R v Inner South London Coroner, ex parte Douglas-Williams
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 30 July 1998 |
| Date | 30 July 1998 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
Before Lord Woolf, Master of the Rolls, Lord Justice Hobhouse and Lord Justice Thorpe
Court of Appeal
Coroners - leaving verdicts to jury
A coroner had a discretion not to leave all possible verdicts on the evidence to the jury if that would merely confuse and overburden them. It was sufficient if he left to the jury those verdicts which realistically reflected the thrust of the evidence as a whole.
A coroner conducting a complex inquest should provide the jury with a written statement of the matters which the law required in relation to each verdict and hear any submissions from lawyers on that statement before commencing his summing-up.
The Court of Appeal so held in a reserved judgment dismissing the appeal of the applicant, Lisa Douglas-Williams, against the refusal of Mr Justice Laws in the Queen's Bench Division on July 31, 1997 to quash the inquest held by Sir Montague Levine and the jury's verdict of accidental death in respect of her brother, Wayne Douglas, who died in police custody in December 1995.
Mr Patrick O'Connor, QC and Mr Leslie Thomas for the applicant; Mr Alan Tyrrell, QC and Miss Sheila Phil-Ebosie for the coroner; Mr Michael Wood for the police.
THE MASTER OF THE ROLLS said that a question that was considered on the appeal was the extent of the discretion of a coroner not to leave to the jury what was on the evidence a possible verdict.
The conclusion his Lordship had come to was that so far as the evidence called before the jury was concerned a coroner should adopt the approach inR v GalbraithWLR ((1981) 1 WLR 1039) in deciding whether to leave a verdict. The strength of the evidence was not the only consideration and in relation to wider issues the coroner had a broader discretion. If it appeared there were circumstances which in a particular situation meant in the judgment of the coroner, acting reasonably and fairly, it was not in the interest of justice that a particular verdict should be left to the jury he need not leave...
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