Ronald Appleton KC, who has died aged 97, was Senior Crown Prosecutor of Northern Ireland for 22 years until 1999, a period which coincided with some of the worst atrocities of the Troubles.
Arguably the world’s most experienced terrorism trial lawyer, Appleton prosecuted in numerous heavyweight cases, including the trial in 1979 of the Ulster loyalist paramilitary gang known as the “Shankill Butchers”, who had terrorised the Catholic population of Belfast; 11 defendants were convicted of 19 murders and given 42 life sentences between them, the most ever handed out in a single trial in British criminal history.
A decade later Appleton prosecuted another loyalist militant, Michael Stone, who was sentenced to a total of 684 years imprisonment in 1989 for murdering mourners at an IRA funeral. And he subsequently acted for the Crown at the trial of the two gunmen who murdered the two British Army corporals after they stumbled into the funeral procession of the men Michael Stone had killed.
Appleton had earlier prosecuted at several of the controversial “supergrass” trials, where former paramilitary terrorists testified against their associates in return for reduced sentences or immunity from prosecution.
Described by one chronicler as having “a florid complexion, a cherubic countenance, and deep blue eyes set below a pair of big black eyebrows,” Ronnie Appleton was renowned as the Crown’s most formidable prosecutor by defendants on both sides of the sectarian divide. He excelled at building a clear and persuasive case, while also being scrupulously fair to the defence. The prominent Catholic solicitor Patrick McGrory, who represented several defendants in IRA cases, had an especially high regard for him even though they were often on opposing sides in court.
Before becoming the Province’s chief prosecutor, Appleton had done a lot of criminal defence work himself, including representing one of the men accused of murdering Constable Victor Arbuckle in 1969, the first RUC officer to be killed during the Troubles.
Appleton had originally been asked to prosecute in the Arbuckle case, but declined to do so on the grounds that, if convicted, the defendants would face the death sentence, which Appleton opposed. To his great relief, and audible gasps of “Thank God!” in the courtroom, the defendants were all eventually acquitted at their trial for capital murder – which turned out to be the last death penalty case in Northern Ireland – but were later sentenced to between six and 10 years for firearms offences on the night of the killing.
Ronald Appleton was born in Belfast on December 29 1927, the eldest of three brothers. His mother Sophie had been born into a Jewish family near Kiev in Ukraine and arrived in Northern Ireland via Liverpool after fleeing the pogroms. His father David, a merchant seaman turned door-to-door salesman, had been born in Dumfries, Scotland, into a Jewish family of Lithuanian origin.
After Skegoniel Primary School and Belfast High School, Appleton, read law at Queen’s University, Belfast, where he also became head of the University Socialist Society. He was called to the Bar of Northern Ireland in 1951.
As a junior barrister his practice included a wide range of civil work as well as crime. He was a far from showy advocate, but very effective due to his meticulous case preparation and sound grasp of the law.
He also had great determination and phenomenal powers of concentration – his son once found him covered in shards of glass at home after he had walked through a closed glass door without apparently noticing it, so engrossed had he been in his legal paperwork.
He took Silk in 1969 and became Senior Crown Prosecutor in 1977, by which time all of the Province’s terrorist cases were being held in the judge-only Diplock courts to avoid the risk of jury intimidation.
Several judges, magistrates and other lawyers were assassinated in Northern Ireland by terrorists before and after his appointment, and Appleton soon became aware that his own name appeared on several kill lists, requiring him to have 24-hour police protection and bullet-proof mirrored windows at his home in north Belfast.
But he appeared largely unconcerned by the dangers he faced, driven as he was by a powerful sense of duty and commitment to justice and the rule of law that came partly from having had so many of his own relations murdered during the Holocaust.
His other prominent cases as a prosecutor included Maxwell v DPP for Northern Ireland (1978), which on appeal to the House of Lords established that an aider and abetter could be convicted as a principal to a crime even if the role was subordinate. It remains the leading case on the mens rea of accomplices.
He was also in the Le Mon House Hotel bombing trial and the trial of Dominic “Mad Dog” McGlinchey, the first man to have been extradited to Northern Ireland from the Republic on terrorism charges. McGlinchey was convicted in 1984 of the murder of postmistress Hester McMullan, although this was overturned on appeal a year later.
Appleton was considered by many to be an obvious candidate to be made a judge of the Northern Ireland High Court, and he and others later suspected that he may have been blocked by anti-Semitism among some in the higher ranks of the Northern Irish judiciary. Against him too were his strong associations with Unionism and the drive from the mid-1980s to appoint more Catholic judges. He also clashed several times in court with Lord Lowry, who was Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland from 1971 to 1988 and a Law Lord after that.
In the years leading up to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, which ended most of the violence of the Troubles, Appleton helped build cross-community relations by inviting various prominent Catholics and Protestants to dinner parties at his house on Fridays to mark the start of the Sabbath. These occasions were often the first time these people had met or spoken to each other. Some of those Appleton had prosecuted also ended up at his table after their release.
At one such dinner, “Mad Dog” McGlinchey’s sister Anne asked Appleton whether he ever thought about the men he had put away, to which he replied that he worried more about the bereaved families they had left behind.
He was actively involved in the Jewish community of Belfast, serving on the committee for Holocaust Remembrance and as president of the Belfast Hebrew Congregation. He was also co-chair of the council of Christians and Jews and a founder of Thanksgiving Square. His extensive charity work included being founder and chairman of the lawyers’ pro bono unit in Northern Ireland. He was also a member of the Medico-Legal Society.
He married, in 1963, Shoshana Schmidt. She survives him, with their three sons and two daughters.
Ronald Appleton, born December 29 1927, died April 6 2025