First published on Mon 15 Feb 2021 10.53 EST Tributes have been paid to Sir William Macpherson, the judge who led the damning inquiry into the police investigation after the 1993 murder of Stephen Lawrence, who has died aged 94. A captain in the Scots Guards during the second world war, he was also one of Scotland’s longer-serving hereditary clan chiefs, and as a retired high court judge he produced the excoriating Macpherson report after the racially motivated killing of Lawrence in 1993. The publication of the 350-page report in 1999 has been described as one of the most significant moments in the history of UK criminal justice. It concluded that the investigation by the Metropolitan police had been “marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership”.