Rayner Goddard, Baron Goddard

Rayner Goddard, Baron Goddard (April 10, 1877 – May 29, 1971) was Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 1946 to 1958 and known for his strict sentencing and conservative views. He was nicknamed the 'Tiger' and "justice-in-a-jiffy" for his no-nonsense manner. [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,863716,00.html?promoid=googlep He once dismissed 6 appeals in one hour in 1957.]

Background

Goddard attended Marlborough College, where he decided on a career in law. In later life he vigorously denied the frequent claims of Lord Jowitt that he had amused his contemporaries by reciting, word for word, the form of the death sentence upon those whom he disliked. He later attended Trinity College, Oxford and graduated with a second class degree in jurisprudence, gaining a full blue in athletics. He was called to the Bar by both the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn in 1899. On 31 May, 1906, he married Marie Schuster, the daughter of the banker Sir Felix Otto Schuster, with whom he was to have three daughters. She died on 16 May 1928 during an operation at the age of 44.

He built a strong reputation in commercial cases on the Western Circuit and was appointed as Recorder of Poole (a part-time Judgeship) in 1917. He was appointed a King's Counsel in 1923, transferred to be Recorder of Bath in 1925, and eventually Recorder of Plymouth in 1928. He was elected a Bencher of his inns in 1929 and undertook work for the Barristers' Benevolent Association. In the general election of 1929, Goddard agreed, against his better judgement, to contest the Kensington South constituency as an unofficial Conservative candidate. The sitting Conservative MP, Sir William Davison, had been a defendant in a divorce case, and a local committee thought the newly-enfranchised young women voters would refuse to support him. In the end, Goddard, running under the slogan "Purity Goddard", came last in the poll, winning only 15% of the vote and the sitting member was returned.

Judicial appointment

In 1932 Goddard was appointed as a full-time Judge of the King's Bench Division of the High Court of England and Wales, receiving a knighthood later that year. After only six years he was promoted again to be a Lord Justice of Appeal. Goddard was known for turning out well-argued and legally convincing judgments but tended to give stiff sentences, especially when he was personally offended by the crime. After another six year stint, he was appointed as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary upon the death of Lord Atkin in 1944 and received as a Law lord a life peerage. He chose the title Baron Goddard of Aldbourne in the County of Wiltshire.

Lord Chief Justice

Viscount Caldecote, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, suffered a stroke in 1945 and suddenly resigned, creating a vacancy at an inopportune moment. The tradition was for the appointment to be a political one, with the Attorney-General stepping up to take it. However, Hartley Shawcross was unwilling and considered too young. The appointment of a stop-gap candidate was expected. As Goddard explained in an August 1970 interview with David Yallop: "They had to give the job to somebody. There wasn't anybody else available, so Attlee appointed me." The appointment came at a time when the crime rate, and public concern over crime, were both increasing. Through his judgments, Goddard made it clear that he felt that stronger sentences were the way to tackle both. Goddard was the first Lord Chief Justice to hold a law degree.

Despite his appointment as a stop-gap, Goddard served twelve years as Lord Chief Justice before retiring on 21 August 1958. He continued to intervene occasionally in Lords debates and public speeches to put his views on capital and corporal punishment, and constantly expressed such views, even in his final ever interview in August 1970. His final ever major speech was in the House of Lords, when he spoke against the legalisation of homosexuality, on 24 May 1965.

Political context

Goddard chose to continue his involvement with trials on the frontline, and opted to judge ordinary High Court cases as he was entitled to do. He presided over the 1946 libel trial at which Harold Laski, Chairman of the Labour Party, attempted unsuccessfully to sue the Daily Express for damages when it quoted him as saying that the party must take power "even if it means violence". In 1948 backbench pressure in the House of Commons forced through an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill to suspend capital punishment for five years, and the government automatically commuted all death sentences to life imprisonment. Goddard attacked the Bill in the House of Lords, making his maiden speech, saying he was against the use of, and agreeing with the abolition of the "cat", but not birching which he perceived as effective punishment for young offenders. He also disagreed with the automatic commutation of death sentences, believing that it was contrary to the Bill of Rights.

