The death of Lord Lane.

international | crime and justice | news report Tuesday August 23, 2005 20:51 by :-) - another in the series of harmless little obits much endebted to wikipedia for this one.

Geoffrey Dawson Lane, Baron Lane AFC QC PC (July 17, 1918 – August 22, 2005) a former British Lord Chief Justice of England & Wales who presided over the Birmingham 6 appeal trial has died today at the age of 87.

He will be remembered for many reasons.
* he followed Lord Widgery.
* he had "strong views" on murder, rape and sexual morality.
* he played a part in both Birmingham 6 and Guildford 4 trials, which saw 10 people serve lengthy sentances for IRA attacks did they not commit.

The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales is the second-highest judge of the Courts of England and Wales, after the Lord Chancellor, and the presiding judge of Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal, and of the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court.

Originally, the three high common law courts, the Court of Common Pleas, the Court of the King's (or Queen's) Bench, and the Court of the Exchequer, each had their own Chief Justice. That of the Exchequer Court was styled as the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and that of the Common Pleas was Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, leaving the head of the King's (or Queen's) Bench to be known simply as the Lord Chief Justice. The courts, however, were combined in 1875, leaving a single Chief Justice.

There is also a Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. The Lord Chief Justice's equivalent in Scotland is the Lord President of the Court of Session, who also holds the post of Lord Justice-General in the High Court of Justiciary.

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Lord Lane will be remember by some for his rulings on rape and thoughts on homosexuality.

Lane was responsible for a judgment which for the first time held that a husband could be guilty of raping his wife.

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, 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".

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Lord Lane will be remembered by most as the Birmingham 6 appeal judge.


Hugh Callaghan, Patrick Hill, Gerard Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, William Power and John Walker were sentanced to life imprisonment for a crime they did not commit in 1975.


Five of the six men arrested were Belfast-born. John Walker was born in Derry. All six had lived in Birmingham since the 1960s. Five of the men, Hill, Hunter, McIlkenny, Power and Walker, had left the city on the early evening of November 21 from New Street Station, some hours prior to the explosions, to travel to Belfast to attend the funeral of James McDade, an IRA member who had accidentally killed himself while planting a bomb in Coventry. They were seen off from the station by Callaghan. When they reached Heysham they and others were subject to a Special Branch stop and search.

They did not tell the police at that stage of the true nature of their trip.

They agreed to forensic tests and were tried on the 22nd of November that year.

And the rest is history, they went to jail for an IRA attack they did not commit and because the British state wanted someone in jail.

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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 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 of Timothy Evans. From the mid-1980s, concern grew. On December 5, 1985 Lane quashed the conviction of Anthony Mycock who had been convicted of a robbery which the BBC 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 Birmingham Six 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 January 28, 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: "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, convicted of the murder of Keith Blakelock in the midst of a strong campaign of vilification from tabloid newspapers (Silcott's conviction for the Blakelock murder was overturned in 1991).

Unfortunately for Lane, 1989 saw the appeal of the Guildford Four where police malpractice was proved conclusively. Here Lane overturned their 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." [1] 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 news of his death:-

http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/0823/lordlane.html

various sources for his obit:-
wikipedia.org (naturally 'tis our encyclopedia innit)

account of the Guildford 4 trial. (another case of 3 irish and one briton serving lengthy time for an IRA attack they didn't commit and becuase the wicked British state wanted people in jail)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,2763,1409087,00.html

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