John da Cunha, Date of Birth, Date of Death
TweetJohn da Cunha
British judge
Date of Birth: 06-Sep-1922
Date of Death: 12-May-2006
Profession: judge
Nationality: United Kingdom
Zodiac Sign: Virgo 
About John da Cunha
- John Wilfrid da Cunha (6 September 1922 – 12 May 2006) was a British barrister and circuit judge.
- He was a member of the British delegation to the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. Born in Manchester, da Cunha's father, Frank da Cunha, was a GP who came to Manchester from Goa to study and never left.
- John da Cunha was educated at Stonyhurst and read law at St John's College, Cambridge.
- During the Second World War, he was commissioned into the 23rd Hussars, commanding a tank.
- He landed at Sword, four days after D-Day.
- Da Cunha was seriously wounded by shrapnel in an attack on Caen, a few weeks later. While recuperating, he was seconded by the Judge Advocate General's department and sent, at age 23, as a junior counsel to the British headquarters at Bad Oeynhausen to assist Group Captain Tony Somerhough in preparing for the war crimes trials.
- He recalled being physically sick after opening his first file.
- He persevered, and interviewed survivors and witnesses from German concentration camps.
- He was closely involved with the Ravensbrück Trials.
- He took up the legal profession when he returned to England from Germany, being called to the Bar by the Middle Temple in 1948 and becoming a barrister in Manchester in the chambers of Tommy Backhouse.
- Among his pupils were Sir Rhys Davies, Baroness Hale of Richmond and Jonathan Geake.He married in 1953 and had 5 children.
- Rather than taking silk, he became a County Court judge in 1970.
- He sat on Diplock courts in Northern Ireland in 1973, supervising internment without trial under the Northern Ireland Emergency Provision Act, and later as a deputy High Court judge.
- In retirement, he was a member of the Parole Board Appeals Tribunal from 1976 to 1978, and a member of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board.
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