View source for Frederick Geoffrey Lawrence

{{Short description|British lawyer and High Court Judge}}
{{Infobox officeholder
| name                = Sir Geoffrey Lawrence
| image               = Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (Tudor crown).svg
| imagesize           = 100px
| caption             = <small>[[Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom]]</small>
| office              = [[High Court judge (England and Wales)|Justice of the High Court]]
| term_start          = 1965
| term_end            = 1967
| predecessor         = 
| successor           = 
| office2             = 
| term_start2         = 
| term_end2           = 
| birth_date          = 
| death_date          = 
| death_place         = 
| nationality         = British
}}
{{For|the [[Nuremberg]] war crimes judge|Geoffrey Lawrence, 1st Baron Oaksey}}
{{EngvarB|date=September 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2014}}

'''Sir Frederick Geoffrey Lawrence''' (5 April 1902 – 3 February 1967) was a British lawyer, [[High Court of Justice|High Court]] Judge, Chairman of the [[Bar Council]] and Chairman of the [[National Incomes Commission]].<ref name=Cullen>Cullen, Pamela V., ''A Stranger in Blood: The Case Files on Dr John Bodkin Adams'' London, Elliott & Thompson, 2006, {{ISBN|1-904027-19-9}}</ref> He first came to prominence when he defended [[John Bodkin Adams|Dr John Bodkin Adams]] in 1957 on a charge of the murder of Mrs [[Death of Edith Alice Morrell|Edith Alice Morrell]], the first murder case he handled.<ref name=Cullen/> Prejudicial press coverage of the case prior to the trial suggested Adams was guilty and that the verdict would be a foregone conclusion, but Lawrence successfully secured an acquittal.<ref name=Devlin>Devlin, Patrick. ''Easing the passing: The trial of Doctor John Bodkin Adams'', London, The Bodley Head, 1985.</ref> Adams, if convicted, might have been [[hanging|hanged]], had he also been found guilty on a second murder indictment that had been brought.<ref name=Devlin/> Devlin at the time, and later investigation, suggested Adams was acquitted in part due to inadequate prosecution preparations and also due to the lack of strong and credible evidence.

==Early life==
The son of a master butcher and a singing teacher, Lawrence was educated at the [[City of London School]] before going up to [[New College, Oxford|New College]], [[University of Oxford|Oxford]]. He enjoyed a variety of sports, but his main recreation was music, being an accomplished pianist and violinist. He was President of the University Musical Club. After graduation he acted as tutor to two sons of [[Jan Masaryk]], travelling with the family to the United States of America, and [[Prague]]. They remained close friends until the murder of Masaryk during the Czech coup in 1948. Having decided to enter the law, Lawrence was awarded a Harmsworth scholarship and became a [[pupillage|pupil]] to Eric Neve, being [[called to the Bar]] in 1930 from [[Middle Temple]].<ref name=ODNB>{{cite ODNB |first=G. R. |last=Rubin |title=Lawrence, Sir (Frederick) Geoffrey (1902–1967) |year=2004 |url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/34436 |access-date=13 May 2008 |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/34436}}</ref>

==Career==
Before the [[Second World War]] Lawrence had built a respected general law practice on the south-eastern [[circuit (judicial district)|circuit]]. In 1944 he acted as junior to Sir [[Walter Monckton]] in a disciplinary hearing against [[Flight Lieutenant]] [[Pensotti]], an [[RAF]] [[judge advocate]] who had been [[court martial]]led for interfering with the papers of another court martial in 1943. Lawrence and Monckton effectively turned the hearing into a retrial of the original case (despite the absence of the original witnesses), and the disciplinary hearing took no action against Pensotti, but the original court martial verdict stood. After the war, Pensotti attempted to clear his name and this first brought Lawrence's name to the attention of the press.<ref name=ODNB />

