Obituary: Mike Redmayne 1967–2015

Mike Redmayne, professor of Law at the London School of Economics and a founding editor of Law, Probability and Risk, died in June 2015.

I knew Mike for many years through our joint interest in evidence evaluation and interpretation. He was an excellent supporter of my work and I was delighted when he agreed to help set up the journal, described by The Guardian obituary writer as ‘the leading journal for research in law and statistics’. That it can be so described is in no small part because of Mike’s work on its behalf. He was also assiduous in travelling to support workshops and conferences in Edinburgh, including the third International Conference on Forensic Inference in Statistics in 1996. Later, he was an enthusiastic member of the Statistics and Law working group of the Royal Statistical Society, an eclectic mix of lawyers, forensic scientists and statisticians, who produced four reports on Communicating and interpreting statistical evidence in the administration of criminal justice.¹ The group was wound up in 2014 and reincarnated in 2015 as a section of the Society. This is a fine recognition of the importance of the work to which he contributed so much and one which ensures the long-term future of the work.

One of the other founding editors of the journal, Franco Taroni, Professor of Forensic Statistics at the University of Lausanne, the leading centre in the world for research in forensic science, refers to Mike’s work in his introductory course on evidence evaluation at the university. For example, one quote of Mike’s from 1996, that Franco uses, is that ‘I regard Bayesian modelling as a valuable tool for reasoning about evidence.’²

He published several books, the most relevant for readers of the journal being Expert Evidence and Criminal Justice.³ This included chapters on ‘Probability models in forensic science’ and ‘Presenting probabilities in court’, expert discourses, showing excellent understanding of conditional probability, on a topic that should be required reading for all interested in evidence evaluation and interpretation.

I remember also the generosity with which he invited me to join with him and others as authors of a paper on the R. v. T.⁴ controversy. He was the principal author and I was impressed with the constructive approach to the discussion of an Appeal Court judgement which was very critical of the approach to evidence evaluation and interpretation we had been advocating for many years.

His ability to discuss sophisticated ideas of conditional probability in ways that lawyers and forensic scientists could understand was impressive. It is very sad that he is no longer with us. His wisdom and expertise will be sorely missed.

C.G.G. Aitken