A judge killed himself by jumping 50ft from his third-floor apartment because he was suffering from depression and anxiety – induced partly by drugs that were prescribed for his high blood pressure, an inquest was told yesterday.

Judge Rodney McKinnon, 64, of Pimlico, Central London, had suffered for some months from depression and anxiety, Westminster Coroner’s Court was told. His GP, Jonathan Hunt, told the inquest that anxieties about his health and his work, coupled with the side-effects of medication, had made Mr McKinnon depressed.

Recording a verdict of suicide, the coroner, Paul Knapman, said that there was no suicide note, but that possible scenarios such as the judge cleaning a window and losing his balance, or retrieving something from the ledge and losing his footing, were “fanciful”.

The judge’s brother, Warwick McKinnon, said he did not believe that his brother had intended to kill himself, and nor did any members of the family. He said that there was insufficient evidence to meet the required standard of proof of “beyond reasonable doubt”.

Warwick McKinnon, who is also a judge, told the inquest that his brother, who lived alone, had planned to meet a girlfriend a week after the day that that he was found dead. He said: “I don’t believe it was suicide and neither does anyone in the family or any friends I gave spoken to. There is obviously some evidence that could point towards suicide. I am not going to be unrealistic, but there is nothing like enough for it to fill the required standard. My personal belief is that it was an accident.”

The court was told that judge was found on the pavement outside his flat at about 4pm on June 21. He was lying some distance from the building and a footprint was found on a chair near the open window. To fall or jump, the judge would have to have stood on the chair, clambered across a desk and climbed out of the window on to a narrow parapet, the inquest was told.

His brother said that the absence of a suicide note convinced him that his brother’s death was an accident. He said: “He was a very tidy and literary man. He would have wanted to record the reason why, if it was suicide, he did it. That is my belief.”

The court heard that Dr Hunt had prescribed treatments for high blood pressure and anxiety and that the judge had seen several specialists. By the time of his death Mr McKinnon was off work and had accepted that he would have to retire, the inquest was told.

In a statement, Dr Hunt blamed Mr McKinnon’s feelings of anxiety on worries that he had about his health, as well as the pressures of his work as a £122,000-a-year circuit judge.

Warwick McKinnon said that he thought his brother’s psychological problems were brought on by the various antihypertension drugs that he had been prescribed.

The inquest was told how one course of medication left Mr McKinnon so lethargic that “he could not function in court” and that he had not been taking medication for his blood pressure for a month at the time of his death.

Warwick McKinnon said that he spoke to his brother on Sunday, June 17, when “he sounded very weak and very low”. He called again the day before his brother’s death and on the morning of the fall and talked about arranging a visit to a psychiatrist. Although his brother was “not fit and well” he was busy making plans for the future, having decided to retire.

He said that he had seen e-mails between his brother and a female friend abroad who was planning to visit the judge a week after the date that he was found dead. His brother loved art and had spoken of taking up painting and buying a property for his retirement just before he died.

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