CORONERS' JURIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13834, 21 August 1908, Page 4

CORONERS' JURIES.

The Coroners Act Amendment Bill, which is now before Parliament, is chiefly remarkable for its abolition of the coroner's jury as an essential feature of these inquiries. Under the measure the empanelling of such a jury. is left to the discretion of the coroner, unless a jury is ordered by the Attorney-General, which may fairly be regarded as a step towards dispensing with jurymen altogether. Much discussion naturally and properly arises at every suggested change in ancient custom, and coroners' juries can claim an antiquity beside which many of our most cherished institutions are as babes. But although much may be said against permitting the coroner's jury to be dispensed with where the coroner is an inexperienced and quite casual officer, -very little can be urged against this dispensation where the coroner is a person of experience and reliability, and, thanks to Sir W. Steward, the Bill does not now propose to confer the power to act without juries upon any but the formally-appointed coroner. An objectionable feature of the existing system, and one not amended by the Bill as it now stands, is the exceedingly poor and inadequate payment, by fee, made to the responsible officials who preside at "crowners' quests." We would suggest that, as the stipendiary magistrates of the Dominion are admittedly overworked, a general improvement all along the line would be the appointment of an assistant-stipendiary magistrate in each of the leading centres, whose special duty would be to act as official coroner of his district, and whose spare time would be employed in ordinary magisterial work. There could be no serious objection to dispensing with juries whenever inquests were presided over by such an official, while juries would be retained in all cases where inquests were held by justices of the peace acting as coroners. This system would also settle the question of fees, as such coroner-magis-trates would be paid a salary, and would do the great bulk of the work. The repeal of the old formality of viewing the body, whatever the cause of death., we regard as quite permissible if the general sense of the community is that the public safety is not thereby endangered. In modern times not one juryman in a thousand knows the person over whose body an inquest is being held, and we have to establish by witnesses an identity which in ancient times generally depended upon.the knowledge of the jurymen themselves. But the weakness of the measure is, we repeat, the entirely unsatisfactory manner in which it leaves the question of coroners' fees, which by an existing Order-in-Council, left untouched by the Bill, remain at one guinea per inquest, however lengthy and however frequently adjourned in the interest of the public. It is quite unreasonable to expect good work for such a preposterously small sum, and the system obviously requires reconstruction.