Sir Brian Smedley; interesting judge (and obit)
Hyfler/Rosner
Telegraph 02/05/2007
Sir Brian Smedley, who has died aged 72, served as a
High Court judge, Queen's Bench Division, from 1995 to 2000.
Notable for his independence of mind and common sense,
Smedley was also patient and hardworking; although always
courteous to those who appeared before him, and quick to
praise a good performance by an advocate, he did not shrink
from rebuking those whose work appeared shoddy or
ill-prepared.
In 1992 Smedley experienced the full glare of
publicity when, as a circuit judge, he presided at the
Matrix Churchill trial, in which Paul Henderson, managing
director of the Coventry-based manufacturing company, and
two fellow executives were charged with knowingly exporting
to Iraq machine tools programmed to make bombs and rockets
when such exports were illegal. The offences were said to
have occurred over the three years prior to Iraq's invasion
of Kuwait in 1990.
A critical aspect of the trial was the Major
government's insistence that releasing policy documents
which the defence believed would prove that Matrix Churchill
had exported its machine tools with the government's
knowledge and connivance would be harmful to the public
interest.
In the event, Smedley decided in favour of the
defence, despite ministerial claims that "unquantifiable
damage" would be caused by disclosure. (Later, giving
evidence to the Scott Inquiry, the Foreign Office minister
Tristan Garel-Jones said that by this he had intended to
mean "unquantifiably small" as well as "unquantifiably
large".)
At the trial Smedley observed: "It seems to me that
these accused\u2026 could not be fairly tried if I were to
uphold the class objection to these documents\u2026 I shall
order their disclosure."
Smedley did, however, at first refuse the defence
access to intelligence documents (specifically, records of
meetings between Matrix Churchill executives and officers
from MI5 and MI6) on the ground of national security; but he
subsequently changed his mind after the prosecution withdrew
its objections.
After the famous admission in court by Alan Clark,
trade minister from 1986 to 1989, that he had been
"economical" with "the actualité ", the case against
Henderson and his colleagues collapsed.
Three years after the trial Smedley was appointed to
the High Court. An unusual promotion for a circuit judge, it
was interpreted in some quarters as an indication that the
government - far from bearing rancour after its "defeat" in
the Matrix Churchill affair - could be disinterested in the
manner of its legal appointments.
Frank Brian Smedley was born in Leicester on November
28 1934 and educated at West Bridgford Grammar School and
London University, where he read Law. He was called to the
Bar by Gray's Inn in 1960 and returned to Nottingham to
practise on the Midland Circuit. A devastating
cross-examiner who employed elegant and economical language,
he was fearless and feared, both as a prosecutor and
defender.
A former Assistant Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire
considered that the worst moments of his life were when he
was being cross-examined by Smedley.
In 1974 Smedley prosecuted a Birmingham ammunition
factory in which an explosion killed six people. (Found
guilty, the firm was fined £10, the maximum allowed under
the Explosives Act of 1875.) And in 1976 he was junior
counsel for the Crown in its successful prosecution of
Donald Neilson, the multiple murderer and so-called "Black
Panther". He took Silk the following year.
Among less high-profile cases were Smedley's
prosecution of a council official for living on the immoral
earnings of his wife, who worked as a "high-class
prostitute", and "with an audacity almost beyond belief,"
Smedley said, "stood as a candidate in the Mansfield
district council elections".
On another occasion he prosecuted three stable hands
who went on a shooting spree to celebrate a racing success.
Using a rifle, they shot at lights inside isolated houses;
one elderly couple were just settling into their armchairs
when one bullet shattered the electric light and another hit
their stuffed parakeet.
In 1984 Smedley moved to Bermuda, becoming a partner
in one of the island's leading firms of solicitors; he went
there because his elderly mother was in poor health, and he
thought that the climate would suit her better. Three years
later, after her death, he returned to Britain.
From 1987 to 1995 he was a circuit judge. In 1989 he
fined a Canadian artist and an art gallery director for,
respectively, making and exhibiting earrings fashioned from
human foetuses. After they had been found guilty of
outraging public decency, Smedley told them: "In a civilised
society there has to be restraint." Earlier he had told the
jury: "We are not here to set ourselves up as arbiters of
public taste. You are here to set the standards of public
decency."
The next year Smedley heard the case of a man who
tottered into a building society branch wearing high heels,
blonde wig, smudged make-up and pillbox hat, then held up
the cashier with a bright blue water pistol. Handing down a
suspended sentence, Smedley told the man: "It is quite clear
you need medical help."
In 1999 he presided at the trial of the paedophile who
murdered 12-year-old Thomas Marshall, found strangled near
Thetford, Norfolk, in 1997. Jailing Kevan Roberts for life,
the judge said: "You described [Thomas] to witnesses as 'not
an angel'. I have no doubt that he was not. Very few
12-year-old boys are. But he did not deserve to die in the
appalling way in which you treated him."
When Smedley went to the High Court he had to
relinquish the position of Senior Judge in the Sovereign
Base Areas of Cyprus. As a High Court judge he dealt with
two cases relating to IRA terrorism, in 1995 jailing a man
for 17 years who had acted as "caretaker" of 3.5 lbs of
Semtex, and two years later sentencing three members of an
IRA bombing unit to a total of 62 years.
In 2000, after suffering a stroke, Smedley retired
from the Bench.
Brian Smedley was a judicial member of the Proscribed
Organisations Appeal Commission from 2001.
He died on April 6, and is survived by his partner of
38 years, Peter Wright.