Mohamed Al Fayed yesterday bowed to reality and accepted that the inquest
verdicts must mark the end to his decade-long pursuit for the truth, as he
sees it, of the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales, and his son Dodi Fayed.
But if the legal ramifications of the deaths are over — after ten years and
four coroners — the two inquests have made legal history. And that’s apart
from the wilder accusations of murder conspiracies involving M16 and the
Duke of Edinburgh, a pregnancy and Muslim marriage.
Held in a courtroom at the Royal Courts of Justice in The Strand with an
overflow tent for up to 100 other spectators, they set records for cost —
£10 million to £12 million — length, scope, number of witnesses, volume of
evidence and countries spanned.
Lord Justice Scott Baker, the coroner, described the inquests as unique. A
fellow coroner agreed: “It doesn’t make new law in any sense — but it did
break legal ground in other ways.”
Lord Justice Scott Baker was drafted in when his predecessor, Lady Elizabeth
Butler-Sloss, stepped down. Faced with a phalanx of seasoned defence
counsel, led by Michael Mansfield, QC, and challenged successfully over her
decision not to have a jury, she pleaded inexperience and retired.
The new coroner, known as “Scottie”, was more than a match for Mansfield and
his like. He also kept the show on the road, coming in just three days over
his six-month target. He was, journalists agreed, undoubtedly the star of
the show — firm, fair, polite and with a stock of wry one-liners.
The inquests heard from 268 witnesses over 89 sitting days; the statements of
57 witnesses were read and others gave evidence live or by videolink.
Seventy-four witnesses gave evidence by videolink from the Palais de Justice
in Paris; evidence was also taken from France, Germany, New Zealand,
Australia, Nigeria, Kenya, Brazil and from Miami, Los Angeles, San Diego and
San Francisco in the United States.
The use of a jury is not unusual, although only one in 30 of the 28,000
inquests a year in England and Wales involve one, usually those over deaths
in police custody and prisons or workplace deaths. These 11 jurors were
given police escorts to and from their homes every day to prevent harassment
— security of a kind usually kept for highly publicised trials such as drugs
or terror cases.
It was also the first time that a British inquest was in session abroad (and
the second for any UK court) when the jurors were flown to Paris to visit
the scene of the crash and retrace the Princess and Dodi’s final journey
from the Ritz Hotel to the Alma underpass. The precedent was the 1999 war
crimes trial of Anthony Sawoniuk, the former Nazi, when a jury was taken to
the scene of the murders in the village of Domachevo in western Belarus.
In another first, several MI6 agents gave evidence to the inquest to answer Mr
Al Fayed’s allegations that the agency murdered the Princess and Dodi in a
staged car crash. While Sir Richard, now Master of Pembroke College
Cambridge, appeared openly, several serving MI6 employees gave their
evidence to a cleared court, with the media and public consigned to an
annexe with an audio link.
The feat of organising all this — with access by public and press over six
months — was something of tour de force by the Judicial Communications
Office. There was a precedent in the Hutton inquiry, although that ran for
only seven weeks compared with the inquests' six months. Some of the same
personnel were involved: Martin Smith, Solicitor to the Inquests, and in the
Communications Office, Lee Hughes, Mike Wicksteed and Phil Golding, all had
been in Hutton.
A second lesson gleaned from Hutton was the creation of a website, use of
electronic database and livenote transcripts that were put up daily online.
Transparency, a spokesman said, was the watchword. She added: “There were
enormous logistical hurdles to be overcome in running these lengthy and
complex inquests — not least the numbers of witnesses involved, requirement
for videolinks with France, the US and elsewhere, jury visit to Paris,
ensuring compliance with both French and English law, time differences, etc.
This made close liaison with the French authorities vital.”
The openness, which gave the public full access each day to everything said,
might now be copied in other prominent inquests but it comes at a cost. “It
is very resource-intensive and therefore is likely to be reserved for cases
where the public interest cannot readily be served by other means,” the
spokesman added.
Other reforms could follow. When the French Government refused to force the
paparazzi living there to testify, the coroner proposed having their
previous statements read to the jury. He faced a legal challenge from
lawyers who argued that he could not introduce such controversial evidence
without calling a witness to cross-examine. The coroner lost at the Court of
Appeal but the matter sparked calls from senior judges for the law to be
redrafted.
Mostly, though, these two inquests were very unusual. And they would not have
happened at all but for the death of Helen Smith, a nurse, 25 years ago. She
fell to her death in Saudi Arabia after a drinks party at a block of flats
and her father, Ron Smith, has fought tirelessly to prove that she was
murdered. Her body still lies in a mortuary — the longest time a body has
lain not buried or cremated.
His demands for an inquest resulted in a change in the law in 1982, so that
coroners must now hold an inquest where a British subject who dies a violent
or unnatural death abroad is brought back into their jurisdiction.
That same duty is retained in the Coroners Bill published two weeks ago and
now awaiting a parliamentary slot. Coroners will have strengthened powers to
force those who cause deaths to explain themselves and spell out what they
are going to do to stop the same thing happening again.
Martin Bare, president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, said:
“There will now be a greater obligation on those who cause a death to act
upon what the coroner says.” The association also wants all coroners’
reports and the responses by the guilty party to be published in full.
The Bill also retains juries for workplace death inquests and the dropping of
controversial plans to allow inquests to be held in private, where there was
no public interest.
Some have derided the proposals as “tinkering at the edges”. Jenny Willott,
the Liberal Democrat Shadow Justice Spokeswoman, said that the coroners
system was stretched to the limit and the Bill provided no extra resources
for it.
“If the Government really wants to create a coroners’ system fit for the 21st
century, it will have to be bolder in its reforms and back them up with real
investment.”
Coroners want their service reformed. The Princess Diana-Dodi inquests were a
model that is unlikely to be repeated. If the Coroners’ Bill is found time,
it will nonetheless go some way towards creating a modern system for the
other 28,000 inquests held in England and Wales a year.
* Read David Pannick, QC, in Law next Tuesday, April 15, on why the
coroners’ system needs reform
