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Sir Thomas Scott Gillespie Baker, PC (born 10 December 1937) is a retired English Court of Appeal judge. Scott Baker is the eldest son of Sir George Baker, a former High Court judge who was President of the Family Division from 1971 to 1979. One of his brothers, Judge Michael Baker, KC, was the Resident judge at St Albans Crown Court.
Scott Baker was educated at Haileybury & Imperial Service College, and studied at Brasenose College, Oxford. He was a member of Chorleywood Urban District Council from 1964 to 1967. He married Margaret Joy Baker on 10 February 1973. The couple has two sons and one daughter.
He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1961, and practised in a range of legal areas, including family finance cases, and professional negligence. He became a recorder in 1976, and was appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1978. He became a Bencher at Middle Temple in 1985. He was a member of the Committee that inquired into human fertilisation in 1982 to 1984, chaired by Mary Warnock, which led to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990.
He was appointed as a High Court judge in 1988 (and was styled Mr Justice Scott Baker), receiving the customary knighthood, and allocated to the Family Division. He moved to the Queen's Bench Division in 1993.
He was Presiding Judge of the Wales and Chester Circuit from 1991 to 1995, and a member of the Parole Board from 1999 to 2002. He was the Lead Judge of the Administrative Court from 2000 to 2002. In 1999, he presided over the trial of Great Western Trains following the Southall rail crash in 1997.
He dismissed charges of corporate manslaughter, as there was no identifiable individual in the company who was also guilty of gross negligence, but levied a then-record fine for health and safety offences of £1.5m. His judgment was upheld on appeal. The same year, Baker presided at the trial of Jonathan Aitken on charges of perjury following the collapse of Aitken's libel suit against The Guardian .
Baker was promoted in 2002, becoming a Lord Justice of Appeal. He was Treasurer of his Inns of Court, the Middle Temple, in 2004. He sat as coroner for the inquests into the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed from 2 October 2007 to 7 April 2008.
In March 2011, Baker was sworn in as a Justice of the Court of Appeal of Bermuda, a position that he held until 2018.
Mohamed Abdel Moneim Al-Fayed was an Egyptian billionaire businessman, whose residence and primary business interests were in the United Kingdom from the mid-1960s. His business interests included ownership of the Hôtel Ritz Paris, Harrods department store and Fulham Football Club. At the time of his death in 2023, Forbes estimated his wealth at US$2 billion.
In law, a verdict is the formal finding of fact made by a jury on matters or questions submitted to the jury by a judge. In a bench trial, the judge's decision near the end of the trial is simply referred to as a finding. In England and Wales, a coroner's findings used to be called verdicts but are, since 2009, called conclusions.
A licence to kill, or license to kill in American English, is a licence granted by a government or government agency to a particular operative or employee to initiate the use of lethal force in the delivery of their objectives. The initiation of lethal force is in contrast to the use of lethal force in self-defence or the protection of life. It is well known as a literary device used in espionage fiction.
Michael John Clement Burgess, CVO, OBE was the Coroner of the Queen's Household. He was educated at Beaumont College and King's College London. He was appointed deputy coroner in 1991 and was appointed coroner in 2002.
Ann Elizabeth Oldfield Butler-Sloss, Baroness Butler-Sloss, GBE, PC is a retired English judge. She was the first female Lord Justice of Appeal and was the highest-ranking female judge in the United Kingdom until 2004, when Baroness Hale was appointed to the House of Lords. Until June 2007, she chaired the inquests into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Fayed. She stood down from that task with effect from that date, and the inquest was conducted by Lord Justice Scott Baker.
The Judiciary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is the judicial branch of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Under the Basic Law of Hong Kong, it exercises the judicial power of the Region and is independent of the executive and legislative branches of the Government. The courts in Hong Kong hear and adjudicate all prosecutions and civil disputes, including all public and private law matters.
