Court of Appeal: Coroners not guilty of culpable delay in Pearse Jordan inquest

About this case:

• Judgment:
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Background

22-year-old Patrick Pearse Jordan was shot and fatally wounded by a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) on the Falls Road, Belfast on 25 November 1992.

The original inquest into Pearse Jordan’s death commenced in 1995 but was adjourned part heard; in 2012, the High Court and the Court of Appeal set a further inquest aside; and in 2016, Mr Justice Horner, sitting as a Coroner, said “gross and inordinate delay” in the inquest made it impossible with the passage of time to say with any certainty what had happened.

Court of Appeal

Delivering the judgment of the Court in the present case, Lord Justice Deeny explained that the Court of Appeal was hearing a number of appeals in respect of the inquest, and that this judgment was “concerned solely with the question of whether Mr Justice Stephens (as he then was) erred in concluding that the Coroners in the period from 4 May 2001 to 24 September 2012 were not guilty of culpable delay”.

Teresa Jordan, Pearse’s mother, argued that the Coroner, as well as the PSNI, failed to ensure the prompt hearing of an Article 2 compliant investigation into the death of her son between 2001 2012; and that the delay was a breach of the Coroner’s duty under Rule 3 of the Coroners (Practice and Procedure) (NI) Rules 1963 which require an inquest to “be held as soon as is practicable after the Coroner has been notified of the death”.

Delay

Lord Justice Deeny commented that short periods of delay may be viewed as inevitable or justified in some instances, but noted that there was a period of some 11 years in this case before the inquest was heard.

Dealing with the issue of delay, Justice Stephens had relied on the judgment of Justice Hart in In re Jordan NIQB 76 “as binding on him as if it were res judicata without expressly committing himself to the application of that maxim” – Ms Jordan argued that the Court of Appeal was not so bound by Justice Hart’s judgment, however Lord Justice Deeny “considered this to be a fallacious argument”, and stated that the Court of Appeal could only quash Justice Stephens’ decision if it was in error.

The Court of Appeal considered four periods of alleged delay:

Finding no culpable delay in this period, Lord Justice Deeny was satisfied that the prolonged nature of this case was partly due to the fact that the law in this area evolved in part from the decisions relating to this particular inquest and that “it would be wrong to condemn the Senior Coroner acting in good faith struggling to cope with that difficult gestation period”.

Satisfied that there was no culpable delay, Lord Justice Deeny explained that this was “the period between the holding of a preliminary hearing by the Senior Coroner after the House of Lords’ decision in this case and his decision to stand down from conducting the inquest himself”.

Ms Jordan criticised the Coroner “for the time it took to prepare a PII protocol and then to adjourn the inquest to have searches of the Stevens’ database carried out” – however Lord Justice Deeny said that these were understandable decisions which were well within the exercise of the Coroner’s own discretion.

Again finding no culpable delay during this period, Lord Justice Deeny was satisfied that the Coroner made a legitimate decision to adjourn the inquest because of late disclosure of the fact that two police officers involved in Pearse’s death had made false statements to CID investigators in the Stalker/Sampson Inquiry.

Considering all of the above, Lord Justice Deeny concluded that there was no culpable delay on the part of the Senior Coroner or the Coroner in the conduct of the inquest into the death of Pearse Jordan.