R (Bryan) v HM Assistant Coroner for Buckinghamshire [2024] EWHC (Admin) 26, 12 January 2024
This most tragic of cases concerned the loss of two precious and irreplaceable lives when Ms Redmond put herself in the path of a train whilst holding her three year old daughter.
The inevitable conclusion of suicide in Ms Redmond’s inquest was not contested. But the Coroner did not agree with the position of the Claimant (supported by the paternal side of the child’s family) that the child had been unlawfully killed by her mother. In a long and detailed narrative conclusion regarding the child’s death the Coroner addressed her mother’s state of mind and determined that this was not an unlawful killing because Ms Redmond had probably been ‘insane’ when she had jumped.
The Claimant challenged both the form and substance of the Coroner’s conclusion, arguing that the Coroner’s finding had impermissibly reversed the presumption of sanity and, in its place, substituted a presumption of insanity. The challenge failed on all grounds, however, as the Court held that not only was the Coroner entitled to make this finding on the evidence but, given the inquisitorial nature of an inquest, it would be inappropriate to attempt to transpose directly the concepts of a presumption of sanity and the burden of proof as they apply in the context of criminal proceedings to the very different context of inquisitorial coronial proceedings.