[1] Edwards graduated from Harvard Law School in 1944, and then took a job in the legal department of the Service Transportation Corporation.
In 1948, he became law secretary to the New York State Supreme Court, where he served under Justices Benjamin F. Schreiber and Henry Clay Greenberg.
[4] In 1980, Edwards was named an acting justice of New York Supreme Court, and several months later, presided over his best-known case, that of Mark David Chapman, who killed John Lennon.
In a very unusual move, Edwards closed the proceedings to the public and press without prior notice or holding a hearing.
According to the court transcript, that Edwards expressed concern that if he did not accept the plea, his decision might later prejudice a jury at trial as the result of having to ask Chapman specific questions about the crime.