Lawrence now began to specialise in planning, parliamentary and divorce cases.<ref name=ODNB /><ref name=Time>{{cite magazine| url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,824796,00.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071014060941/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,824796,00.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=14 October 2007 | magazine=Time | title=Foreign News: Not Guilty | date=22 April 1957 | access-date=2 May 2010}}</ref> ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine described Lawrence as a "[[puck (Shakespeare)|puck]]ish, mousy little man with a mind as orderly as a calculating machine".<ref name=Time/> Cullen describes him similarly as "used to digesting boring technicalities",<ref name=Cullen/> though [[Robert Hounsome]] highlights his "magnetic oratory style. 'Certainly no-one, other than his brothers (both in the legal profession) can make such polysyllables as "cerebral" and "respiratory" sound like something out of [[John Keats|Keats]]'"<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=nzO8a5ea9fMC&pg=PA183&dq= Robert Hounsome, ''The Very Nearly Man'', 2006, page 183]</ref> He first achieved judicial office in 1948 with his appointment as [[Recorder (judge)|Recorder]] (a part-time judge) of [[Tenterden]].<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=38416|page=5197|date=28 September 1948}}</ref> He was appointed a [[King's Counsel]] (KC) in 1950,<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=38888|page=1873|date=18 April 1950}}</ref> and in 1951 he was appointed as a member of a [[Royal Commission]] investigating the laws on marriage and divorce ([[Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce]]).<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=39333|page=4822|date=14 September 1951}}</ref> In 1952 he was appointed Recorder of [[Canterbury]],<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=39711|page=6416|date=5 December 1952}}</ref> and in 1953, Chairman of the [[Court of Quarter Sessions]] for [[West Sussex]].<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=39777|page=905|date=13 February 1953}}</ref>

In 1957 Lawrence defended John Bodkin Adams and in 1958 he successfully defended [[Charles Ridge]], [[Chief Constable]] of [[Brighton]], England, who was charged with conspiracy to obstruct the course of justice by taking bribes.<ref name=Cullen/>

Lawrence was chairman of the Bar Council from 1960 to 1962.<ref name=Cullen/> In 1962 he was appointed to chair the National Income Commission),<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=42826|page=8635|date=6 November 1962}}</ref> the Commission was dissolved in 1965.<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=43625|page=3684|date=13 April 1965}}</ref> He was [[Knight Bachelor|knighted]] in the 1963 [[New Year Honours]].<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=42870|supp=y|page=2|date=28 December 1962}}</ref><ref>{{London Gazette|issue=42915|page=1189|date=8 February 1963}}</ref> In 1964 Lawrence was appointed a [[Deputy Lieutenant]] of [[Sussex]],<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=43367|page=5540|date=26 June 1964}}</ref> and chaired the Committee on the Remuneration of Ministers and Members of [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|Parliament]] (known informally as "the Lawrence Committee").<ref>[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATID=10862&CATLN=3&Highlight=&FullDetails=True Catalogue information for series PRO 41/1, records of the Committee on the Remuneration of Ministers and MPs (the Lawrence Committee)], [[The National Archives]].  Retrieved 13 May 2008.</ref>

He was appointed a High Court judge on 30 September 1965,<ref>{{London Gazette|issue=43779|supp=y|page=9171|date=1 October 1965}}</ref> but fell ill not long after.<ref name=Cullen/> He died in 1967.

==Bodkin Adams case==
Lawrence made his name defending [[John Bodkin Adams|Dr John Bodkin Adams]]. Adams was arrested in 1956 for the murder of two elderly widows, [[Gertrude Hullett]] and [[Edith Alice Morrell]]. He was tried for the murder of the latter in 1957 with the prosecution, led by [[Reginald Manningham-Buller|Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller]], alleging that he had killed her with excessive doses of heroin and [[morphine]] for mercenary motives. Lawrence was hired by the [[Medical Defence Union]] to defend Adams, making this Lawrence's first capital case. Indeed, ''Time'' magazine described Lawrence as "a relative stranger in criminal court".<ref name=Time/> He was assisted by [[Edward Clarke (lawyer)|Edward Clarke]] QC and junior counsel was John Heritage.

