A group of media lawyers has helped overturn a coroner’s decision to hold the inquest into the death of a 38-year-old electrician in secret.
The Media Lawyers Association backed freelance journalist and Gazette contributor Charlie Moloney in a judicial review challenge to the decision by Crispin Butler, senior coroner for Buckinghamshire.
Butler had been presiding over an inquest into the death of Graham Whelan, who died on 22 April last year. But in October, the coroner decided to hold the inquest ‘in writing’, under a power introduced in 2022 which allows coroners to conclude cases without a public hearing.
Refusing Moloney’s application for the record of inquest and ruling in Whelan’s case, the coroner said: ‘I believe this is required in order to protect the family from any glare of publicity’.
In a formal three-page ruling, Butler wrote: ‘I maintain that there is no wider public health benefit, or public learning or safety outcome to be gleaned from the specific circumstances of the death of Mr Whelan. In contrast, the sensitivity of the circumstances are such that the only likely outcome from publicity is one of damage to the wellbeing of the remaining family.’
Moloney obtained assistance from the Media Lawyers Association - an association of in-house media lawyers at national, regional and local news media organisations across the UK - which arranged for media barrister Guy Vassall-Adams KC to prepare a pre-action letter, threatening judicial review of Butler’s decision.
The letter stated: ‘The Record of Inquest is the formal public record of the outcome of an inquest setting out the coroner’s conclusions as to the key matters in relation to which the coroner has a statutory duty to make findings. There is a strong public interest in such documents being made available to the public and to the media under the open justice principle because it enables the public to understand the findings that coroners have made and the circumstances in which people have died.’
Vassall-Adams continued: ‘The senior coroner’s ruling proceeded from the premise that there is a lower public interest in the media getting access to a Record of Inquest after an inquest in writing than there would have been following an inquest heard in open court. The opposite is the case. It is precisely because so little public information becomes available where there is an inquest in writing that the right of access to the bare minimum of the Record of Inquest assumes such importance.’
Butler subsequently provided the record of inquest and ruling, which showed Whelan had died from asphyxiation by a ligature. The coroner ruled his death was a result of misadventure.
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