R (Rizvi) v HM Assistant Coroner for South London [2025] EWHC 3014 (Admin) judgment 17th Nov 2025 here
It has been a long journey for Mrs Rizvi who may now have exhausted all avenues in her attempts to show that the police breached an Article 2 duty owed to her daughter. Twelve and a half years ago Sabina Rivzi was the innocent victim of a gang shooting as she drove away from Bexleyheath Police Station, having picked up her boyfriend after a police interview. A High Court judge has now forcefully concluded that, having held an Article 2 compliant investigation and inquest, the Assistant Coroner[1] was entitled to consider it unsafe to leave any findings of fact to the jury regarding acts or omissions by the police. The Claimant’s counsel’s “island-hopping expedition in a sea of extensive evidence” did not persuade Mr Justice Foxton that it was arguable that the Coroner’s assessment that it would be unsafe to do so had been unreasonable in the Wednesbury sense.
This case importantly delineates the ambit of the Art 2 procedural duty on coroners. It is exactly what it says on the label – a duty of procedure and not one of outcome. It is quite a low threshold that triggers the procedural duty [2] to investigate an arguable Art 2 breach. But the hurdle to be surmounted before making any positive finding is somewhat higher once the evidence has been heard. In many cases a thorough exploration of all the evidence will reveal there is no state shortcoming that needs to be left to the jury, let alone reflected in the inquest’s conclusion.
The Background
In 2003 Sabina Rizvi picked up her boyfriend from the police station where he had just been granted bail. Her car was shot at as they drove away, killing Sabina and seriously injuring her boyfriend. The assailants who carried out the attack were never identified, although Paul Asbury was subsequently convicted of orchestrating her murder and the attempted murder of her boyfriend and was gaoled for 20 years.
The inquest was not held until 2024, having been adjourned for the criminal trial and not initially resumed. However, after considering IPs submissions, the Coroner was persuaded that there was arguably a breach of Art 2 substantive rights that engaged the procedural obligations under Article 2, and so the inquest was resumed.
The Inquest Ruling
A key issue explored at the inquest in 2024 was whether the police owed an Art 2 duty to Sabrina in that they should have appreciated that there was a real and immediate threat to her life once she left the police station and hence came under a duty to take steps to mitigate that risk.
The family’s legal team at the inquest had agreed with the Coroner that Galbraith was the correct legal test to apply to the question of whether any issue under Article 2 should be left to the jury.[3]
A particular issue explored was whether police officers had deliberately or inadvertently notified Paul Asbury and/or others of the whereabouts of her boyfriend who was the focus of a targeted hit. After considering the evidence, the Coroner was persuaded that there was indeed sufficient evidence of there being a real and immediate risk to Sabina’s life. However, applying Galbraith, the Coroner held that there was insufficient evidence to safely establish that either (i) this risk was known or ought to have been known to the police; or that (ii) there were steps which the police could reasonably have been expected to take to prevent that risk materialising.
As a result of that ruling, no issues of fact relevant to these Article 2 questions were to be left to the Jury.
The Judicial Review grounds
Three months out of time, Mrs Rizvi, who had by then engaged a new legal team, applied for permission to judicially review the Coroner’s decision on two grounds:
Ground 1: That the Coroner erred in law by determining the matters to be left to the jury based upon whether there was sufficient evidence that the substantive Article 2 ECHR duty had been breached, rather than whether such a breach was arguable, and so added an unnecessary and impermissible gloss to the threshold for assessing whether such a breach had occurred (or was arguable). (The ‘threshold’ ground)
Ground 2: That the Coroner erred in law by eliding the question of whether there had been a breach of the substantive Article 2 duty with that of whether there was sufficient evidence that there were any acts or omissions by the police that were potentially causative of Sabina’s death which could safely be left to the jury.” (The ‘causation’ ground)
The Decision
Foxton J’s refusal of Mrs Rizvi’s request for an extension of time was enough to be fatal to her claim.[4]Nevertheless the judge went on to also consider the merits of her claim, again refusing permission in respect both the grounds for review.
