Geoffrey Lane, Baron Lane

Lord Justice of Appeal
In office 1974–1979
Preceded by	Sir Arthian Davies
Succeeded by	Sir John Donaldson
Justice of the High Court
In office 1969–1974
Personal details
Born	Geoffrey Dawson Lane (1918-07-17)July 17, 1918 D-Day Operation Market Garden
Awards	Air Force Cross

Geoffrey Dawson Lane, Baron Lane,

from 1977 until 1980.

The son of a bank manager, Lane was educated at

, serving until his retirement in 1992. A private man, Lane never gave interviews and kept a low public profile until his death in 2005.

The later part of his term was marred by a succession of disputed convictions, though Lane remained highly regarded by his colleagues and the legal profession. 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".^[1] His failure to allow the appeal of the Birmingham Six 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. On his death, the barrister Sir Louis Blom-Cooper declared that "by common consent of the legal profession, Lane was a very great Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales".^[2]

Early life

The son of a bank manager, Geoffrey Lane was born in

in 1943.

Legal career

Lane was

While appearing for the defendant in the case of R v Morris,[4] he made a much-cited statement as to what constituted 'common purpose' 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

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

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.

Court of Appeal and House of Lords

Lane was made a

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

National Executive

.

Lane became a

St Ippollitts in the County of Hertfordshire.^[5] 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."^[3]), but eventually not welcomed by Lane himself, who disliked the work. The overdue retirement of Lord Widgery, 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

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

) 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

irrebuttable presumption at common law

that a wife consented to sex with her husband.

Many observers^[who?] 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".

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

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

Silcott's conviction for the Blakelock murder was ultimately quashed in 1991.

Unfortunately for Lane, in 1989, the appeal of the

, 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

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, near Hitchin in Hertfordshire.

References

External links

• Obituary (BBC News, 24 August 2005)
• Obituary (The Guardian, 23 August 2005)
• Obituary^{[dead link]} (The Telegraph, 24 August 2005)
• Obituary (The Times, 24 August 2005)
• Obituary (The Independent, 25 August 2005)

Legal offices
Preceded by The Lord Widgery	Lord Chief Justice 1980–1992	Succeeded by The Lord Taylor of Gosforth