Last months review of our Coroner’s Court attracted much interest. For me personally, this was emphasised by two events since.
The first was my participation at a Wellness seminar in Christchurch. We were so very fortunate to have several coroners in attendance. Their contribution was invaluable, and their frank reporting of the extreme pressures of their calling quite humbling.
The second was reading a speech by the Chief coroner of the United Kingdom, HHJ Thomas Teague QC, given in the annual Leeming Lecture at the University of Bolton.
In part he marked the difference between our courts in this way.
“What, then, is the essential difference between the coroner’s inquest and other court proceedings in this country? The proceedings in other cases are driven by the participants. They do not belong to the court in the way that an inquest belongs to the coroner. In a criminal case, the prosecution decides whether to institute proceedings, what charges to bring and what evidence to adduce in support. The defendant decides whether to give evidence or call witnesses and is perfectly entitled to do neither. The judge is a bit like the referee at a boxing match, whose job is to ensure that the rules are followed and – through a jury – to decide the eventual ‘winner’. Similarly, in civil proceedings, it is the claimant, not the judge, who decides whether to make a claim and, if so, against whom and on what grounds. This is a point that is often not well understood by non-specialists (and even by some lawyers). It is easier to grasp in civil litigation, but it is sometimes obscured in modern criminal proceedings. Certainly, in the minds of the public, the prosecution, the police, the prisons and other forms of ‘officialdom’, including the judicial system, are often incorrectly blurred into one.”
His views on the centrality of the bereaved were emphasised.
“There is something else about an inquest which, in my opinion, is not spoken about sufficiently often. It is something we should be shouting from the rooftops. The inquisitorial nature of an inquest is what guarantees the bereaved family a central place in the process as interested persons”.
His warning about gradual procedural changes to a coroners role in society was a stark reminder of the care required to ensure the integrity of this jurisdiction especially in times of the executives ‘push’ for file velocity over the quality of outcome for a bereaved whānau.
“As I have already made clear, I firmly believe in the inquisitorial ethos of the coroner’s jurisdiction and the centrality of the bereaved that is inseparable from it. It seems to me that if we allow the coroner’s inquest to become a vehicle to enable individuals or groups to ventilate grievances that are more properly resolved through political means or by conventional litigation, we will end up colluding in the marginalisation of bereaved people. Experience in other jurisdictions tells us this kind of process tends to occur incrementally, through gradual procedural changes, each one seemingly innocuous and, on its individual merits, entirely reasonable. But the danger is that step by barely perceptible step, the coroner’s inquest will slowly ossify into a species of trial, with each party stationed behind a barricade attempting to score points, rather than to elucidate. Were such a thing to occur, inquests would become truly uncomfortable places for some witnesses. I do not want that, and I think we should do all we can to avoid it and focus on the joint effort to assist the coroner towards the truth.”