Coroner's Jury

A coroner's jury is a group of citizens who are summoned to serve as members of an inquest to determine the cause of any accidental or suspicious death that occurs within a specific jurisdiction. The coroner's jury may also be called upon to determine the identity of the deceased person. The coroner's office is responsible for leading the inquest and for investigating the circumstances surrounding the cause of death. An inquest is a legal investigative process that varies somewhat by jurisdiction. The structure and role of a coroner's jury also differ between geopolitical boundaries.

History

Although the coroner's jury is viewed by some as a legal dinosaur left over from the medieval England from which the entity first emerged, the coroner's jury has had an important historical role in the system of justice. One recent examination of the origins of the coroner's jury is complicated. Indeed, in what was probably the first historical consideration of the jury, in 1852 it was argued that the jury did not result from any law of government or theory of justice but gradually grew out of institutional forms that were already present. Some similarities between the coroner's jury and other entities can be identified as dating back to Roman times.

The main elements of a jury are that it decides on the effect of evidence, decisions are made under the sanction of a solemn oath, and the jury is distinct from the court. The first and last elements are particularly important because it means that jurors are concerned with making a decision based on the facts rather than on the complexities of law, which is left to the court.

One of the earliest legislative requirements for a coroner's jury is found in the English De Officio Coronatoris, 4 Edw. I. st. 3 in 1276 that required coroners to request people from four, five, or six of the towns neighboring the scene of death appear before the coroner's court so that they could answer questions of fact about the death. Thus, the coroner's jury started out as people who were selected because of their personal knowledge of the case. Indeed, Sara Butler finds cases where jurors were neighbors of the deceased in cases of suicide and shows how their judgment formed the basis for resolution rather than legal presentation. The role of the jury subsequently changed so that 12 members were required to make judgment on the facts and their decision was required to be [Page 229]unanimous. Note that the requirement for the agreement of 12 jurors meant that there was no specification on the maximum number, but in contemporary legal systems 12 is the most common number of jurors and, in some jurisdictions, a majority decision will suffice.

English and U.S. coroner's juries were once asked for in all inquests. Thus, the juries are associated with a number of historical characters. In the United States in 1882, for example, a coroner's jury found Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday, Warren Earp, Texas Jack Johnson, and Sherman McMasters guilty of the murder of Frank Stillwell. In England, Lord Lucan, who disappeared the night his nanny was murdered, was charged in absentia by a coroner's jury in 1975.

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