Talking to Dunedin’s coroner
Dunedin coroner David Robinson has kept a low profile since being sworn in just over a year ago. He sat down with George Block for a wideranging interview, covering everything from his most memorable case to a controversial Netflix series.
WHEN Dunedin coroner David Robinson was appointed last year, several people remarked to his wife that they did not know he was a doctor.
Misconceptions like these are not helped by images from American television of people wearing coroner’s jackets charging into crime scenes, he said.
In fact, Mr Robinson is a judicial officer working from chambers at the Dunedin District Court, formerly a local civil litigation lawyer with about two decades of professional practice behind him.
A local boy who studied law at the University of Otago and had ‘‘never managed to leave Dunedin,’’ before his appointment, he was a partner at Gallaway Cook Allan.
His life appeared to centre mostly on the law and his family.
Asked about his hobbies, he said he was putting the finishing touches on a textbook on the law governing the police. Aside from an occasional glass of wine at a Law Society dinner, he does not drink.
Coroners are responsible for dealing with sudden or unexplained death. They conduct inquiries where needed to determine the cause, and are charged with making recommendations to prevent similar deaths happening again.
After being sworn in as coroner in April last year, he received only a couple of weeks training before being let loose, expected to close about 17 inquiries into unexplained deaths per month. But he said it was no baptism of fire.
‘‘You draw on your experience of being a lawyer, and you really just need to have an inquisitive mind and try and work out what happened.
‘‘I paired up with an Auckland coroner . . . and she showed me the ropes. After a week she said ‘you have a crack’.’’
He effectively serves as the Dunedin branch of the Christchurch coroner’s office.
On alternating weeks, the offices receive cases from around the South Island, and occasionally some from further north when other coroners have an unmanageably high case load.
There are only 18 in total throughout New Zealand, but Mr Robinson believed more were needed.
‘‘I think we’d like to see a couple more coroners appointed across the country.’’
One reason for his low profile in Dunedin since becoming coroner is that he has conducted only two inquests so far.
Inquests are hearings in court where the coroner hears from witnesses directly, as opposed to hearings ‘‘on the papers,’’ where they read evidence in their chambers.
Asked if this was an unusually low number for a coroner with such a wide catchment, Mr Robinson said it was to be expected, as the Coroners Amendment Act 2016 meant inquests were no longer compulsory for deaths in compulsory care or custody.
He now had a greater ability to resolve matters in his chambers, except where evidence was conflicting or needed to be delivered in person.
While the phrase ‘‘the death has been referred to the coroner,’’ was often incorrectly read by the public as a catchall euphemism for suicide, selfinflicted deaths were a significant and challenging part of the job.
‘‘The teenage ones stand out because I have kids that age.’’
He urged friends and family of teenagers to be alert to the signs of suicide, and take action early if they see warning signs.
‘‘They’ll engage in selfharm, they’ll talk about suicide, make comments like ‘you’re better off without me’.
‘‘The first step . . . is to refer them to a GP, or take them along.’’
He had seen a disturbing run of ‘‘kids from good families’’ ending their own lives. The victims did not fit the usual profile of youths who committed suicide, who frequently had a history of exposure to family violence.
‘‘Absolute tragedies. You look at the kids and they are often highachieving with good peer groups, appear to be well settled, then as a bolt from the blue they’ve taken their life.
‘‘My frustration in those cases is I can’t offer any explanation to the family.
‘‘One of the coroner’s roles is to answer the question ‘why has this happened,’ but those cases really do defy logic.’’
He was concerned at what he described as ‘‘excessive publicity’’ around suicide.
He cited Netflix drama 13 Reasons Why, which depicted scenes of suicide and selfharm, as a particularly worrying example.
The first season of the series centred on a young girl who killed herself, leaving behind a box of cassette tapes describing her reasons for ending her life.
‘‘I think a programme like 13 Reasons Why is just dangerous, because it actually glorifies it.’’
The coroner’s children, aged 14 and 16, would not be allowed near the show.
His most memorable case so far involved an elderly woman found dead in her selfcontained unit in a retirement village, he said.
She had inadvertently left her car running in a garage attached to the unit.
Mr Robinson found she had died from carbon monoxide poisoning after the fumes seeped into her home, despite the door between the garage and the home being closed. It was the eighth death in the South Island in similar circumstances since 2013.
He was able to make a series of wideranging recommendations to prevent similar deaths occurring in the future, for example, making carbon monoxide detectors mandatory where a garage adjoins the rest of the dwelling, and amending the Building Code to require the door between a garage and a home to be airtight.
As a coroner, he had to maintain a professional detachment from the hundreds of unexplained deaths which had crossed his desk. But he always remained aware these were real people.
‘‘It’s more than a file . . . it’s someone’s son, daughter, mum or dad.’’
❛ You draw on your experience of being a lawyer, and you really just need to have an inquisitive mind and try
and work out what happened