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Message: [QUOTE="Jason Simmons, post: 2893298, member: 8275"] I don’t know. I’d have to read the report and I’m not sure I’m interested enough. Coronial Inquiries can be quite the dog and pony show at times. I have given evidence at a few over the years and they are so different to regular courts. Rules of evidence don’t apply for a start so they are full of hearsay, rumour and innuendo. It doesn’t take that much to become a party to the inquest and to be able to give evidence or cross-examine witnesses under oath at that inquest and you get some very esoteric situations occurring within them. As an example, I gave evidence in relation to a coronial inquriy some years back where an offender had been tasered and had subsequently died. For the record I did not employ a Taser at that scene. However I was there and I was equipped with a Taser and was subsequently questioned under oath about it. When we check out Tasers, we conducted a ‘SEED drill’. A static electricity discharge drill, to ensure our Taser cartridges don’t activate due to static electrical discharge. We also check the battery level for the Taser (by policy the level has to be above 20% or we don’t take them out) and finally we do a spark test, to ensure the Taser is working correctly before we attach the cartridges and the weapon is ‘loaded’. So I was asked the usual questions by Counsel assisting the Coroner, my observations and recollections, did I make any notes, audio or video recordings and so forth. I was asked nothing by the Counsel representing the family of the deceased. I was grilled for over two hours by the Counsel representing Taser International. What specific Taser did I use that day? How did I sign it out? What function tests did I perform? What battery level did my Taser have? How did I wear my Taser during the shift? Did I take it off? Did I use it on anyone else? Did I present it at all and if so was that effective? How many hours did I have a Taser on? When did I return it? What condition was it in after I returned it to it’s allocated weapons safe? Did I disassemble it correctly when I returned it? Did I sign it back in? I was questioned more thoroughly than I was during the internal investigation and more than by the Coroner himself. To this day I have no idea why. The questions would be in the court transcript but they aren’t in the report and no submissions were made by Taser International or anyone else about my evidence. It was utterly bizarre and I have never experienced anything before or since like it. I can’t help, but get the nagging feeling the whole thing occurred simply because the lawyer wanted to get some cross-examination practice or was putting on a show for his client. It meant absolutely nothing at the end of the day. Maybe it was just an odd, complicated and expensive way of getting detailed feedback on their product? I don’t know. Someone above said Coroners aren’t about appointing blame. That is somewhat true, but not entirely correct because they can still recommend that someone be charged with a criminal offence as a result of their inquiry, including murder or manslaughter, however it is a recommendation only and it remains up to the DPP to decide whether to present an indictment on the matter or not. But they can and often do apportion specific blame. The Daniel Morcombe inquiry was a notable example of this, as I expect we will shortly see... The real point of a Coronial Inquiry is simply to determine a cause of death, identify any related matters and attempt to identify and correct any issue that may have prevented the death or may in future help prevent further deaths. So my thoughts are I suppose that the above quotes don’t provide enough context for the reasons the Coroner decided to say those things. As with most things written by journalists, they are funnelled through the journalist’s ability to understand them, or desire to paint in a particular light (usually for commercial imperatives, ie: to sell copy). [/QUOTE]

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