GS, R (On the Application Of) v HM Senior Coroner for Wiltshire and Swindon

Article 2 of the Convention does not generally require a state in which a death occurs to investigate the actions of agents of a foreign state who may have caused it. The procedural obligation is ancillary to the state’s substantive obligations and principally ensures accountability for deaths for which that state or its agents may be responsible.

A coroner has a broad discretion to determine the scope of an inquest. The statutory prohibition on determining criminal or civil liability does not prevent investigation of facts bearing on responsibility. A decision narrowing an inquest must not rest on a material error of law or irrational reasoning. Remoteness and the unintended status of the deceased may justify limiting some matters, but do not necessarily exclude investigation of closely connected events or the source of the lethal instrument.

The claimant, the daughter of Dawn Sturgess, sought judicial review of the Senior Coroner’s ruling on the scope of the inquest into her death. Ms Sturgess died after unknowingly using a perfume bottle containing Novichok, following the March 2018 poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury.

The coroner allowed investigation of the movements and acts of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, but excluded investigation of wider Russian state responsibility and the source of the Novichok. The claimant challenged those exclusions on domestic-law and Article 2 grounds. The central issues were the meaning of “how” in the statutory coronial questions, the effect of the statutory prohibitions on determinations of liability, the limits of the coroner’s discretion, and whether Article 2 required investigation of foreign-state agents.

1. Article 2. The procedural obligation under Article 2 is intended to secure accountability for breaches of the right to life for which the state concerned or its own agents are responsible. It does not impose on the United Kingdom an obligation to investigate the actions of agents of Russia merely because a death occurred in the United Kingdom. The reasoning in Guzelyurtlu v Cyprus and Turkey concerned concurrent jurisdiction and duties of inter-state co-operation, and did not establish such an obligation. Ground 2 therefore failed.
2. Scope of an inquest. The coroner’s discretion to set the bounds of an inquest is broad, but remains subject to ordinary public-law supervision. The meaning of “how” in a non-enhanced investigation is principally “by what means”, under R v HM Coroner for North Humberside and Scunthorpe ex p Jamieson. The inquiry must nevertheless investigate relevant facts fully, fairly and fearlessly.
3. Sections 10(2)(a) and 10(2)(b). The prohibitions in the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 concern the framing of the final determination. They do not prevent investigation of facts bearing on criminal or civil responsibility. The coroner therefore erred in treating those prohibitions as reasons to exclude investigation of wider Russian responsibility, particularly when the acts of Petrov and Boshirov could themselves be investigated.
4. Remoteness. The four-month interval between the Salisbury attack and Ms Sturgess’s death did not by itself make the matters remote. The fact that Ms Sturgess was not the intended target could justify excluding matters such as Mr Skripal’s wider career and intelligence connections, but was not clearly sufficient to exclude evidence about other Russian state actors or the source of the Novichok. The public interest was acute and obvious, although the court did not prescribe the ultimate scope of the inquest.
5. The claim succeeded on Ground 1. The coroner’s ruling was quashed and the matter remitted. The claim was dismissed on Ground 2.

This was a first-instance judicial review in the Divisional Court of the High Court. The court reviewed the Senior Coroner’s ruling dated 20 December 2019, allowed the claim on Ground 1, dismissed it on Ground 2, quashed the ruling and remitted the matter to the Senior Coroner.