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{{short description|Jury convened to assist a coroner in identifying a deceased person and their cause of death}}A coroner's jury is a body convened to assist a coroner in an inquest, that is, in determining the identity of a deceased person and the cause of death. The laws on its role and function vary by jurisdiction.

United Kingdom

In England and Wales, all inquests were once conducted with a jury. They acted somewhat like a grand jury, determining whether a person should be committed to trial in connection to a death. Such a jury was made up of up to twenty-three men, and required the votes of twelve to render a decision. Similar to a grand jury, a coroner's jury merely accused, it did not convict.There are no coroners in Scotland, which has its own legal system. The Scottish equivalent of an inquest is a Fatal Accident Inquiry, held where there is a sudden, suspicious, accidental, or unexplained death, which is ordered by a Procurator Fiscal and presided over by a Sheriff without a jury.Since 1927, coroner's juries have rarely been used in England. Under the Coroners Act 1988,Coroners Act, 1988, s 8(3) a jury is only required to be convened in cases where the death occurred in prison, police custody, or in circumstances which may affect public health or safety. The coroner can actually choose to convene a jury in any investigation, but in practice this is rare. The qualifications to sit on a coroner's jury are the same as those to sit on a jury in Crown Court, the High Court, and the County Court.WEB,weblink King's College of London - Coroner's Law Resource, 15 February 2007, 25 September 2012,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20120925214542weblink">weblink dead, Additionally, a coroner's jury only determines cause of death; its ruling does not commit a person to trial. While grand juries, which did have the power to indict, were abolished in the United Kingdom by 1948 (after being effectively stopped in 1933), coroner's juries retained those powers until the Criminal Law Act 1977. This change came about after a coroner's jury charged Lord Lucan in 1975 in the death of Sandra Rivett, his children's nanny.

United States

A coroner's jury deemed Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and their (wikt:posse#Noun|posse) guilty in the death of Frank Stilwell in March 1882.WEB, Grand Jury Indictment for the Killing of Frank Stilwell,weblink In the aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, a coroner's jury found factory owners Isaac Harris and Max Blanck responsible for the death of Mary Herman, a factory operator.NEWS,weblink Men Responsible for Fire Horror, Morning Press, 18 April 1911, California Digital Newspaper Collection, en, 2018-11-29, A coroner's jury ruled that the 2018 Hart family crash in Mendocino County, California was deliberate.WEB, Holcombe, Madeline, Augie Martin,weblink Jennifer Hart drove her six children to their deaths as her wife looked up how much they would suffer, a jury says, CNN, 2019-04-06, 2020-01-01,

References

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External links

• weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20060502015746weblink">Scan of a standard pamphlet sent those called to serve on a Corner's Jury in Northern Ireland
• Jarvis on Coroners {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120924100544weblink |date=2012-09-24 }}
• Writeup explaining concepts and example cases of a Coroner's Jury

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