Accidental death

Inquests in England and Wales are held into sudden and unexplained deaths and also into the circumstances of discovery of a certain class of valuable artefacts known as "treasure trove". In England and Wales inquests are the responsibility of a coroner, who operates under the jurisdiction of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009.

There is a general duty upon every person to report a death to the coroner if an inquest is likely to be required. However, this duty is largely unenforceable in practice and the duty falls on the responsible registrar. The registrar must report a death where:

The coroner must hold an inquest where the death was:

Where the cause of death is unknown, the coroner may order a post mortem examination in order to determine whether the death was violent. If the death is found to be non-violent, an inquest is unnecessary.

In 2004 in England and Wales, there were 514,000 deaths of which 225,500 were referred to the coroner. Of those, 115,800 resulted in post-mortem examinations and there were 28,300 inquests, 570 with a jury. In 2014 the Royal College of Pathologists claimed that up to 10,000 deaths a year recorded as being from natural causes should have been investigated by inquests. They were particularly concerned about people whose death occurred as a result of medical errors. "We believe a medical examiner would have been alerted to what was going on in Mid-Staffordshire long before this long list of avoidable deaths reached the total it did," said Archie Prentice, the pathologists' president.

A coroner must summon a jury for an inquest if the death was not a result of natural causes and occurred when the deceased was in state custody (for example in prison, police custody, or whilst detained under the Mental Health Act 1983); or if it was the result of an act or omission of a police officer; or if it was a result of a notifiable accident, poisoning or disease. The senior coroner can also call a jury at his or her own discretion. This discretion has been heavily litigated in light of the Human Rights Act 1998, which means that juries are required now in a broader range of situations than expressly required by statute.

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