Sir Robin Spencer | |
|---|---|
 | |
| High Court Judge King's Bench Division | |
| In office 2010–2023 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 8 July 1955 |
| Alma mater | Emmanuel College, Cambridge |
Sir Robin Godfrey Spencer DL (born 8 July 1955), is a former judge of the High Court of England and Wales.
He was educated at The King's School, Chester and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. [1]
He was called to the bar at Gray's Inn in 1978 and became a bencher there in 2005. He was appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1999, deputy judge of the High Court from 2001 to 2010, and judge of the High Court of Justice (Queen's Bench Division) since 2010. [2] In 2013 he was appointed as Presiding Judge on the South Eastern Circuit. He retired from the High Court with effect from March 2023.
In 1999 Spencer was leading Counsel for the prosecution in the trial of Sally Clark, a solicitor charged with the murder of her two babies. Clark was found guilty and sent to prison. She maintained her innocence and eventually her convictions were overturned at a second appeal and she was freed in 2003. [3]
Clark's husband, also a solicitor, made a complaint about the conduct of Spencer and his prosecution team. A Bar Council appointed QC prepared a charge sheet containing eight acts or omissions prejudicial to the administration of justice, but Mr Justice McKinnon struck out the complaints. [4]
In 2014 Spencer was the judge in the trial of three G4S security guards charged with the manslaughter of Angolan Jimmy Mubenga. Spencer ruled that abusive racist text messages found on the mobile phones of two of the guards had 'no real relevance' to the trial. The three were acquitted. [5] [6]
In 2014, Spencer was the sentencing judge for the Peterborough ditch murders sentencing Joanna Dennehy to life imprisonment with a Whole life order for the murders of 3 men in Cambridgeshire, England
Sally Clark was an English solicitor who, in November 1999, became the victim of a miscarriage of justice when she was found guilty of the murder of her two infant sons. Clark's first son died in December 1996 within a few weeks of his birth, and her second son died in similar circumstances in January 1998. A month later, Clark was arrested and tried for both deaths. The defense argued that the children had died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The prosecution case relied on flawed statistical evidence presented by paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow, who testified that the chance of two children from an affluent family suffering SIDS was 1 in 73 million. He had arrived at this figure by squaring his estimate of a chance of 1 in 8500 of an individual SIDS death in similar circumstances. The Royal Statistical Society later issued a statement arguing that there was no statistical basis for Meadow's claim, and expressed concern at the "misuse of statistics in the courts".
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