Sir William Davis

Lord Justice of Appeal dies at 70

Lord Justice William Davis, chair of the Sentencing Council, died suddenly at his home in Warwickshire on Saturday. He was 70. He leaves a wife, Ginny, and two children, Rosie, 32, and Ralph, 29.

A calm, unflappable man, he brushed off the stresses and strains that would have kept others awake at night. Bill Davis, as everyone called him, was known for his generosity of spirit and his willingness as a High Court judge to share his wide experience of the criminal law with newly-appointed colleagues from a civil law background.

Bill Davis on holiday in Cornwall

Davis had a dry wit which he put to good use when creating the scenarios used at the Judicial College, where he was director of training from 2014 to 2019. Experienced judicial trainers would stop the scene at a crucial point and ask would-be judges what they would do next.

Educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys, Leicester, and Queen Mary, University of London, Davis was called to the bar at Inner Temple in 1975. He practised from No 7 Fountain Court in Birmingham, now St Philips Chambers, where he began doing what he described as “tatty” crime and ended up as head of chambers.

Appointed a recorder in 1995, he took a full-time judicial appointment on the circuit bench in 2009 and became the senior circuit judge of Birmingham in 2009. It fell to him to try cases arises from serious rioting there in 2011. Davis said a “wave of lawlessness” had spread across many towns and cities; “severe penalties” had to be imposed, both as punishment and as a deterrent.

It’s still quite rare for circuit judges to join the High Court — as Davis did in 2014 — and even more uncommon for them to be promoted to the Court of Appeal, which Davis joined in 2021. He became chair of the Sentencing Council a year later, having been a judicial member between 2012 and 2015.

Davis had fully intended to carry on in this important role and to continue sitting in the Court of Appeal for the next four years. His death leaves the court short of experienced criminal specialists.

It was as chair of the Sentencing Council that he spoke to me three months ago about a revised sentencing guideline on the imposition of community and custodial sentences, which he said was no more than a revision of an existing guideline that has been in force since 2017.

We recorded the interview on 5 March, unaware that, as we were speaking, the shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick was claiming in parliament that the guideline would make a custodial sentence less likely for those “from an ethnic minority, cultural minority, and/or faith minority community”. That is “not what the guideline does”, Davis explained on 27 March — and not for the first time.

Some thought his five-page letter to the justice secretary was an over-reaction. Others saw it as a courageous attempt to defend judicial independence against political interference.

Davis had total confidence in the consultation process that took place before each guideline was issued. But once the justice secretary announced that she would be introducing legislation, he acted entirely appropriately by suspending implementation of the guideline that Shabana Mahmood had objected to. Her bill has its third reading in the House of Lords tomorrow.

Tributes

Dame Anne Rafferty, a former lady justice of appeal, said yesterday:

Bill Davis was fearless, strong, thoughtful, collegiate and the finest of public servants. He was a pleasure to sit with in the Court of Appeal, a stalwart Recorder of Birmingham and as a QC left every judge confident of quality help. And he was very, very funny.

Jaime Hamilton KC, leader of the Northern Circuit, said he had the pleasure of appearing before Davis, both when he was Recorder of Birmingham and when Davis was a presiding judge of the Northern Circuit from 2016 to 2019.

Hamilton added:

Perhaps most memorably, I was on fictitious jury duty with him a few years ago. His wife Ginny is both a writer and an actor who wrote and performed a play called Learned Friends. Twelve of the audience became the jury and once more I found myself slightly trembling beneath the gaze of his lordship.

He was equipped with a sense of humour that you occasionally saw in court and a very fine mind which you saw quite a lot of in court. He was truly a fine contributor to public life as well as someone who made a tremendous contribution to the profession.

Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill, the lady chief justice of England and Wales, said this morning:

Lord Justice William Davis was a fearless judge with outstanding expertise in criminal law, always a valuable source of wisdom, experience and good sense and one of the very best criminal judges of his generation. He was also a much loved colleague and friend to the judges and so many others.

He was, as ever, hard at work right up until the day before his death, with his characteristic good humour and dry wit. He loved his work; he never had too much of it and it was never an unwelcome burden for him.

Davis would be greatly missed, Carr added. “We share in a collective mourning at the passing of a great judge and a good man.”