AC-2024-LON-003241 - [2025] EWHC 3014 (Admin)

Fecha: 17-Nov-2025

The roles of the Coroner and the Jury

The roles of the Coroner and the Jury

19.

Where s.7(2) or (3) of the 2009 Act apply, the inquest is to be held with a jury. One of those circumstances is where “the senior coroner has reason to suspect … that the death resulted from an act or omission of a police officer or a member of a service police force in the purported execution of the officer’s or member’s duty as such”.

20.

The provisions of the 2009 Act are supplemented by the Coroners (Inquests) Rules 2013 (SI No 1616 of 2013), Rule 33 of which provides:

“Where the coroner sits with a jury, the coroner must direct the jury as to the law and provide the jury with a summary of the evidence.”

21.

There are obvious superficial similarities between those assigned roles, and those of a judge and jury in a criminal trial. However, as Fordham J noted in R (Glaister and others) v HM Assistant Coroner for North Wales [2025] EWHC 167 (Admin), [13]:

“There are fundamental differences between coroner’s inquests and crown court trials. Coroners are a type of court; with a jury; with legal directions; and a summing up. Some ‘criminal law concepts’ are ‘applied’ … There are Galbraith rulings about what can be left. But there are very important differences”

(a number of which he then identified).

22.

It is the application of the Galbraith test in an inquest which lies at the heart of this application. In a criminal trial, the defendant can make submissions at the close of the prosecution case to the effect that they have “no case to answer”, and that a not guilty verdict should be entered without the need for the defendant to open and advance their case. Clearly applications of this kind bring into sharp focus the different roles of judge and jury in a criminal case, and in particular the fact that, as juries are invariably informed by judges at the start of any criminal trial:

“I am responsible for legal matters, and will tell you about the law which applies to this case. You must accept and apply what I tell you about the law. You are responsible for weighing up the evidence and deciding the facts of the case. It is entirely up to you to decide what evidence is reliable and what evidence is not.”

(Crown Court Compendium Part 1 –October 2025, page 4-3).

23.

The manner in which those different functions are respected when the Judge is asked to dismiss a count, and withdraw it from the jury on the basis that there is no case to answer was settled in R v Galbraith [1981] 1 WLR 1039. At p.1040, Lord Lane CJ referred to there being:

“two schools of thought: (1) that the judge should stop the case if, in his view, it would be unsafe (alternatively unsafe or unsatisfactory) for the jury to convict; (2) that he should do so only if there is no evidence upon which a jury properly directed could properly convict. Although in many cases the question is one of semantics, and though in many cases each test would produce the same result, this is not necessarily so. A balance has to be struck between on the one hand a usurpation by the judge of the jury's functions and on the other the danger of an unjust conviction.”

24.

At p.1042, Lord Lane CJ resolved that controversy in criminal cases by approving the following test:

“(1)
If there is no evidence that the crime alleged has been committed by the defendant, there is no difficulty. The judge will of course stop the case.
(2)
The difficulty arises where there is some evidence but it is of a tenuous character, for example because of inherent weakness or vagueness or because it is inconsistent with other evidence. (a) Where the judge comes to the conclusion that the prosecution evidence, taken at its highest, is such that a jury properly directed could not properly convict upon it, it is his duty, upon a submission being made, to stop the case. (b) Where however the prosecution evidence is such that its strength or weakness depends on the view to be taken of a witness's reliability, or other matters which are generally speaking within the province of the jury and where on one possible view of the facts there is evidence upon which a jury could properly come to the conclusion that the defendant is guilty, then the judge should allow the matter to be tried by the jury. It follows that we think the second of the two schools of thought is to be preferred.”

25.

