the obituary for Judge Boreham (most famous for being in charge of trials of the 'Yorkshire Ripper' Peter Sutcliffe and the Brighton bomber Patrick Magee).

As is usual, he'd been a leading barrister before being appointed as a judge, including…

In 1970, he appeared in one of the more exceptional murder cases of the time, representing Trooper Michael Hanson, who was charged with his wife Carol over the sexual assault and murder of a 10-year-old girl near Colchester. Carol Hanson claimed her husband had stabbed the child to death.

Four days into the trial, Hanson told Boreham that he had, in fact, killed the girl, but that he wanted his wife put away to stop her associating with other men. He nevertheless refused to change his plea to guilty and, as a result, Boreham neither cross-examined Carol Hanson nor made a closing speech to the jury. Despite this, she was also convicted, and jailed for a recommended minimum of 20 years. An application for a retrial was refused, and, in 1997, she died in obscurity in prison.

There's more about the case here, but for one of the UK's main miscarriages of justice of the last century, there's amazingly little on google.

At 27 years inside before her death, she shared the 'record' with Stephen Downing (freed), a decade longer than the Bridgewater Four (17 years), the Birmingham Six (16 years) or the Guildford Four (15 years).