Grieving limbo hard on families
The long wait for answers about the death of a loved one is a kind of mental torture, a mother says.
More than 40 per cent of open coroner’s cases are older than 12 months – the worst rate in six years. That’s 723 families in grieving limbo, waiting more than a year for answers about why their loved one died.
The average time to close coronial cases is 345 days but that masks long inquest waits, because more than 90 per cent of cases are decided without a hearing.
The Justice Ministry could not say how long cases requiring an inquest took, but Stuff’s analysis of 70 published decisions from 2017 found those cases took more than twice as long – an average of two years.
Many are waiting longer still. Nicky Stevens died of suspected suicide in March 2015. Three and a half years later, his parents are still waiting for a coroner’s decision, having lost nine months just trying to find an inquest date all the lawyers could attend.
‘‘Our life was constantly on edge,’’ said Nicky’s father, Dave Macpherson. ‘‘You couldn’t go away or plan any breaks, because we didn’t know when the hearing would be. We put off family holidays. People were surprised that we got through it intact, in that we’re still together.’’
Barbara Cooke waited six years for the findings into the death of her daughter, Wendy Shoebridge, who died of suspected suicide in 2011 – days after being falsely accused of fraud by the Ministry of Social Development.
The first coroner, Ian Smith, died 18 months after the first inquest, having still not released his decision. It then took another three years for a new coroner to hold a new inquest findings.
‘‘It’s affected my physical health, my financial standing, and my relationships. The amount of stress over a long term – it’s been like a kind of mental torture,’’ Cooke said.
Every year coroners look into about 3400 deaths – everything from deaths in state care to car crash victims to suspected suicides to deaths that are simply unexpected and unexplained.
Their recommendations are supposed to identify and fix systemic weaknesses, so delays also meant a lost opportunity to prevent further deaths, said lawyer Nigel Hampton, QC.
Chief Coroner Judge Deborah Marshall said inquest delays could result from other agencies investigating first, such as the Civil Aviation Authority, police or the health and disability commissioner.
Providing a 24/7 duty coroner to respond quickly to new deaths also took coroners away from ongoing inquiries.
Coroners were doing the best they could with the resources they had, she said. However, she noted that, while the Coroners Act allowed up to 20 fulltime coroners, plus relief coroners, only 18 fulltimers were currently appointed.
Justice Minister Andrew Little said the delay statistics were ‘‘concerning’’.
While inquests were becoming more complex and coroners needed to consider every possibility, two to three years was ‘‘a long time’’ for families to wait for answers, he added.
The court received $7 million in extra funding in the 2018 Budget to improve support services but it was too early to gauge the impact.
He pledged to investigate hiring extra coroners to clear the backlog. and release her