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Diana inquest — a simple waste of money

— PHOTO: AFP

A handout image obtained from the coroner shows Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed in a car in Paris on the night of August 31, 1997, before their deaths in a road crash.

They flew to Paris in a private jet. They saw the Ritz, front and back, and crowded into Diana’s bedroom suite. They glimpsed Posh Spice. They visited the site of Diana’s death a reported eight times, by day, night, coach, and on foot, back and front. They even went to the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital. This parody of a “homes of the stars” Hollywood bus tour was accompanied by riot police and outriders.

Welcome to another trip on the great British legal gravy train. The 2001 French inquest into the deaths of Princess Diana and Dodi al-Fayed reached the same sensible conclusion as did a subsequent three-year British coroner’s inquiry headed by the London Metropolitan police chief, Lord Stevens. The couple died because they were being driven much too fast by a drunk. Dodi’s father, Mohamed al-Fayed, appealed against the French conclusion and claimed his son was murdered, but he lost in a trial judgment in April 2002. Conspiracy theories were relegated to addicts of The Da Vinci Code, the templars, and the Holy Grail.

Diana’s death was always going to be the big one. The legal establishment would not readily leave it to the French and Lord Stevens, especially with Mr. Mohamed al-Fayed’s millions and The Daily Express newspaper in tow. Who cares that the French authorities spent two years on it, interviewed 200 witnesses and prepared 6,000 pages of evidence? Who cares that Lord Stevens, later columnist for the Sunday tabloid News of the World, capped that with three years, 12 experts and no fewer than 300 witnesses? His report ran to 832 pages and cost the taxpayer £3.7 million. This was clearly a gold mine.

British law requires an inquest into the death of anyone abroad whose body is returned to Britain. This can be a formality, though not invariably. Hence the oddity of the Oxfordshire coroner, responsible for Brize Norton (air base a few miles from Oxford), investigating the American zapping of British soldiers in Iraq. The first coroner to consider the Diana-Dodi case, John Burton, barred Mr. Mohamed al-Fayed from involvement to limit publicity for his wild accusations. In this he was upheld by the High Court, but he retired in 2002.

Mr. Burton was followed by Michael Burgess, who decided on a formal inquest and was the man who commissioned Mr. Stevens. After four years, Mr. Burgess had had enough of Mr. Mohamed al-Fayed and his lawyers and was replaced by the former head of the High Court’s family division, Elizabeth Butler-Sloss. She wisely decided that the inquest should not have a jury, for which she saw no justification other than public prurience. The attendant publicity could only intrude on the privacy of Diana’s family.

This outraged Mr. Mohamed al-Fayed, The Daily Express, and three High Court judges. Ms. Butler-Sloss was told she had misdirected herself and was driven to resignation. Her trial itself employed five QCs (senior advocates) with attendant juniors and solicitors (non-advocate lawyers). A fourth coroner was now summoned in the distinguished form of Lord Justice Scott Baker, operating not from some hole-in-the-wall in the west London coroner’s court but from the Royal Courts of Justice and with a jury. His budget is £10 million.

Coroners are ancient officers of the crown (from whom they derive their name). Their job dates from Saxon times, embracing judicial delights such as deodand (object that causes death) and murdrum (fine), and was to present accusations for the king’s judges to hear. The use of coroner’s juries was so that people who knew the parties might confirm the circumstances of death. They were to assemble facts, not pass judgment as in criminal juries. Their survival in inquests is pure legal archaism.

Even now they sit only where doubt exists over identity or evidence (in some 3 per cent of hearings). This is because inquests have limited remits, to name the deceased and determine how and where they died. There must be no discussion or declaration of blame or liability, which is for any subsequent trial. The exercise is inquisitorial, not confrontational, fact-finding not fault-finding. Ms. Butler-Sloss was thus being reasonable in declining to summon a jury for what was no more than a confirmation of the French and Mr. Stevens’ conclusions.

The reason given by the High Court for overruling Ms. Butler-Sloss and requiring a jury was extraordinary. It was that the deaths involved “circumstances the recurrence of which might be prejudicial to the health and safety of any section of the public.” The circumstance was that the death of the mother of the heir to the throne was preceded by paparazzi attention. But this was never in dispute. There cannot be a person in Britain who does not know the cause of Diana’s death.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that judges and barristers were spoiling for a glamorous, if now rather limp, Parisian whodunit, justified as “laying to rest” Mr. Mohamed al-Fayed’s fanciful accusations. They would re-employ the legal teams for the six named parties, re-interview witnesses whose memories of 10 years ago must be fuzzy, and give the press daily video titbits of Diana and Dodi from the Ritz security cameras. Nothing in this justifies another £10 million of public money.

I may, of course, be missing the point. Coroners retain one other historic function beyond establishing the facts of a death. They adjudicate on treasure trove. They must ascertain who found it and to whom (if not the crown) it might belong. Perhaps this holds the key to the Diana inquiry. It is about helping to allocate the vast sums swilling about in the Lord Chancellor’s (head of the judiciary) overblown fees budget. Here at least the jury can be assured. There is no doubt where today’s treasure will come to rest. — ©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

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