THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, JULY 24, 1908. CORONERS' JURIES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9150, 24 July 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, JULY 24, 1908. CORONERS' JURIES.

But brief consideration is sufficient to convince one that coroners' juries are totally unnecessary under our laws. A jury is, or rather should be, unnecessary at an inquest, and the practice of viewing the bcdy is unpleasant in the extreme and should, also, be done away with by Act of Parliament. It is satisfactory to note that the Minister for Justice is engaged in securing several radical and much needed reforms in the Coroners Act. The proposed reforms might, perhaps, have been more sweeping and more beneficial, but as they are, the Minister is to be congratulated upon the common-sense Bill that he has introduced to the House , and which, without doubt, will be passed by the House. Under the Bill the Coroner can order the payment of witnesses if he thinks ! fit, and provision is made for the i holding of an inquest without a jury. ! There is, however, still power to .im-

panel a jury where the Coroner deems it necessary or when the AttorneyGeneral bo directs. There is also provision made by which a representative of a union, in the ca.«e of one of their number having met with a fatal accident, may have the opportunity of appearing at the inquest. Whtn the Bill was under discussion in the House Mr T. M. Wilford

favourably criticised it, and, in the course of a t-peech he made, spoke as foiljvvj Suppose that a man is shot in the streets — 1 will take the Terry case. Suppose that the man is shot, as the Chinaman was in the Terry case, and an inquest is held as to the cause of death. All that should occur at that inquest is that two medical men should examine the body of the Chinaman and say to the Coroner, "This man died from a gunshot wound." That ends the functions of the Coroner. Then the Coroner, should give his report that the man died on account of a gunshot wound. Whether tomebody had malice against him or not, or whether he held his gun at an angle of forty degrees, is not the function ol the Coroner to pronounce. That is the function .if the police. If they have the evidence let them lay an information, and let the Magistrate commit the man for trial if a prima facie case is made out. Ido not believe in the Coroners' jury in any shape or form, and I have denounced it on every occasion that I have had the opportunity. L t me turn to one other matter: the point of not requiring the jury to view the body is a wise provision if there are medical men engaged in the case. If there are no medical men, the Coroner or the jury inust view the body. I will give a case that happened in this town since April last. A child was found dead in a private dwelling early in the morning, and that afternoon the Coroners' inquest was held, and the mother of the child —quite a young woman—was brought to the Court, and evidence was given by the police and by other witnesses not as to the cause of death —that was .left to the doctors. Other witnesses were then called, and the mother of the child, who was absolutely biokenhearted, was take into the morgue to view the body, on which the postmortem examination had been held

a fearful sight for her. Then she was dragged into Court to stand the examination and cross-examination. I think it is a wrong thing that she should have been asked to see the dead body of her child. The suggestion in that case was that she had starved the child to death; but when the evidence was given and the case concluded, the jury found a verdict, with which the Coroner said he absolutely agreed, that there was no question that the mother had done everything she possibly could for the child, and there was not the slightest suspicion that she had been in any way the cause of its death. But look what that young woman had to suffer. She had to suffer the death of her child, and she Lad to bi dragged to the Court the same day that the child died. She had to be dragged into the morgue, and then dragged back to stand cross-examination. It is a cr iel thing. If you had had no jury, but simply the Coroner sitting there to call the doctors, who gave the evidence at the finish which absoluttly exonerated this young woman from any wrong-doing, and if they had been allowed to say that the cause of this child's death was one which they could diagnose, that would have been an end of the matter, and that young woman would not have ha Ito sufftr these tortures. 1 do not know whether that case has been beforj the Minister of Justice, but the scheme of not requiring the jury to view the bod.v is a good one if there are medba! men able to testify to the cause of death.