The judge who was at the centre of a row with ministers over allegations of ‘two-tier’ sentencing has died suddenly at the age of 70. Lord Justice William Davis, the former Court of Appeal judge who chaired the council since 2022, died on Saturday. The cause of his death is not known.
In March, Davis found himself embroiled in a battle with the government after the shadow lord chancellor Robert Jenrick raised concerns about guidelines issued by the council, saying they were biased ‘against straight white men’ and amounted to ‘two-tier justice’. The guidelines, which the council said were drafted months ago, advised judges to consider an offender’s racial, cultural and religious background when deciding whether to impose a custodial or community sentence. The council rejected calls from the lord chancellor, Shabana Mahmood, to change the guidance.
In a statement this morning, the lady chief justice, Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill, paid tribute to a ‘fearless judge with outstanding expertise in criminal law - always a valuable source of wisdom, experience and good sense - one of the very best criminal judges of his generation’.
Carr said: ‘He was, as ever, hard at work right up until the day before his death, with his characteristic good humour and dry wit’ and said that the judge ‘fully intended to carry on’ in his role as chair of the Sentencing Council, ‘demonstrating both his courage and sense of duty’. Carr said: ‘He loved his work; he never had too much of it, and it was never an unwelcome burden for him.’
Offering condolences to his wife, the author and playwright Ginny Davis, and their children, Carr said: ‘He will be greatly missed and we share in a collective mourning at the passing of a great judge and a good man.’
Born in1954, Davis attended Wyggeston Boys’ School in Leicester and studied law at Queen Mary College, London before being called to the bar by Inner Temple in 1975. Practising primarily in criminal and personal injury work, he took silk in 1995. His journey on the bench began in 1992 when he was appointed as an assistant recorder, becoming a recorder in 1995 and joining the circuit bench in 2008. During 2009 he was appointed a deputy High Court judge, a senior circuit judge and the honorary recorder of Birmingham, before being promoted to the High Court bench in 2014 and to the Court of Appeal in 2021.
Away from court, he enjoyed writing and performing in amateur dramatic sketches, appearing at theatres in Leamington and Kenilworth, including playing the role of Basil Fawlty. He appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe three times and in 2019 appeared in a performance in Court Number 1 at London’s Old Bailey, playing the role of a judge in a production of My Learned Friends, written by and staring his wife. On his performance, he told The Times: ‘This isn’t acting; I just come in and do what I do on the bench’.
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