Former Chairman of the Judicial Review Commission Sean McWeeney said recently the change in the coroner’s court policy has been in the works for quite some time, but he is not certain it would make the system more efficient.
“I actually thought the system was working quite well,” Mr. McWeeney told The Bahama Journal.
“Winston Saunders ﾖ when he was brought on as coroner ﾖ really blitzed through those old cases, some of which had been languishing for shamefully long periods of time ﾖ in some cases more than 10 years. So, Winston Saunders was able to give very concentrated attention on clearing the backlog and he did a very good job. And so I thought this indicated that there was much to commend the system having a dedicated coroner.”
He added, “Then Linda Virgill came along and was doing an excellent job as well.”
Mrs. Virgill has since been relocated to Court #11 on Nassau Street.
Despite the speculation that followed the decision, Mr. McWeeney, who is also a former attorney general, said there was “nothing sinister” about removing Magistrate Virgill as the exclusive coroner.
“It was not something done as a sort of reaction to Linda Virgill grabbing a lot of publicity,” Mr. McWeeney said.
“I donﾒt think this was so at all, but I do think the timing was unfortunate in the sense that it suggested that one had to do with the otherﾅI know that for some time, there has been the thought to redistribute the coronerﾒs duty among the magistrates as opposed to giving all of the coronerﾒs matters to a single person.”
A Supreme Court Memorandum, signed by Chief Justice Sir Burton Hall last month, said the practice of designating a particular magistrateﾒs court as the coronerﾒs court ﾖ which began in 1993 with the appointment of Winston Saunders as coroner ﾖ has been scrapped.
Such matters will now be assigned to any magistrate.
Sir Burtonﾒs memorandum came less than a week after Mrs. Virgill announced that she would hold an inquest into the unexplained death of 20-year-old Daniel Wayne Smith, son of former Playboy playmate and Trimspa model, Anna Nicole Smith.
Chief Magistrate Roger Gomez has since confirmed that Mrs. Virgill would not preside over an inquest into Daniel Smithﾒs death.
But he denied that the change was punishment for the magistrate speaking to the press about the case.
The chief magistrate instead explained that the move to have all magistrates handling coronerﾒs duties was designed to speed up the hearing of what is acknowledged to be a heavy backlog of cases.
The Free National Movement said it was “deeply disturbed” about the policy change.
FNM Leader Hubert Ingraham has vowed that “when” returned to office, his party would amend the Coroners Act to constitute specialty coronerﾒs courts, so that all unexplained deaths will be promptly and efficiently investigated, as has been the case since 1993.
By: Macushla N. Pinder, The Bahama Journal
