Sir Richard George May (12 November 1938 – 1 July 2004) was a British
judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...
.
May was born in
London and educated at
Haileybury. Following national service with the
Durham Light Infantry, he studied law at
Selwyn College, Cambridge. He was
called to the bar
The call to the bar is a legal term of art in most common law jurisdictions where persons must be qualified to be allowed to argue in court on behalf of another party and are then said to have been "called to the bar" or to have received "call to ...
in 1965, and practised on the
Midland and Oxford Circuit, principally in criminal prosecution work, initially from chambers at 10 King's Bench Walk and latterly from Devereux Chambers. He was a Recorder of the
Crown Court
The Crown Court is the court of first instance of England and Wales responsible for hearing all Indictable offence, indictable offences, some Hybrid offence, either way offences and appeals lied to it by the Magistrates' court, magistrates' court ...
until he was appointed as a Circuit Judge in 1987.
He was also an active member of the
Labour Party in
Westminster from the mid-1960s, fighting unsuccessfully for a seat on
Westminster City Council in 1968. He was a
Parliamentary candidate in
South Dorset in the
1970 general election.
In 1971 May was elected to Westminster City Council, where he led the Labour Group from 1974 to 1977. He stood down from the council in 1978 to concentrate on his legal career but was still able to stand in the
1979 contest in
Margaret Thatcher's
Finchley
Finchley () is a large district of north London, England, in the London Borough of Barnet. Finchley is on high ground, north of Charing Cross.
Nearby districts include: Golders Green, Muswell Hill, Friern Barnet, Whetstone, Mill Hill and H ...
constituency.
He came into the international limelight with his 1997 appointment to the
UN's
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was a body of the United Nations that was established to prosecute the war crimes that had been committed during the Yugoslav Wars and to try their perpetrators. The tribunal ...
. Most notably, he served as the presiding judge in the proceedings to prosecute former
Serbian and
Yugoslav president
Slobodan Milošević
Slobodan Milošević (, ; 20 August 1941 – 11 March 2006) was a Yugoslav and Serbian politician who was the president of Serbia within Yugoslavia from 1989 to 1997 (originally the Socialist Republic of Serbia, a constituent republic of ...
on
war crimes charges.
May stepped down from that position, on grounds of poor health, in February 2004. He was knighted in June 2004 and died at his home in
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the north west of South East England. It is a mainly rural county, with its largest settlement being the city of Oxford. The county is a centre of research and development, primarily ...
a few weeks later of a brain tumour.
External links
Obituary of Sir Richard May(
The Guardian)
{{DEFAULTSORT:May, Richard
1938 births
2004 deaths
Deaths from brain cancer in England
Durham Light Infantry soldiers
Alumni of Selwyn College, Cambridge
20th-century English judges
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia judges
Labour Party (UK) parliamentary candidates
Councillors in the City of Westminster
People educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College
Knights Bachelor
British judges of United Nations courts and tribunals
20th-century British Army personnel
21st-century English judges