Lawrence's conduct of the defence was admired by many.<ref name=Devlin/> On just the second day of the trial he dropped a bombshell. While [[cross-examination|cross-examining]] a witness, one of the nurses who had taken care of Mrs Morrell, some "notebooks" the nurses had kept were mentioned. Unfortunately they had long ago gone 'missing'. Lawrence summarised the situation:
"If only we had those old books we could see the truth of exactly what happened."<ref name=Cullen/>

To the surprise of all but the defence team, he then produced eight notebooks which had been written by the nurses, detailing their and Adams' treatment of Morrell. The entries differed markedly from the accounts in witness statements produced by the police from testimony obtained in 1956. The prosecution was wrong-footed and never fully recovered from the notebooks showing far less opiates had been given to Mrs Morrell than had been suggested in the opening prosecution speech. Testimony from [[expert witness]]es for the prosecution, [[Arthur Henry Douthwaite|Dr Arthur Douthwaite]] and [[Michael Ashby|Dr Michael Ashby]], was rendered ineffective as they had prepared their hypothesis of murder by opiate poisoning based on the police evidence of the amounts of opiates prescribed and the assumption that everything prescribed had been administered, without having had access to the detailed evidence of amounts administered in the notebooks. When they attempted to adjust their evidence to take the notebooks into account, they were accused by Lawrence of being inconsistent.<ref name=Cullen/>

Lawrence again surprised the court with his decision not to call the defendant as a witness.<ref name=ABC>[http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2006/1692048.htm Ockham's Razor – 23 July 2006 – The Strange Case of Dr John Bodkin Adams<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> Although it was not obligatory for the defendant to give his or her version of events, and a defendant's legal right to silence had been acknowledged since the turn of the 20th century, when it first became legal for a defendant to give evidence in their defence under oath,<ref name=Devlin/>) it had become usual for them to do so. Therefore, when Lawrence announced that Adams would not speak in his own defence, it surprised many present in court, with Devlin considered that Lawrence was taking a risk in not allowing Adams to enter the witness box, although conceding that Adams' garrulousness was a credible reason for that strategy.<ref name=Devlin/> Most surprised of all was the prosecutor, Manningham-Buller. He had been expecting Adams giving evidence, and being able both to provoke him onto making the sort of damaging admissions that the police had recorded and discrediting his explanation of events.<ref name=Cullen/> When this opportunity was not presented, the prosecution strategy was thrown into disarray.<ref name=Devlin/>

Lawrence is also remembered for his final address to the jury:<ref name="lawinaction.ca">[https://web.archive.org/web/20241205131943/http://www.lawinaction.ca/assets/snippets/filedownload/download.php?path=YXNzZXRzL2ZpbGVzL290aGVyX3Jlc291cmNlcy9lbmdsaXNo&fileName=english.doc lawinaction.ca]</ref>

{{quote|[[Justice]] is of paramount consideration here, and the only way in which this can be done is for you to judge the matter on what you have heard in this court and in this court only.

What you read in the papers, what you hear in the train, what you hear in the cafés and restaurants, what your friends and relations come and tell you; rumour, gossip, all the rest of it, may be so wrong.

The possibility of guilt is not enough, suspicion is not enough, probability is not enough, likelihood is not. A criminal matter is not a question of balancing probabilities and deciding in favour of a probability.

If the accusation is not proved beyond [[reasonable doubt]] against the man accused in the dock, then by law he is entitled to be acquitted, because that is the way our rules work.
It is no concession to given him the benefit of the doubt. He is entitled by law to a verdict of [[Acquittal|not guilty]].<ref name="lawinaction.ca"/>}}

Adams was acquitted after just 44 minutes and the case made Lawrence's reputation.<ref name=ABC/>

==Personal life==
In 1941 Lawrence married Marjorie Avice.<ref name=ODNB/> She survived him and they had no children. In his spare time Lawrence was an accomplished violinist, having played [[first violin]] for the orchestra of the [[Oxford Bach Choir]] under Sir [[Hugh Allen (conductor)|Hugh Allen]].<ref name=ODNB/>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20071014060941/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,824796,00.html Time Magazine's description of Lawrence's defence of Adams]
*{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20071006095744/http://www.strangerinblood.co.uk/html/gallery.htm Gallery of those involved in the Adams case, including a photo of Lawrence]}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lawrence, Frederick Geoffrey}}
[[Category:Alumni of New College, Oxford]]
[[Category:Knights Bachelor]]
[[Category:1902 births]]
[[Category:1967 deaths]]
[[Category:Queen's Bench Division judges]]
[[Category:20th-century English judges]]
[[Category:Members of the Middle Temple]]
[[Category:People educated at the City of London School]]
[[Category:20th-century King's Counsel]]
[[Category:Recorder (judge)]]