Richard May
Sir Richard George May (12 November 1938 – 1 July 2004) was a British judge.May was born in London and, following national service with the Durham Light Infantry, studied law at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He was called to the bar in 1965, and he worked as a criminal prosecutor and court recorder before being chosen as Crown Court judge in 1987.
He was also active in politics. He fought the constituency of Dorset South for the Labour Party in the 1970 election and, in the 1979 contest, he bravely stood as the Labour candidate in Margaret Thatcher's Finchley constituency. In the years between those two elections, he served as an elected councillor on Westminster Council.
He came into the international limelight with his 1997 appointment to the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Most notably, he served as the presiding judge in the proceeedings to prosecute former Serbian and Yugoslaviann president Slobodan Milošević on war crimes charges.
May stepped down from that position, on grounds of poor health, in February 2004, after the prosecution had rested its case. He was knighted in June 2004 and died at his home in Oxfordshire some weeks later, reportedly of a brain tumour.