Chief Coroner’s Law Sheet #6, 13.1.2021

The new Chief Coroner, HHJ Teague QC, has just published his first legal guidance in the form of “Law Sheet 6” addressing the impact of the case of R (on the application of Maughan) v Her Majesty’s Senior Coroner for Oxfordshire [2020] UKSC 46 on coronial practice. These Law Sheets are written to assist coroners with the law and their legal duties, and to provide commentary and advice on policy and practice.

On 13 November 2020 the Supreme Court determined in Maughan that the civil standard of proof is to be applied in coronial inquests for all conclusions that a coroner or a coroner’s jury might return, including unlawful killing (see our earlier blogs (here and here)). Previously it had been accepted that the ‘short form’ conclusions of unlawful killing and suicide could only be returned if found proven to the criminal standard of ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. However, the Supreme Court brought coronial law into line with a number of other areas of civil law when it held that, as a matter of common law principle, the criminal standard should not apply to any conclusion in coronial proceedings.

Setting that change in its wider context, in 2019 there were fewer than 166 conclusions of unlawful killing made by coroners or juries in inquests, this was half a percent of the 31,284 inquests concluded.  The issue of unlawful killing is likely to feature in relatively few inquest cases. However, when it does arise it will of course be of substantial importance to all involved.

R (Maughan) v Senior Coroner for Oxfordshire [2020] UKSC 46

There is perhaps no better example of the judicial development of our common law than Maughan. A case which began with a family member appealing against what they believed was the incorrect application of the civil standard of proof to a suicide conclusion has ended with the Supreme Court determining that not only was the standard of proof correctly applied in circumstances where suicide is a civil finding, but that the same logic also applies to an inquest conclusion of unlawful killing.

“There is to be only one standard of proof in inquests and that is proof that the fact in issue more probably occurred than not.”

This will no doubt surprise many readers, and perhaps rightly so, as the decision in Maughan is from a divided court: a 3:2 majority concluded that the standard of proof for all conclusions at an inquest – including ‘suicide’ and ‘unlawful killing’ – should be the civil standard.

Although as one of the dissenting voices, Lord Kerr, has quite rightly emphasised in another setting:[1] the importance of dissent, even when in the final court of appeal, is that it contributes to the transparency of the debate, and far from detracting from the authority of the majority opinion, that opinion, in confronting and disposing of an opposite view, if it has been done convincingly, will be all the more commanding of acceptance as a result.