Ronald Appleton obituary: chief prosecutor during the Troubles

Times

3 days ago

Short, mild-mannered and bespectacled, Ronald Appleton was not obviously a heroic type, but in his own courageous way he did much to preserve the rule of law in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
As the province's senior crown prosecutor for 22 years from 1977, he secured the convictions in jury-less Diplock courts of some of the conflict's most infamous terrorists: the Shankill Butchers, the loyalist gunman Michael Stone, the Provisional IRA's Shankill Road bomber Sean Kelly and the Irish National Liberation Army's Dominic 'Mad Dog' McGlinchey, to name but a few.
He did so at considerable personal risk. He was a target of the province's paramilitary organisations, both republican and loyalist, and was compelled to live in conditions of intense security: a 24-hour armed guard, a fortified home and an armoured car.
His fairness, honesty and diligence impressed even those whose convictions he secured, and it is unclear why he was never appointed as a High Court judge — a glaring omission that was said to have hurt him. It may have been because the authorities needed to appoint more judges from the nationalist community, and Appleton was regarded as a moderate unionist. He was also considered a bit of an outsider — a highly principled prosecutor who was not afraid to criticise judges and refused to go along with some of the politically inspired legal shenanigans of that era. More recently, Irish newspapers have claimed that Robert Lowry, Northern Ireland's chief justice during the 1970s and 1980s, disliked both Catholics and Jews — and Appleton was Jewish. He was offered an MBE, but he apparently considered it a sop and turned it down.
Ronald Appleton was born in Belfast in 1927. His father, David, was of Lithuanian descent and a door-to-door salesman of picture frames who had been a teenage merchant seaman before serving with the Royal Australian Navy during the First World War. His mother, Sophie, was born near Kyiv, but her family fled Ukraine's pogroms when she was an infant.
Appleton was raised in north Belfast and educated at Belfast High School, surviving a German bomb that damaged the family home during the Second World War. He read law at Queen's University Belfast, where he headed its socialist society and clashed with the vice-chancellor when he invited a prominent international left-winger to speak. Initially as a barrister he worked mostly on civil cases, but became increasingly involved in terrorism trials involving both loyalists and republicans as the Troubles deepened.
Most notably, he refused an invitation to prosecute three men accused of shooting Constable Victor Arbuckle during a loyalist riot in Belfast's Shankill Road in 1969 because they faced the death penalty if convicted. Arbuckle was the first member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary to die in the Troubles. He instead agreed to defend Tommy Rowntree, the lead defendant and a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force. In what proved to be Northern Ireland's last death penalty case, all three defendants were acquitted of murder, but subsequently jailed for firearms offences. 'I could feel the rope around my neck,' Rowntree told Appleton afterwards.
In 1963 Appleton married Shoshana Schmidt, a film producer's assistant whom he had met on a trip to Israel, and they went on to have five children — Michael, now a psychotherapist, Dallia, a lawyer, Dudi, a film-maker, Philip, an HR technology consultant, and Sophie, who works for a car rental company. Despite his growing family he prepared meticulously for each case and routinely worked into the small hours — once walking straight through a glass door in his home because he was so preoccupied with his work.
In 1977 he was asked to become Northern Ireland's senior crown prosecutor — a post he accepted only after Lowry had privately assured him it would not hurt his chances of becoming a judge.
His first big terrorism trial came two years later when he secured the convictions of the so-called Shankill Butchers, a loyalist gang responsible for the brutal sectarian murders of at least two dozen Catholics, most chosen at random. Eleven men were convicted for 19 murders and received 42 life sentences — a record for a criminal trial in Britain. Martin Dillon, the author of a book on the Butchers, described Appleton as 'one of the outstanding lawyers of his generation'.
In 1984 Appleton secured the extradition of Dominic 'Mad Dog' McGlinchey, the murderous leader of the Irish National Liberation Army, from Ireland — an unprecedented feat at that time. He then secured McGlinchey's conviction for murdering the elderly mother of an RUC reservist, but the conviction was subsequently overturned on appeal. From his prison cell McGlinchey sent Appleton a message saying that he had had a fair trial, and that his only regret was that Appleton had prosecuted — not defended — him.
In 1989 Appleton secured the conviction of Michael Stone, a loyalist who killed three mourners at an IRA funeral in west Belfast's Milltown Cemetery. Stone, who received prison sentences totalling 684 years, later sent Appleton an abstract painting, which he hung in his lavatory.
Shortly after Stone's cemetery attack a crowd attending the funeral of one of his victims seized two British corporals, Derek Wood and David Howes, who had inadvertently driven into the procession. Both were shot. Appleton secured life sentences for Henry Maguire and Alex Murphy, two of those most closely involved in the killings, though he could not prove that either had fired the fatal shots.
In another celebrated case, Appleton secured nine life sentences for Sean Kelly, one of two IRA men who killed nine people, including women and children, and injured 50 more when they bombed a fish shop on the Shankill Road in 1993.
Appleton did not win every case. In 1980 he prosecuted Edward Manning Brophy, a senior IRA man accused of organising the bombing of La Mon House hotel near Belfast in which 12 people died. To Appleton's dismay, Brophy was cleared because he had relied on 'confessions' the defendant made while in custody. Nor was every case a terrorist trial. In 1992 he secured the conviction of Frederick Bushell, the former Lotus executive who helped to mastermind the DeLorean Motor Company fraud.
After stepping down as senior crown prosecutor in 1999 Appleton helped to set up a pro bono lawyers' group and an organisation called Thanksgiving Square, which created a place of reflection beside Belfast's Lagan River after the Troubles. He helped to sustain Belfast's dwindling Jewish community as its president for 14 years.
He also reached out to former adversaries, on occasion inviting them to dinner at his home. One such guest was David Ervine, the former loyalist paramilitary whom Appleton had helped to convict for bomb-making but later became a peacemaker. Ervine's first words to Appleton were: 'You look different without a wig on.'
Ronald Appleton KC, senior crown prosecutor of Northern Ireland during the Troubles, was born on December 29, 1927. He died on April 6, 2025, aged 97