Corporate manslaughter is a criminal offence in English law, being an act of homicide committed by a company or organisation. In general, in English criminal law, a juristic person is in the same position as a natural person, and may be convicted for committing many offences. The Court of Appeal confirmed in one of the cases following the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster that a company can, in principle, commit manslaughter, although all defendants in that case were acquitted.
In the English law of homicide, manslaughter is a less serious offence than murder, the differential being between levels of fault based on the mens rea or by reason of a partial defence. In England and Wales, a common practice is to prefer a charge of murder, with the judge or defence able to introduce manslaughter as an option. The jury then decides whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty of either murder or manslaughter. On conviction for manslaughter, sentencing is at the judge's discretion, whereas a sentence of life imprisonment is mandatory on conviction for murder. Manslaughter may be either voluntary or involuntary, depending on whether the accused has the required mens rea for murder.
Sir John Bernard Goldring is a British judge. He currently sits as the President of the Cayman Islands Court of Appeal, and serves as the Deputy Investigatory Powers Commissioner. He formerly sat on the Court of Appeal of England and Wales.
Heather Carol Hallett, Baroness Hallett,, is a retired British judge of the Court of Appeal and a crossbench life peer. The first woman to chair the Bar Council and the fifth woman to sit in the Court of Appeal, Hallett led the independent inquest into the 7/7 bombings. In April 2019, she was appointed Chair of the Security Vettings Appeal Panel. In December 2021, she was announced as the chair of the public inquiry into the UK Government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. On 29 June 2022, the Government accepted Baroness Hallett's proposed terms of reference for the inquiry, with minor changes suggested by the devolved administrations.
During the early hours of 31 August 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, died from injuries sustained earlier that night in a fatal car crash in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris, France. Dodi Fayed, Diana's partner, and Henri Paul, the driver of the Mercedes-Benz W140, were found dead inside the car. Dodi's bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, was seriously injured and the only survivor of the crash.
Operation Paget was the British Metropolitan Police inquiry established in 2004 to investigate the conspiracy theories about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a car crash in Paris in 1997. The inquiry's first report with the findings of the criminal investigation was published in 2006. The inquiry was wound up following the conclusion of the British inquest in 2008, in which a jury delivered its verdict of an "unlawful killing" due to the "gross negligence" of both the driver of Diana's car and the pursuing paparazzi.
Paul Burrell is a former servant of the British Royal Household and latterly butler to Diana, Princess of Wales.
There are many conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, on 31 August 1997. Official investigations in both Britain and France found that Diana died in a manner consistent with media reports following the fatal car crash in Paris. In 1999, a French investigation concluded that Diana died as the result of a crash. French investigator, Judge Hervé Stephan, concluded that the paparazzi were some distance from the Mercedes S280 when it crashed and were not responsible for manslaughter. After hearing evidence at the British inquest, a jury in 2008 returned a verdict of "unlawful killing" by driver Henri Paul and the paparazzi pursuing the car. The jury's verdict also stated: "In addition, the death of the deceased was caused or contributed to by the fact that the deceased were not wearing a seat belt and by the fact that the Mercedes struck the pillar in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel rather than colliding with something else."
Paul Knapman DL was Her Majesty's coroner for Westminster, from 1980 to 2011. His responsibility for investigating sudden deaths as an independent judicial officer saw him preside over numerous notable cases.
Sir Brian Henry Leveson is a retired English judge who served as the President of the Queen's Bench Division and Head of Criminal Justice.
English law contains homicide offences – those acts involving the death of another person. For a crime to be considered homicide, it must take place after the victim's legally recognised birth, and before their legal death. There is also the usually uncontroversial requirement that the victim be under the "King's peace". The death must be causally linked to the actions of the defendant. Since the abolition of the year and a day rule, there is no maximum time period between any act being committed and the victim's death, so long as the former caused the latter.
Ian Duncan Burnett, Baron Burnett of Maldon,, is a British judge who served as Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 2017 to 2023.
Sir Andrew George Lindsay Nicol is a retired judge of the High Court of England and Wales.
Sir Jonathan Leslie Baker, styled The Rt Hon Lord Justice Baker, is a Judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales.
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