Senior Coroner for Cumbria v Ian Smith [2015] EWHC 2465 (Admin) Poppi Worthington, was only 13 months old when she died in hospital in December 2012 having apparently sustained fractures to her leg and other injuries. Yet despite there clearly being reason to suspect that this was a violent or unnatural death, and an inquest […]
Read More… from Justice neither done, nor seen to be done, in a secret inquest
Dr S v HM Coroner North Yorkshire East [2015] EWHC Queen’s Bench Admin Division, CO/2277/2015, 21.7.2015 Coroners sitting without a jury are now encouraged by the Chief Coroner’s Guidance (no. 17) to deliver a ‘summing up’ in which they state orally, in open court, their key findings of fact before recording their formal inquest conclusions. But […]
The CJA 2009 entered the “terrible twos” this week having come into to force on 25 July 2013. Its birthday gift was the publication of the ‘Second Annual Report of the Chief Coroner to the Lord Chancellor: 2014-2015’, which details the gradual evolution of the Coroner’s Service as a combination of the CJA 2009 and […]
Read More… from “Happy 2nd Birthday” to the Coroners and Justice Act 2009
R (Wiggins) v HM Assistant Coroner Nottinghamshire [2015] EWHC 1658 (Admin), 26.3.2015 With the growing popularity of narrative verdicts in the mid-2000’s it had become common practice for Art 2 inquests to conclude with a lengthy jury narrative outlining a multitude of shortcomings by public bodies. That practice has largely died out: the Court of […]
Read More… from Causative failings under Art 2: a challenge to Lewis looms
HM Coroner for the Isle of Wight v (1) HM Prison Service (2) Family of Alvin Bay (dec) [2015] EWHC 1360 (Admin), 1.4.2015 The sad case of Alvin Bay sets out no new proposition of law, but perhaps leads one to wonder whether there should be some mechanism to allow a Senior Coroner (or even […]
Read More… from Overturning an open verdict after a murder conviction