Her work with Gerry Conlon and the Guildford Four – wrongly convicted of bombings carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army – was chronicled in the film In the Name of the Father (1993), in which she was portrayed by Emma Thompson.
Martin Luther King Jr.[8] She married, returned to Britain in 1970 with her husband and son and undertook her postgraduate law degree at the London School of Economics.
[11] During her career she represented Judith Ward, who had been wrongfully convicted in 1974 of several IRA-related bombings, the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six, several mineworkers after the Battle of Orgreave, the family of Jean Charles de Menezes and Moazzam Begg, a man held in extrajudicial detention by the American government.
Santiago Pedraz, the Audiencia Nacional judge who is overseeing the case against UC Global's David Morales, issued court orders requesting permission of UK authorities to take witness testimony from Peirce and others.
[5] She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1999 New Year Honours for services to justice,[15] but later wrote to Downing Street asking for it to be withdrawn and tendering an apology for any misunderstanding.
[7] Sir Ludovic Kennedy, a campaigner against miscarriages of justice, dedicated a book to Peirce, calling her "the doyenne of British defence lawyers" who "refuses to be defeated in any case no matter how unfavourable it looks".