In debate, he referred to a case he had tried of an agricultural labourer who had assaulted a jeweller; Goddard gave him a short two months' imprisonment and twelve strokes of the birch because "I was not then depriving the country of the services of a good agricultural labourer over the harvest". The suspension of capital punishment was reversed by 181 to 28, and a further amendment to retain the birch was also passed (though the Lords were later forced to give way on this issue). As the crime rate continued to rise, Goddard became convinced that the Criminal Justice Act 1948 was responsible as it was a 'Gangster's Charter'. He held a strong belief that punishment had to be punitive in order to be effective, a view which was also shared at the time by Lord Denning.

Craig and Bentley

In December 1952 Goddard presided over the trial of Christopher Craig and Derek Bentley, accused of the murder of PC Sidney Miles at a Croydon warehouse. Sixteen-year-old Craig had apparently shot and killed PC Miles whilst resisting arrest on the roof of a factory he intended to break into. Bentley, who was 19 but of limited intelligence, had gone with him and was accused of urging Craig to shoot, having called out to him "let him have it, Chris". Lord Goddard directed the jury at the trial that, in law, Bentley was as guilty of firing the shot as Craig, and this in the face of contradictory evidence as to whether Bentley was aware that Craig was carrying a gun and ballistics evidence doubting whether Craig could have hit PC Miles. During the trial, Goddard made no reference to Bentley's mental state, apart from when Christmas Humphreys asked Bentley to read a statement he had allegedly made to Police Officers after his arrest. Goddard told Humphreys that Bentley couldn't read.

After 75 minutes of deliberations, the jury returned a guilty verdict in respect of both defendants. However, whilst Craig was too young for a death sentence, that was not the case with Bentley despite the doubt cast over his guilt. Nevertheless, the jury had exceptionally returned a plea of mercy in favour of Bentley along with the guilty verdict. The decision passed to the Home Secretary, David Maxwell Fyfe to decide whether clemency should be granted. After reading Home Office psychiatric reports and a petition signed by 200 MPs, he rejected the request and Bentley was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint on 28 January 1953.

On 30 July 1998 the Court of Appeal granted a posthumous acquittal on the basis of Goddard's misdirection to the jury which, according to Lord Bingham, "must [...] have driven the jury to conclude that they had little choice but to convict." He added that the summing-up of the case was "such as to deny the appellant [Bentley] the fair trial which is the birthright of every British citizen" [cite news | first= | last= | coauthors= | title=Bentley judge attacked | date=30 July 1998 | publisher= | url =http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/142313.stm | work = | pages = | accessdate = 2007-10-23 | language = ] . Lord Bingham also, however, acknowledged that Goddard was "one of the outstanding criminal judges of the century", and underlined the change in social standards between 1953 and 1998.

Goddard himself died shortly before the controversy over the hanging of Bentley blew up but in the final interview he ever gave in August 1970, Goddard said he had thought that Maxwell Fyfe was going to reprieve Bentley. Whilst still maintaining strong pro-capital punishment views, he claimed that "Yes. I thought that Bentley was going to be reprieved. He certainly should have been. There's no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Bentley should have been reprieved" [page 10 of the Times newspaper -5 June 1971] .Goddard also stated in the same interview that "I was never consulted over it. In fact he (Maxwell Fyfe) never consulted anyone. The blame for Bentley's execution rests solely with Fyfe" [David Yallop's book of the Bentley case "To Encourage the Others"] .

This view is disputed by John Parris in his book "Scapegoat" (Duckworth) 1991. Parris was Craig's barrister. He claims that Goddard passed on the recommendation of the jury for mercy with a recommendation that it be ignored and Bentley should be hanged.

Criticism

After Goddard's death, he was attacked in the columns of "The Times" by Bernard Levin who described him as "a calamity" and accused him of vindictiveness and of being a malign influence on penal reform. In "The Times" on 8 June 1971 Levin wrote that (referring to Goddard's claim during the 1970 interview that he had been "very unhappy" about the result of the case) "If Goddard did indeed claim this, it was a breathtaking piece of hypocrisy, in view of his conduct of the case".

