An inquest jury could not use the short-form conclusion of suicide under the direction it received, yet its narrative findings said the deceased had probably intended to take his own life. His brother’s challenge required the Court to decide which standard of proof governed an inquest conclusion.
James Maughan died in prison. The coroner directed the jury that the criminal standard was required for a short-form conclusion of suicide but asked it to answer narrative questions on the balance of probabilities. The resulting difference in treatment was central to the appeal.
His brother brought judicial review, contending that the criminal standard governed suicide and that the jury should not have been invited to make narrative findings which in substance amounted to suicide on the lower standard. The Divisional Court and the Court of Appeal rejected that argument and held that the civil standard applied to both forms of conclusion. The appeal to the Supreme Court raised the further question of unlawful killing.
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The rules and the common law
The Coroners and Justice Act 2009 does not itself prescribe a standard of proof. Note (iii) to the mandatory Form 2 in the Coroners (Inquests) Rules 2013 states that the criminal standard is required for the short-form conclusions of unlawful killing and suicide, while the civil standard applies to other short-form conclusions and to a narrative statement. The majority treated the note as recording the common law as it was then understood, rather than as freezing that law. The consultation on the rules showed that the Ministry of Justice considered a change to the case law to be beyond the reach of the secondary legislation, and the note was not expressed as a mandatory rule for the future.
Why the civil standard applies
Lady Arden, with whom Lord Wilson agreed, held that an inquest is not a criminal proceeding and that the ordinary civil standard should apply. Earlier cases treating suicide as requiring proof beyond reasonable doubt were not binding and gave no cogent modern reason for a different rule. Suicide ceased to be a crime in 1961, and the historical links between inquests and criminal process no longer justified the higher standard. Different standards for short-form and narrative conclusions in the same inquest were internally inconsistent. A conclusion on the balance of probabilities still requires it to be more likely than not that the deceased both took his own life and intended to do so; other possibilities cannot simply be eliminated and suicide assumed. The civil standard was also more likely to produce accurate records and to allow lessons to be learnt, particularly from deaths in state custody.
The same reasoning led the majority to apply the civil standard to unlawful killing. A finding cannot name a person as criminally responsible, and an inquest can be adjourned where a prosecution is in prospect. Narrative findings could already point towards an individual on the civil standard. Lord Carnwath agreed. He read the 2009 Act as a modern fact-finding regime, concerned with ascertaining how the deceased came by his death, and found nothing in it to justify a special or higher standard for suicide or unlawful killing. Note (iii) was guidance about the law as then understood, not a provision prescribing the standard.
The dissenting view
Lord Kerr, with whom Lord Reed agreed, would have allowed the appeal. He treated Note (iii) as an operative statutory provision requiring the criminal standard before a short-form conclusion of suicide or unlawful killing could be returned. In his view, the note confirmed the existing common law and gave it statutory force, so only further legislation could alter it. A narrative account could be compiled on the civil standard, but it should not be treated as a final conclusion of suicide or unlawful killing unless the criminal standard was met. The gravity and consequences of those conclusions justified the distinction.
Verdict: By three votes to two the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal. It held that the balance of probabilities applies to inquest conclusions, including suicide and unlawful killing, whether recorded in short or narrative form. An inquest conclusion does not determine criminal liability.
Source: R (on the application of Maughan) v Her Majesty’s Senior Coroner for Oxfordshire [2020] UKSC 46
