Graham Cox

Born: December 22, 1933;

Died: December 27, 2014.

Graham Cox, who has died aged 81, was a young army lawyer who went on to play a key role in the initial stages of the Lockerbie bombing case.

By then a veteran sheriff, who had already presided over the Lanarkshire Fatal Accident Inquiry into what was then the world's worst outbreak of E.coli, he was Sheriff Principal of the jurisdiction that covered the site of the atrocity and the first member of the Scottish judicial system to come into contact with the two Libyan suspects.

He sat on the bench at Camp Zeist, the temporary court set up in the Netherlands to hear the case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, when they made their first appearance in private there on April 6, 1999. The pair, alleged to be behind the 1988 blowing up of Pan-Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie which left 270 dead, faced charges of conspiracy, murder and violations of aviation laws.

The following week, April 14, Sheriff Principal Cox committed them for trial, a court case from which the reverberations still echo, more than a quarter of a century after the bombing. Fhimah was acquitted in 2001. Megrahi was convicted of the killings and sentenced to life imprisonment. He maintained his innocence and died of cancer in 2012 after being released on compassionate grounds.

The case had thrown the respected lawman back into the spotlight after the E.Coli inquiry into the deaths of 21 people who ate contaminated meat from a Wishaw butcher's shop. Though he did not court publicity, he would later return to prominence when his chairmanship of the Adoption Policy Advisory Group led to major legal changes allowing unmarried couples, including same-sex partners, to adopt and foster children.

A son of the manse and one of a family of four, he was born in Newcastle to Rev Thomas Loudon Cox and his wife Leonainie but raised in Cambuslang until moving to Dundee when he was 15.

As a youngster he used to deliver sermons to his siblings and his future could easily have lain in the ministry. But he also possessed an innate ability to conduct a logical argument, as a result of which he chose to study law.

After an education at Hamilton Academy and then Grove Academy, Dundee, he went to Edinburgh University where he graduated with an MA in 1954, followed two years later by a law degree. Whilst studying, he was an apprentice to lawyers Young and Cruickshank, Writers to the Signet in Edinburgh.

Called up for national service in 1956, he was a 2nd lieutenant in the Royal Army Service Corps and after his two years was up, he went on to join the Army Legal Services. He spent three years there, based in the War Office in Stanmore, but

also served briefly in Germany, Nigeria and Gibraltar, where his first case involved the successful defence of a soldier on a string of theft charges.

Despite being assured of a successful career in the forces he left the army with the rank of major in 1961. Having already been admitted to the Law Society as a solicitor in 1958 and having always wanted to go the Scottish Bar, he returned to civvy street and devilled to James Mackay, who went on to become Lord Mackay of Clashfern, the Lord Advocate.

In 1962 he achieved his ambition and was called to the Bar, becoming a member of the Faculty of Advocates. From 1966 he was an advocate depute with the Crown Office, a demanding role with a heavy workload which entailed long hours to ensure he was fully prepared for every case. Then in 1968 he accepted an appointment to the bench in the Sheriffdom of Tayside, Central and Fife at Dundee, a job he loved and in which he was known for his sense of fairness over 25 years' service.

He took silk in 1993, the same year he became Sheriff Principal of South Strathclyde, Dumfries and Galloway. It was during his tenure there that he conducted the two-month long FAI into the 1996 outbreak of E.coli in Lanarkshire, reporting in May 2000 and identifying five key failures in environmental health and safety measures. In the interim he had been to Holland to carry out his duties in the Lockerbie case.

After his seven years as Sheriff Principal, he served as chairman of the Adoption Policy Advisory Group from 2001 to 2005. The subsequent research and report published in 2005 formed the basis of The Adoption and Children (Scotland) Bill (2007) which, amongst other reforms, permitted unmarried couples to adopt.

"Graham was always very interested in adoption law," said Sheriff Principal Edward Bowen, "and I am sure that the lasting legacy of major changes in the law resulting from that report must have given him great satisfaction."

Sheriff Cox was president of the Sheriffs' Association from 1991-93 and had also been a council member of the Commonwealth Magistrates' and Judges' Association and a vice-chairman of the Northern Lighthouse Board, the latter a position he very much enjoyed, particularly his lighthouse inspection trips on board HMS Faroes. For many years he had served as honorary president of the Scottish Association for the Study of Delinquency (now the Scottish Association for the Study of Offending), was a member of Dundee Cyrenians and an elder of Dundee Parish Church where he was also honorary patron and past convenor if its charity card sale.

Other interests included golf - he was a member of the Royal and Ancient and Crail Golfing Society - gardening, restoring old properties and skiing. He taught his family to ski and celebrated his 80th birthday in Aviemore, where he had often

spent family ski holidays, with a trip on the funicular railway to the Ptarmigan restaurant.

Sheriff Cox, who died at his home in Crail, donated his body to medical research.

He is survived by his second wife Jean, his three daughters Sandra, Elaine and Susie by his first wife June, six granddaughters, one great granddaughter and his sister Ellen.

ALISON SHAW