Lord Hutton
Northern judge saw the worst of the conflict — and gained fame with a Gulf War inquiry
LORD Hutton, who has died aged 89, was a Belfast-born Presbyterian and former Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland who led the inquiry for the British government into the death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly in the run-up to Britain’s involvement in the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Kelly had been identified as the man believed to be the source for claims on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Downing Street had “sexed up” its September 2002 dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Kelly was called to appear on July 15 before a parliamentary security committee. Two days later, the 59-year-old scientist was found dead.
Hutton, who chaired an inquiry, found that Kelly had killed himself; the Ministry of Defence was at fault for failing to help and protect him — but Tony Blair and his director of communications, Alastair Campbell, were cleared of improper behaviour. BBC director-general Greg Dyke and chairman Gavyn Davies resigned.
James Brian Edward Hutton was born in Belfast on June 29, 1931. His father, James, was a senior rail executive, his mother Mabel a daughter of the manse.
Hutton won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, and was called to the Northern bar in 1954. He came to public notice in 1969 when he prosecuted Bernadette Devlin, the MP for Mid-Ulster, for her part in the riots in Derry’s Bogside.
In 1973, with Northern Ireland under direct rule, he represented British soldiers involved in shooting dead 13 innocent civilians in 1972 in the Bloody Sunday massacre.
At the inquest, he made a scathing attack on the coroner who had described the shootings as “sheer unadulterated murder”.
In 1979 at the age of 48, he was made a judge. His cases included that of Dominic “Mad Dog” McGlinchey, the most wanted man in Ireland.
He ordered three unnamed RUC officers to appear at the inquest into the shooting in 1982 of three unarmed IRA men, a decision that prompted the “shoot-to-kill” inquiry by John Stalker.
There was surprise in some quarters when Hutton was appointed Lord Chief Justice for the North in 1988. Lord Justice Turlough O’Donnell, a Catholic, was more senior.
In 1990 Hutton cleared former Sinn Fein publicity chief Danny Morrison of conspiracy to murder, and in 1992, to unionist fury, he acquitted Patrick Nash, a former republican prisoner accused of 22 charges, as he had been beaten up in Castlereagh RUC station.
Hutton died on July 14. His first wife, Mary Murland, died in 2000. The following year he wed Lindy Nickols. She survives him with two daughters from his first marriage, and three stepchildren.