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. Coroner’s 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 Coroner’s, and in larger districts, Assistant Deputy Coroner’s to assist them with their workload. Where 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 Coroners 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 in a criminal trial. In an Inquest, there are no parties, no indictment, no prosecution, no defence, no trial: simply an attempt to establish the facts. It is an inquisitorial process, a process of investigation unlike a trial where the prosecution 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, is how the deceased came by their death.
In this Inquest His Honour Judge Baker QC has been appointed as Assistant Deputy Coroner for Hertfordshire, with jurisdiction over the seven deaths which occurred in the Potters Bar Derailment on May 10th 2002.
The first Inquest was adjourned after the second pre-Inquest hearing, shortly after the fatal derailment at Grayrigg on 23 February 2007.
The Department for Transport felt it was necessary to wait until the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) had released its final report into the accident at Grayrigg before deciding how the two accidents should be further investigated.
Following the release of the RAIB’s final report into Grayrigg, on 23 October 2008, the Secretary of State for Transport sought the views of affected parties on how to proceed. Having considered the views given, the Secretary of State announced on 19 June 2009 his decision to hold two separate Inquests into the Potters Bar and Grayrigg derailments.
On 14 December 2009, Mr Edward Thomas, Hertfordshire Coroner appointed His Honour Judge Baker QC as the Assistant Deputy Coroner for Potters Bar Inquest.