The Briefcase Blog – John Bowie – I was terribly sad to learn that Wellington Crown Prosecutor Ken Stone had died late last week. Ken lost his leg to cancer nearly eight years ago and dealt with his health challenges with great dignity and courage. I worked with him for about five years and knew him to be both intensely private and enormously competent. His steel-trap brain collected and remembered everything. Notwithstanding the reserved personality, he was enormously interesting to talk to. On this basis I used to look forward to entering his corner office on some pretense with a small, vexed legal issue relating to some miscellaneous prosecution that he dispensed with at once and, if he had time, would then enter a discussion on anything and everything from traveling in India to European or New Zealand history.
He was also someone, as noted at his funeral, with a sometimes acerbic humour, which I happen to enjoy, and an entertaining ability to discuss or mimic judges and fellow lawyers. My own view, worthless of course, is that he should have been a judge. He was a very good man indeed.
