What do the David Bain murder trials, Peter Ellis trials, the CTV collapse, Pike River and the Christ-church mosque shooting have in common?
They share the needle-sharp legal mind of Nigel Hampton OBE, KC, who has witnessed and helped shape some of New Zealand’s most significant cases, and has seen and influenced major changes in the legal profession itself. In this compelling, highly readable and often humorous memoir, he describes the moments, the relationships and the language that have affected his life, the ‘adrenalin tidal surges of the criminal trial’, the importance of the dramatic flourish, and the disillusionment and exhaustion that at times have accompanied his quest for justice.
After more than six decades in law, consummate storyteller Nigel Hampton offers a forensic examination of a career ‘striving to achieve right, correcting wrongs, through the law’. His tale, at first glance chaotic, with every deft twist and turn reveals the heart, humour and acuity of one of New Zealand’s most respected defence lawyers. Underpinning his story is a clear thread: a conviction that the law matters most when it improves lives and strengthens justice.
From a colourful youth in Canterbury to the mud of the rugby field and the panelled walls of courtrooms, a two-year stint as Chief Justice in the Kingdom of Tonga and a spell as commissioner with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Nigel Hampton’s engrossing account is, as he says, ‘digressive, even divergent, yet always relevant’.
A Life Forensic describes a life and career in which language, oratorical skill and ‘the promptings of humanity’ are writ large.