Role of the Coroner

A Coroner is an independent judicial office holder acting on behalf of the Crown to investigate the cause and circumstances of violent or unnatural deaths, or sudden deaths of an unknown cause. Most Coroners are lawyers rather than doctors, although members of either profession can be appointed. Coroners are appointed by and paid via the local authority for their district, but they are not local authority employees and are independent of both local and central government.  Coroners appoint Deputy Coroners, and in larger districts, Assistant Deputy Coroners, to assist them with their workload, which is substantial. Where – as in this case - senior members of the judiciary are appointed by the Coroner for a particular district to deal with particularly complex inquests, they are appointed as the Coroner's Deputy or Assistant Deputy with jurisdiction over the particular inquest(s) in question.

An inquest is a fact-finding exercise and not a method of apportioning guilt, as would be the case with a criminal trial or in civil proceedings.  In an inquest, there are no parties, no indictment, no prosecution, no defence, and no trial; simply an attempt to establish the facts. It is an inquisitorial process, a process of investigation unlike a trial where the prosecutor accuses and the accused defends. It is a fact-finding inquiry conducted by a coroner, with or without a jury, to establish reliable answers to four important but limited factual questions. The first relates to the identity of the deceased, the second to the place of this death, the third to the time of death. In most cases these questions are not hard to answer but in a minority of cases the answers may be problematical. The fourth question, to which evidence and inquiry is usually most closely directed, relates to how the deceased came by their death.

In this inquest, His Honour Judge Peter Thornton QC has been appointed as Assistant Deputy Coroner for the City of London.