To balance this criticism there is the appeal case of Daly v Cannon presided over by Lord Goddard in 1954. A rag and bone man in Ilford gave gifts to children to bring out recyclable material. For fear of spreading disease it was made unlawful for rag and bone men to give 'articles' to children. Mr Cannon circumvented this by giving the children goldfish by placing them in water filled jars that the children had to provide (and by doing so avoided the public health risk of handing them articles). Mr Daly, the Chief Sanitary Inspector for the local council, tried to prosecute him but the magistrates threw out the case on the grounds that a goldfish was not an article. Mr Daly appealed. Mr Cannon did not seem to be able to afford counsel for the appeal, so he sent a letter of apology to the Appeal Court in case he was found to have done something wrong. Lord Goddard agreed with the magistrates that a goldfish was not an article and dismissed the appeal. If he was vindictive, he did not show it in this case. This case was relatively trivial and did not involve Capital Punishment, however.

Bodkin Adams case

During the committal hearing for the suspected serial killer Dr John Bodkin Adams in January 1957, Goddard was seen dining with the defendant's lover, Roland Gwynne (Mayor of Eastbourne from 1929 to 1931), and ex-Attorney-General Hartley Shawcross at a hotel in Lewes.Cullen, Pamela V., "A Stranger in Blood: The Case Files on Dr John Bodkin Adams", London, Elliott & Thompson, 2006, ISBN 1-904027-19-9] Goddard had already appointed Patrick Devlin to try Adams' case. Three months later on 15 April, while the jury was out discussing the verdict on Adams' first charge of murder, Goddard phoned Devlin to urge him in the case of Adams being found not guilty, to grant Adams bail before he was tried on a second count of murder. Devlin was surprised since a person accused of murder had never been given bail before in British legal history. [Devlin, Patrick; "Easing the Passing", 1985]

Adams was acquitted on the first count of murder and the second charge was controversially dropped via a nolle prosequi - an act by the prosecution that was later called by Devlin an "abuse of process". [Devlin, Patrick; "Easing the Passing", 1985] Adams was thought by pathologist Francis Camps to have murdered up to 163 patients. Historian Pamela Cullen has suspected political interference.

A month after Adams' trial, on May 10, 1957, Goddard heard a contempt of court case against Rolls House Publishing, publishers of Newsweek, and chain of shops W. H. Smith, who on April 1 during Adams' trial had respectively published and distributed an issue of the magazine containing two paragraphs of material "highly prejudicial to the accused", saying that Adams' victim count could be "as high as 400". Each company was fined £50. Goddard made no mention of his friendship with Roland Gwynne and the potential conflict of interest.

Death penalty reaction

It has been claimed that Goddard had a particular personal reaction to sentencing people to death. According to his valet, Goddard would have an orgasm during sentencing and his trousers had to be sent off to be cleaned as a result. [Spencer, Colin (1995) "Homosexuality - a history" p.364 Fourth Estate. ISBN 1-85702-143-6] [Bob Turney (2005), "Wanted!" p.95]

Another and more probable version has Goddard reacting in this way when he sentenced defendants to corporal punishment.

References

*"Lord Goddard: His career and cases" by Glyn Jones and Eric Grimshaw (Allan Wingate, London, 1958).
*"Lord Goddard: My Years With the Lord Chief Justice" by Arthur Smith (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1959) is a sympathetic biography by Goddard's chief clerk.
*"To Encourage the Others" by David Yallop (Allen 1971). The first authoritative and thorough study of the Bentley/Craig case.
*"Scapegoat " John Parris (Duckworth 1991) An account of the Craig and Bentley trial by Craig's barrister.
*"Daly v Cannon" [1954] 1 WLR 261 (QB).
*cite encyclopedia |last= |first= |author= |authorlink= |coauthors= |editor= |encyclopedia=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |title=Goddard, Rayner, Baron Goddard |url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31152 |accessdate=2007-10-23 |edition= |date= |year=2004 |publisher=Oxford University Press |volume= |location= |id= |doi= |pages= |quote=

External links

*cite journal|title=Rewriting history in the Court of Appeal|journal=New Law Journal|month=October | year=1998|first=Francis|last=Bennion|coauthors=|volume=148|issue=|pages=1228|id= |url=http://www.francisbennion.com/pdfs/fb/1998/1998-010-bentley.pdf|format=PDF|accessdate=2007-10-23
*cite web|url=http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/1998/2516.html |title=R v. Derek William Bentley (Deceased) (1998) EWCA Crim 2516 |accessdate=2007-10-23