Sir John Kay

Unstuffy Lord Justice of Appeal

A leading figure in criminal justice in England and Wales, Sir John Kay was a Lord Justice of Appeal and Chairman of the Criminal Justice Council.

John William Kay, judge: born Sidcup, Kent 13 September 1943; called to the Bar, Gray's Inn 1968, Bencher 1992; a Recorder 1982-92; QC 1984; Kt 1992; Judge of the High Court, Queen's Bench Division 1992-2000; Presiding Judge, Northern Circuit 1994-97; PC 2000; a Lord Justice of Appeal 2000- 04; Chairman, Criminal Justice Consultative Council 2001-03; Chairman, Criminal Justice Council 2003-04; married 1966 Jeffa Connell (one son, two daughters); died London 2 July 2004.

A leading figure in criminal justice in England and Wales, Sir John Kay was a Lord Justice of Appeal and Chairman of the Criminal Justice Council.

Kay presided at a succession of heavy criminal appeals which attracted media attention - including those of Jeremy Bamber, whose 2002 appeal against conviction for murdering five members of his family was dismissed; Sally Clark, whose appeal in 2003 against conviction for murdering her two sons was allowed; and Ruth Ellis, whose 1955 conviction for murdering her lover was upheld in December 2003.

In the Ellis case, he was strongly critical of the expenditure on an old case of resources that could have been better spent on people who were said to be still wrongly in custody. He was preparing for another appeal, that of Sion Jenkins, convicted in 1998 for the murder of his foster daughter Billie-Jo, when he became ill; he later suffered a fatal heart attack.

To each of the bodies he served - the Criminal Justice Council, the Criminal Justice Board, the Criminal Procedure Rules Committee and the Sentencing Guidelines Council - he brought good-humour, a conspicuous ability to get on with people from a wide variety of backgrounds, clear thought and incisive exposition.

John Kay was born in 1943, the younger son of Herbert and Ida Kay. His father was a Merseyside timber importer who had to move his family from Liverpool during the Second World War. In consequence, John was born in Sidcup, Kent. Thereafter his home, throughout his life, was on Merseyside, although he went elsewhere for his education and to work.

He went to school at Denstone like his father and brother and then to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he first read Maths for two years and then, in his third year, switched to Law. He obtained first class honours and was awarded the Bachelor Scholarship for law and the De Hart Prize. During the next two years, while reading for the Bar, he taught at a boarding prep school and, in 1966, married Jeffa Connell, whom he had met when they were teenagers.

In 1968, he was called to the Bar by Gray's Inn, where he was a Holker Scholar. He joined the Northern Circuit, entered chambers at Corn Exchange, Liverpool and became the pupil of Ifor Morris-Jones (later His Honour Judge Morris-Jones QC). To finance his fledgling career in practice, he became a part-time tutor in law at Liverpool University, but subsidy from that source was only needed for a year.

His practice, in civil and criminal work, took off rapidly and he became a familiar and commanding figure on the Circuit, particularly in Liverpool and Carlisle. His mastery of the relevant law and the detail of his cases was legendary. His advocacy, before judges and juries, was forceful and concise. In 1982 he became a recorder and, in 1984, inevitably, he took silk. Soon afterwards he became head of his chambers, where he was in the forefront of those embracing new technology.

His cases became heavier and he was increasingly involved in criminal work, particularly prosecuting. He served the profession for four years on the Bar Council and, for many years, as chairman of the Northern Circuit Legal Aid Committee. In these twin roles he played a significant part in negotiating fair remuneration for the Bar from public funds - a task which, as the years pass, becomes increasingly difficult, particularly for the Junior Bar.

At the age of 49 he was appointed a judge of the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court and knighted. He was a superb trial judge. He had all the necessary qualities, which are not always found together - outstanding intellect, common sense, a deep understanding of humanity and its weaknesses and an unfailing instinct for what was fair and just. He expected others to be as much on top of their case as he was and he did not gladly, or silently, suffer incompetence.

In 1994 he became a Presiding Judge of the Northern Circuit (where his administrative skills were of a high order) and, in 1995, a member of the Crown Court Rules Committee. For three years from 1998, he was chairman of the Criminal Committee of the Judicial Studies Board, where he was able to spread some of his own qualities, in training other judges.

In 2000 he was, unsurprisingly, promoted to the Court of Appeal and sworn of the Privy Council. It was at this level that the full flowering of his talents took place. He made a significant contribution to the hearing of civil appeals but it was in relation to crime that he was particularly outstanding, willingly undertaking a huge burden of work.

Parallel to his legal career, he had an abiding interest in rugby football, fostered when he played prop forward at school, maintained through his presidency of Waterloo Rugby Club (where he devoted many hours to encouraging the young) and reaching a pinnacle of pleasure when, with his wife, he travelled to Australia last autumn to see his son Ben play as a second-row forward in the victorious England World Cup team. In his leisure time, he advised the English Rugby Football Union.

His other interests included theatre, philately, genealogy and horse-racing. The last of these pursuits embraced several years of unprofitable ownership of the leg of a succession of horses with unlikely legal names, such as Silk and Stuff, and, on one occasion in a civil appeal, enabled him, in conjunction with his mathematics training, to display formidable knowledge of the complexity of betting odds.

Kay was a completely devoted family man. He had the happiest of marriages and Jeffa was involved in all his activities. He was immensely proud not only of his son, but also of his two daughters, one of whom is a barrister in Liverpool, and his five grandchildren. His eldest grandchild, aged nine, read a prayer which she had written at his funeral in Liverpool Anglican Cathedral. He was a kind, unstuffy man, with a great sense of fun and complete confidence in the superiority of northerners.

When a new judge sitting with him in the Court of Appeal Criminal Division had just given his first ever judgment, Lord Justice Kay said of the judge, to a court empty save for counsel from Liverpool, "He may sound like a southerner, but he's all right really: he was born and brought up in Southport."

Christopher Rose