Coroners' Inquests and Criminal and Disciplinary Law

The privilege against self-incrimination has a venerable history in the conduct of coroners' inquests. However, recent statutory reforms to the privilege in coroners' courts, which have had disuniform outcomes throughout Australia, have complicated the circumstances in which the privilege is extended to those claiming its protection. This editorial reviews the evolving law on the privilege generally and rulings that have been made in high-profile coronial inquests, as well as the modest volume of appellate litigation on this important issue. It identifies that the emerging law on the area prioritises amongst relevant factors for the coroner's discretion to exercise coercive powers over witnesses' objections to give evidence the fact that they are charged with serious criminal offences, and that the need for and utility of the evidence are also functioning as important considerations.

The entire legal profession – lawyers, judges, law teachers – has become so mesmerised with the stimulation of the courtroom contest that we tend to forget that we ought to be healers – healers of conflicts. 1 For more than a decade, analyses of coronial processes inspired by both therapeutic jurisprudence and restorative justice have identified the potential for maximising the therapeutic and public health benefits of the investigative functions of coroners' courts and minimising their counter-therapeutic potential. The focus of both scholarly literature and law reform proposals has been upon addressing deficits in respect of the role of families in coronial investigations and especially coroners' inquests. This has been a constructive contribution and has improved sensitivity to the risk that family members will be disenfranchised and alienated at a highly vulnerable time after they have been bereaved. This article chronicles the development in awareness of such issues. However, the potential for adverse effects on parties other than family members has been inadequately recognised in the literature, save for empirical studies conducted in 2011 for the Coronial Council of Victoria and another study published in 2014 in New Zealand. This article seeks to redress that imbalance. It argues that it is appropriate also to have regard to such potential in endeavouring to provide an approach to the work of coroners that is influenced by the sensibilities of therapeutic jurisprudence and seeks to reduce, so far as possible, counter-therapeutic outcomes for all parties, while at the same time prioritising accurate and robust fact-finding and formulation of constructive recommendations to avoid avoidable deaths. It calls for further empirical research on the impact of coroners' investigations on all affected parties and argues in favour of extension of improved funding to enable approaches to be informed by therapeutic jurisprudence and in particular to enhance eligibility for the counselling services attached to coroners' courts.

International Journal of Law in Context

This Special Issue, Frontiers in Coronial Justice, reflects on the future of death investigation studies in the coronial context. Where the uptake of the death studies movement in the social sciences more broadly has expanded the interdisciplinary study of death, comparatively little attention has focused on the work of coroners or their death investigation practices. Important, but albeit ad hoc, contributions from the disciplines of medicine, law, public health and criminology, highlight both the possibilities for coronial scholarship and how coronial studies continue to percolate at disciplinary margins. And yet, there is growing social attention to death generally, from death cafés to death salons, and the 'positive death movement' more broadly. Society is clustering around conversations seeking social change in facing death, including preparatory discussions around end of life wishes and options. Yet, by their very nature, unexpected, sudden or violent deathsthose that fall under the jurisdiction of the coronerconstitute a distinct category of death; one that is, in many ways, incapable of being prepared for. Nevertheless, such deaths present instances of considerable medical, legal and social industry, with attendant issues around autopsy and inquests, for example. This industry is also changing, as coronial law and policy reform across international jurisdictions has refined, clarified and sought to evolve the coronial role. Together, these developments evidence why coronial law and practice deserve sustained attention. Correspondingly, a theme that unites the papers in this special issue is a greater appreciation of the principles and practices of coronial death investigation. It is intended that, by showcasing work that cuts across law, socio-legal studies, criminology and history, this Special Issue will contribute to delivering new frontiers in coronial research. At a snapshot, the genres of scholarly attention to the coronial jurisdiction are wide and varied. Coroners' work has intermittently piqued the attention of socio-legal scholars (e.g.

Journal of law and medicine

2016

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence. As an open access journal, articles are free to use with proper attribution in educational and other non-commercial settings. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence. As an open access journal, articles are free to use with proper attribution in educational and other non-commercial settings.

Academic Forensic Pathology, 2017

The medicolegal death investigation in Victoria, Australia is a traditional coroner system based on the model in England and Wales in the early 20th Century. In 1985, the first of a series of legislative amendments were made that proved the vanguard of reform of the coroners' jurisdictions in Australia. The Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine (the Institute) was established by the Coroners Act 1985 (Vic.), now the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine Act 1985 (Vic.), to provide forensic pathology, medical, and related scientific services needed by the justice system. In addition to death investigation, other forensic and scientific services are performed by the Institute including: clinical medical examinations and support services for assault victims and perpetrators, forensic toxicology services and molecular biology, and anthropology and odontology services in relation to human identification. Medical and nursing staff provide medical information and support to famil...

Journal of law and medicine

Death investigation by coroners incorporates elements of the adversarial and the inquisitorial. Coroners function differently from most other judicial officers in the way in which their staff interact with family members of the deceased and in the way in which they increasingly function as public health officials with a prophylactic orientation. Coroners, both before and at inquest, have the potential to have broad-ranging and constructive impacts but also deleterious and counter-therapeutic effects. This article analyses how coronial practice and coronial law and procedural reform have the potential to draw upon the principles of therapeutic jurisprudence.

In recent years, following public inquiries (for example, the Goudge Inquiry, 2007–08), reviews (for example, the US National Academy of Science, 2009; the Law Commission of England and Wales, 2011), systematic analysis of wrongful convictions (for example, Innocence Projects) and empirical studies, weaknesses with many types of forensic science and the frailty of the adversarial criminal trial have been exposed, though inadequately addressed. Drawing upon emerging empirical evidence from a variety of common law jurisdictions (and recent work in the sociology of science) and building upon the discussion of the Law Commission's Report and draft Bill (in Part 1), this article considers one means of helping common law courts to respond to some of the primary difficulties raised by incriminating forensic science and forensic medicine evidence. The proposal, involving an independent multidisciplinary advisory panel (or MAP) reviewing impugned forensic science and medical techniques t...

Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice/ …, 2006

The problems of forensic pathologists’ court testimony leading to wrongful convictions in cases of infant death, especially where mothers are charged with the offence, and of this testimony possibly involving gross distortion of scientific findings arise, in part, through a systematic misunderstanding by the law, and by judges and jurors, of forensic pathologists’, and especially coroners’, attitude toward their professional obligations. The law takes forensic pathological and coronial testimony to be ‘‘disinterested’’ scientific fact advanced purely for its inherent value in assisting the truth-seeking element of the trial process, and thus highly reliable as the basis of the exercise of the most coercive powers of government. Those delivering the testimony understand their task as part of a broader, long-standing public health and safety mandate to ‘‘speak for the dead to protect the living.’’ This clash of discursive frameworks has undermined the adversarial element of these trials, not just on a contingent case-by-case basis but over the courses of extended campaigns against child abuse and of professional forensic pathological careers.