Exploring fatal facts: current issues in coronial law, policy and practice

Articles

1. Co-Director, Institute of Criminology, Sydney Law School, and Senior Lecturer in Socio-Legal Studies, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney, Australia. Email:

[email protected]

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2. Associate Professor of Socio-Legal Studies, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney, Australia. Email:

[email protected]

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I.

Introduction: an exclusive concern

In April 2016, two very different but significant inquests on opposite sides of the world were in their final stages. In Sydney, Australia, the inquest into the deaths resulting from the seventeen-hour siege at the Lindt café in December 2014 (the Sydney Siege inquest) was undergoing its final segment of hearings before State Coroner Michael Barnes, after beginning in January 2015. The inquest scrutinised the siege and events around it, including key questions such as why the gunman was on bail, what the authorities knew about him, and police decision-making in response to the siege. Meanwhile, in Warrington, Cheshire, in the northwest of England, following a two-year hearing beginning in March 2014, the jury emerged after two weeks of deliberation to deliver the determination of 'unlawful killing' in the Hillsborough Inquests before the Right Honourable Sir John Goldring, sitting as Assistant Coroner for South Yorkshire (East) and West Yorkshire (West). ³Both inquests were landmark coronial events: the Sydney Siege inquest held uniquely segmented hearings dealing with discrete issues, after commencing just six weeks after the December 2014 siege - a promptness unheard of in Australian coronial history. The Hillsborough inquests represent the longest coronial hearing in English history, heard in the largest purpose-built courtroom in England, and on an unprecedented scale.

The Hillsborough Inquests are the second inquests to investigate the deaths of ninety-six people who died as a result of the fatal crush at the Hillsborough Stadium, Sheffield, England, on 15 April 1989, when they were attending the Football Association Cup Semi-Final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. In the case sequelae, the original inquests (1990-1991) were part of a constellation of numerous official investigations, reviews and inquiries into the disaster. In April 2009, the then Secretary for Culture, Media and Sport, Andy Burnham, and MP Maria Eagle, advocated for the full public disclosure of information about Hillsborough, publicly supporting the Hillsborough Family Support Group's twenty-year campaign. ⁴In 2010, the United...