband could be guilty of raping his wife, overturning the irrebuttable presumption at common law that a wife consented to sex with her husband.
Many observers regarded Lane as a defender of traditional 'Victorian' morality rather than a supporter of mild feminism. In 1983, he gave the Darwin Lecture at Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge becam ...
, in which he stated that he believed that the word "gay" should not be used to mean homosexual, and that instead the term should be "homosexuals, and/or buggers".
Disputed convictions
Lane had an early introduction to controversies and disputed convictions when, in 1962, he was the junior Crown counsel in the trial of James Hanratty
James Hanratty (4 October 1936 – 4 April 1962), also known as the A6 Murderer, was a British criminal who was one of the final eight people in the UK to be executed before capital punishment was effectively abolished. He was hanged at Bedfo ...
for the A6 murder. Hanratty was hanged but disputes over whether he was properly convicted have continued to this day. He also represented the Metropolitan Police at the Brabin inquiry into the conviction and subsequent hanging of Timothy Evans
Timothy John Evans (20 November 1924 – 9 March 1950) was a Welshman who was wrongly accused of murdering his wife (Beryl) and infant daughter (Geraldine) at their residence in Notting Hill, London. In January 1950, Evans was tried, and was c ...
for the murders at 10 Rillington Place in 1950. From the mid-1980s, concern grew. On 5 December 1985, Lane quashed the conviction of Anthony Mycock who had been convicted of a robbery which the BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
television programme '' Rough Justice'' argued had never occurred. In his judgment, Lane asserted that there had been a robbery and criticised the programme for "outrageous" interview methods. He regarded such programmes as "mere entertainment".
When the Birmingham Six
The Birmingham Six were six Irishmen who were each sentenced to life imprisonment in 1975 following their false convictions for the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings. Their convictions were declared unsafe and unsatisfactory and quashed by the C ...
were granted permission to appeal in 1987, Lane presided over what was (at six weeks) the longest criminal appeal in English legal history. The judgment, given on 28 January 1988, adopted all the key parts of the Crown case, dismissed defence witnesses as unreliable, and upheld the convictions. Lane concluded by sending a message to the Home Secretary
The secretary of state for the Home Department, otherwise known as the home secretary, is a senior minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom. The home secretary leads the Home Office, and is responsible for all national ...
: "As has happened before in References by the Home Secretary to this court, the longer this hearing has gone on the more convinced this court has become that the verdict of the jury was correct." This implied rebuke and invitation not to refer any more questioned cases was criticised by campaigners. Lane initially refused leave to appeal to Winston Silcott
Winston Silcott (born 1959),[Winston Silcott: An infamous past](_blank)
( , convicted of the murder of Keith Blakelock
Keith Henry Blakelock QGM, a London Metropolitan Police constable, was murdered on 6 October 1985 during rioting at the Broadwater Farm housing estate in Tottenham, north London. The riot broke out after Cynthia Jarrett died of heart failur ...
in the midst of a strong campaign of vilification from tabloid newspapers. In his findings he concluded that there was "no lurking doubt" in spite of the flimsiness of the prosecution case. Silcott's conviction for the Blakelock murder was ultimately quashed in 1991.
Unfortunately for Lane, in 1989, the appeal of the Guildford Four
Guildford ()
is a town in west Surrey, around southwest of central London. As of the 2011 census, the town has a population of about 77,000 and is the seat of the wider Borough of Guildford, which had around inhabitants in . The name "Guildfo ...
proved police malpractice conclusively. In this case, Lane overturned the convictions. One observer described his appearance: "The Lord Chief Justice seemed to sniff something nasty in the air. Peering out over half-moon spectacles, Lord Lane's weary face was the mask of Justice embarrassed." Lane refused to free Paul Hill, one of the Four, because of a separate conviction for murder in Northern Ireland, although this later turned out also to have been a wrongful conviction.
The Birmingham Six were granted a further appeal (their third) in 1991, when more evidence established that the police evidence at their trial had been fabricated. The Director of Public Prosecutions announced before the appeal was held that he no longer considered their convictions safe and satisfactory. Lane did not preside over the appeal which formally cleared them. Their successful appeal led to calls for Lane to resign, including a hostile editorial in '' The Times'' and a motion in the House of Commons signed by 140 members of parliament. These, and other cases where convictions were overturned, blighted the end of Lane's tenure as Lord Chief Justice.
Retirement
Despite previous thoughts that he would resign before the end of his time to enjoy an active retirement, Lane stayed in office until 1992. Despite remaining in office after the Birmingham Six were released, he nevertheless resigned over a year before he would have been forced to retire at the age of 75. He headed a commission in 1993 which recommended the end of the mandatory life sentence
Mandatory sentencing requires that offenders serve a predefined term for certain crimes, commonly serious and violent offenses. Judges are bound by law; these sentences are produced through the legislature, not the judicial system. They are inst ...
for murder, but otherwise kept a low profile (he never gave press interviews while in office and did not change that policy in his retirement).
He died in 2005 and was buried in the churchyard at St Ippolyts
St Ippolyts (or St Ippollitts) is a village and civil parish on the southern edge of Hitchin in Hertfordshire, England. It has a population of approximately 2,000.
Governance
North Hertfordshire District Council
St Ippolyts is located within th ...
, near Hitchin in Hertfordshire.
References
External links
Obituary
( BBC News, 24 August 2005)
Obituary
('' The Guardian'', 23 August 2005)
Obituary
(''The Telegraph
''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are popular names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include:
Australia
* ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaide, South Australia, publ ...
'', 24 August 2005)
Obituary
('' The Times'', 24 August 2005)
Obituary
('' The Independent'', 25 August 2005)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lane, Geoffrey
1918 births
2005 deaths
20th-century English judges
Knights Bachelor
Law lords
Lord chief justices of England and Wales
Queen's Bench Division judges
Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom
Members of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
Members of Gray's Inn
Royal Air Force officers
British World War II pilots
British World War II bomber pilots
Recipients of the Air Force Cross (United Kingdom)
People from Derby
Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
People educated at Shrewsbury School
Lords Justices of Appeal