"[3][4] The trial also established the doctrine of double effect, whereby a doctor giving treatment with the aim of relieving pain may lawfully, as an unintentional result, shorten life.

[6] Furthermore, although a defendant had not been required within recorded legal history to give evidence in his own defence as part of the right to silence in England and Wales, the judge underlined in his summing-up that no prejudice should be attached by the jury to Adams not doing so.

John Bodkin Adams was born and raised in Randalstown, Ulster, Ireland, into a deeply religious family of Plymouth Brethren, an austere Protestant sect of which he remained a member for his entire life.

In 1929, he borrowed £2,000 (equivalent to £100,753 at 2022 prices) from a patient, William Mawhood,[13] and bought an eighteen-room house called Kent Lodge,[14] in Trinity Trees (then known as Seaside Road),[15] a select address.

[23] He worked one day a week in a local hospital, where he acquired a reputation as a bungler: he would fall asleep during operations, eat cakes, count money, and even mix up the anaesthetic gas tubes, leading to patients waking up or turning blue.

[27] Adams attended some famous and influential people in the region, including MP and Olympic medal winner Lord Burghley, society painter Oswald Birley, Admiral Robert Prendergast, industrialist Sir Alexander Maguire, the 10th Duke of Devonshire, Eastbourne's Chief Constable Richard Walker and many businessmen.

[40] On 24 August the British Medical Association (BMA) sent a letter to all doctors in Eastbourne reminding them of "Professional Secrecy" (i.e. patient confidentiality) if interviewed by the police.

[44] The Attorney-General, Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller (who customarily prosecuted cases of poisoning or delegated them to the Solicitor General),[45][46] wrote to the BMA secretary, Angus Macrae, "to try to get him to remove the ban".

[52] Instead, he instigated an investigation into a leak,[52] later concluding that Hannam himself[49] had passed information regarding the meeting with Macrae to a journalist, probably Rodney Hallworth of the Daily Mail.

Hannam and Pugh challenged him and Adams showed them two bottles of morphine; one he said was for Annie Sharpe,[65] a patient and major witness who had died nine days earlier under his care; the other said "Mr Soden".

"[81][60] Hannam considered he had collected enough evidence in at least four of the cases for prosecution to be warranted: regarding Clara Neil Miller,[82] Julia Bradnum,[82] Edith Alice Morrell and Gertrude Hullett.

Cullen claims that in some of the several wills she made Adams was bequeathed large sums of money and her Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost (valued at £1,500).

On 21 July, Dr. Shera, a pathologist, was called in to take a spinal fluid sample and immediately asked if her stomach contents should be examined in case of narcotic poisoning.

The coroner questioned Adams's treatment and in his summing up said that it was "extraordinary that the doctor, knowing the past history of the patient" did not "at once suspect barbiturate poisoning".

[111] Charles Hewett, Hannam's assistant, was quoted as saying that both officers were astounded at Manningham-Buller's decision to charge Adams with the murder of Morrell since her body had been cremated and therefore there was no evidence to present before a jury.

While the culprit was not found, Scotland Yard suspected the local Deputy Chief Constable of Eastbourne, Seekings, of having misplaced it to help Adams.

[76] Following the committal hearing, the Attorney-General advised Devlin that he would not be using the evidence regarding the Hullets in the Morrell trial, but seeking a second indictment relating to Mrs. Hullett, which he did on 5 March 1957.

Devlin summed up the tricky nature of the case thus: "It is a most curious situation, perhaps unique in these courts, that the act of murder has to be proved by expert evidence.

The much more recent death of Hullett, who died aged 50 without suffering from any somatic illness and whose body had not been cremated (and contained twice the fatal dose of barbiturates) would have made a much more convincing case.

[138] Furthermore, the prosecution's two expert medical witnesses gave differing opinions: Arthur Douthwaite was prepared to say that murder had definitely been committed (though he changed his mind in the middle of his testimony regarding the exact date),[139] but Michael Ashby was more reticent.

Devlin was at first surprised since a person accused of murder had never been given bail before in British legal history, but was willing to entertain the idea and, on consideration, saw its merit as showing strong judicial displeasure over the Attorney-General's plan to proceed with the second indictment.

[149] Nolle prosequi could legitimately be used in cases to protect a guilty person granted immunity to turn Queen's evidence or to save the lives of the innocent, or sometimes on compassionate grounds.

[152] The case was "very important for the medical profession",[153] as the Attorney-General, a government minister, had created the threat of a death sentence by indicting Adams for two murders, an unusual practice in 1957.

[160] Hoskins later exposed a police campaign to plant stories prejudicial to Adams in national newspapers, particularly the Daily Mail, whose reporter was briefed by Hannam personally.

[165] The defence was not required to explain how the books came into their hands, and the Attorney-General neither made any effort to pursue this matter nor asked for an adjournment to acquaint himself with the new evidence, although Devlin later said that he would have been willing to grant it, had Manningham-Buller requested one.

Yet his disagreeableness was so pervasive, his persistence so interminable, the obstructions he manned so far-flung, his objectives apparently so insignificant, that sooner or later you would be tempted to ask yourself whether the game was worth the candle.

[165] At an early stage in the investigation, Hannam believed he had found Adams's modus operandi: that he first made his victims drug addicts, then influenced them to change their wills in his favour and finally gave them a lethal dose of opiates.

His interim report on his investigation of October 1956 includes his strong suspicions both of narcotic poisoning in several cases and of Adams inducing patients to make or change their wills in his favour.

As Devlin makes clear, he needed to clarify for the jury, and incidentally the medical profession, the extent to which the law allowed the orthodox doctor to go in easing the passing of the dying.

[216] This was not simply Adams's idiosyncratic view, as appears from the evidence of Dr. Douthwaite for the prosecution, who accepted that a physician might knowingly give fatal doses of pain-relieving drugs to terminally ill patients, adding it was not his business to say whether it was murder.