THE CORONER'S JURY,

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15639, 19 June 1914, Page 6

THE CORONER'S JURY,

The coroner's jury had its virtues, although in some aspects it was anachronistic. The time has gone by when representatives of the public need to watch all investigations into sudden or violent death, for there is no sympathy with crime on the part of the legal authorities, and every desire to protect from violence the lives of the King's lieges. The Whangamarino inquiry, however, has taught the great majority of the public that even in the matter of the coroner's jury the wisdom of our forefathers is not to be denied. A jury is both desirable and necessary wherever the public finds its interests thrust aside by the inherent tendency of officialism to resist any encroachment upon what it considers its domain. In the nature of things, officials are prejudiced in favour of one another as against.the general public, exactly as seamen and doctors and drapers are prejudiced. WHh the best intentions in the world on the part of all concerned in the Whangamarino proceedings, that lengthy inquiry quite underestimated and largely overlooked phases which to the public were of dominant interest. There is no possible doubt that the tools available were insufficient, that relief was unintentionally but avoidably delayed, and that gas-lighting was shown to be horribly dangerous and much to be condemned. In thousands of words the magisterial finding failed to touch upon salient points as a jury would have touched upon them in a few lines. There should certainly be a jury at every inquest in which departmental methods are involved.