(1) On the ‘threshold’ ground the judge held that: when considering leaving a matter to the jury the Coroner had been correct to apply the Galbraith test. At the end of the inquest the question of arguability of an Art 2 breach (that had triggered the procedural duty at the outset) was no longer the test. Rather, the classic Galbraithapproach of considering the sufficiency of evidence was to apply. If it was not safe to leave a finding it should not be left: this being an ‘Art 2 inquest’ made no difference.
“Island-hopping in a sea of evidence”
As for whether there was sufficient evidence: Foxton J was quite unimpressed by what he called counsel’s ‘island-hopping in a sea of evidence’ trying to cherry pick parts to the evidence to support the claim. The Assistant Coroner was an experienced criminal judge, she had made a reasonable assessment of the state of evidence, and she was entitled to come to the view that any finding of police shortcoming would be unsafe.
(2) On causation: the Tainton approach[5] was affirmed. The judge found, that the Coroner, was right to conclude there were no causation issues in respect of the actions of the Police which should be left to the jury. Indeed, causation is not an issue which can fairly or sensibly be approached in the abstract, but only by reference to established acts or omissions alleged to be causative. The Galbraith decision already made, that there was insufficient supportive evidence of any failure, logically must be fatal to any causation argument.
Comment
This outcome of this case is perhaps unsurprising given (as the reader will learn from the judgment) it elides with the position of those representing Mrs Rizvi at the inquest.[6] As the judge put it “this is an extremely challenging application, brought in circumstances in which the highly experienced legal team representing the family at the Inquest had advised that there was no arguable claim. The premise of the claim is that, notwithstanding a detailed ruling reached after hearing full legal submissions from all interested parties, a highly experienced criminal judge either misunderstood the conventional Galbraith test of which she has had a lifetimes professional experience or that she misapplied it.”
This threshold for triggering an Art 2 inquest is of course a low one, because to impose a more onerous burden would run the risk of the coroner determining, in advance of the full evidential picture, what the outcome of any inquest might be. But all this means is (as Foxton J points out) that the issue of Article 2 liability will be ‘front and centre of the Inquest’ . It does not require any factual findings indicative of Art 2 breach to be left or be found at the inquest’s conclusion.
That facts supportive of an Art 2 breach are not left to be found in the end will not mean that it was somehow wrong to hold an Art 2 inquest. On occasions the misguided submission is made to a Coroner on behalf of a state body at the end of an inquest that Art 2 should somehow now be disengaged, given the inquiry has exculpated the organisation. But this is silly: one cannot disengage an Art 2 procedural duty that has already arisen. Rather the better way to frame the submission is that the procedural duty Art 2 has been fully complied with even though there are no putative shortcomings left to record
After all s.5(2) CJA 2009 only applies “where necessary” to avoid a breach of a Convention right, and s.10(1)(a) CJA 2009 only requires determinations to be made applying s.5(2) “If applicable” . If it is not safe to record a factual finding then it cannot be necessary or applicable to do so.
The question of whether an Art 2 procedural investigative duty is engaged is a wholly separate issue from whether there are any issues to properly and safely leave to the jury at the end of an Art 2 compliant investigation.
Cecily White apeared for the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and Kevin Baumber acted for one of the Police Officers
Footnotes
[1] a highly experienced criminal judge who is a Senior Circuit Judge at the Old Bailey.
[2] There only needing to be a ‘credible suggestion’ of a substantive breach of rights – See R (Maguire) v Blackpool and Fylde Senior Coroner [2021] QB 409, at §75
[3] See §41: Leading counsel had participated in the Inquest on the basis that, if the evidential threshold was met, the issues for the Jury would be the factual predicates for the Article 2 operational duty, with the Galbraith test being applied by the Coroner to determine if the evidential threshold was met.
[4] There had been a number of periods of delay which, judged by the ordinary standards of public law proceedings, Foxton J concluded involved unreasonable delay.
[5] Whether on balance of probabilities a matter more than minimally, negligibly or trivially caused or contributed to the death : see [2016] EWHC 1396.
[6] At §47-48 the judgment describes how, , when the Coroner initially gave her ruling at the Inquest she allowed IPs overnight for consideration, thereby facilitating Mrs Rizvi to obtain advice from her legal team on the prospects of bringing a judicial review challenge to the Ruling. No challenge was brought by those representing her at the inquest.