In the context of a coroner’s inquest, the test which a coroner should apply before leaving an issue to the jury has been the subject of some debate. The history of this issue is traced in the judgment of a Divisional Court (Stuart-Smith LJ and Fordham J) in R (Police Officer B50) v HM Assistant Coroner for the East Riding of Yorkshire and Kingston upon Hull [2023] EWHC 81 (Admin). In brief:

In R v HM Coroner for Exeter and East Devon ex parte Palmer [2000] Inquest Law Reports 78, the Court of Appeal considered the application of the Galbraith test in the context of a public law challenge, on Wednesbury grounds, to a coroner’s decision to leave an issue to the jury. The language used by Lord Woolf in [46] and [49] of the judgment has been treated in subsequent cases as involving a gloss on the Galbraith test in the context of a coroner’s inquest, although the Divisional Court in B50 doubted that this interpretation follows from the decision.

ii)

In R v Inner South London Coroner ex parte Douglas-Williams [1999] 1 All ER 344, Lord Woolf MR at 348-49 expressly supported a wider “gate-keeping” role for a coroner sitting with a jury than a criminal judge at a jury trial, given the different nature of the two proceedings. He stated that a coroner had a discretion not to leave an issue to the jury where the coroner “acting reasonably and faithfully” concludes that “it is not in the interests of justice that a particular verdict should be left to the jury”. It was sufficient, he said, to “leave those verdicts which realistically reflect the thrust of the evidence as a whole”. That formulation was justified by what might be described as “jury management” considerations – the risk of overwhelming a jury (cf. the reference to similar considerations in the context of “overloaded” indictments in criminal trials: Crown Court Compendium Part 1 page 6-6).

iii)

Later cases, however, suggested that the application of the Galbraith test in the context of a coroner’s jury might involve a different test for withdrawing issues from the jury by reference to the strength of the evidence. B50 traces the course of the authorities, identifying R (Bennett) v HM Coroner for Inner South London [2007] EWCA Civ 61, [27] as the first case clearly to this effect.

iv)

In R (Secretary of State for Justice)v HM Deputy Coroner for the Eastern District of West Yorkshire [2012] EWHC 1634, [20]-[23], Haddon-Cave J formulated the position as follows:

“Galbraith ‘plus'
The authorities recognise that there is some (if small) distinction between the position of a coroner deciding what verdict to leave to a jury after hearing all the evidence and that of a judge in a criminal trial considering whether to stop a case after the conclusion of the prosecution case. This was made clear by Waller LJ in R (Bennett v HM Coroner for Inner South London [2007] EWCA Civ 617 ). Waller LJ cited passages of Lord Woolf MR in R v HM Coroner for Exeter, Ex Parte Palmer [1997] CA (10 December) and Leveson J in Sharman v. HM Coroner for Inner North London [2005] EWHC 857 (Admin) … Waller LJ went on to note that the very issue in Galbraith was which of the ‘two schools of thought’ was to be preferred.
Waller LJ held on the facts of that case that the coroner was right to take the view that a verdict of unlawful killing could not be safely left to the jury in that case (see paragraph [34]).
It is clear, therefore, that when coroners are deciding whether or not to leave a particular verdict to a jury, they should apply a dual test comprising both limbs or ‘schools of thought’, i.e. coroners should (a) ask the classic pure Galbraith question “Is there evidence on which a jury properly directed could properly convict etc.?” (see above) plus (b) also ask the question “Would it be safe for the jury to convict on the evidence before it?” . The second limb, arguably, provides a wider and more subjective filter than the first in certain cases. In my view, this extra layer of protection makes sense in the context of a coronial inquiry where the process is inquisitorial rather than adversarial, the rights of interested parties to engage in the proceedings are necessarily curtailed and coronial verdicts are at large.”

That “Galbraith-plus” formulation was endorsed by Sir Brian Leveson P in R (Tainton) v HM Senior Coroner for Preston and West Lancashire [2016] EWHC 1396 (Admin), [39] and R (Wandsworth BC) v Her Majesty’s Senior Coroner for Inner West London [2021] EWHC 801 (Admin), [31].

vi)

In B50, the Divisional Court held that the added element to the Galbraith test in the coroner’s jury context was established by authority binding on them, while expressing some doubts both as to the necessity for such a distinction, and the manner in which it had been formulated ([64]-[65]).