I have long been exercised by the fact that a Coroner at an inquest here in UK has the power to inform a jury, before thay consider their verdict, what their options are: i.e. what verdicts he will refuse to accept. I cannot understand what the point is of even having a so-called jury if their powers of decision are to be so restricted by another party. It was long ago established, in the case of R v Penn which led ultimately to the foundation of Pennsylvania, that the judge in a criminal trial had no power to insist on any verdict from a jury — I have even heard of cases in which a judge has directed a jury to acquit a defendant whom he judged had no case to answer, only to have an awkward body of jurors decline to do so.

This anomaly was recently most prominently displayed in the notorious De Menezes killing by the Metropolitan Police who mistakenly took him for a terrorist, when a High Court judge was appointed a for·the·nonce coroner and informed the jury that he would not 'accept' a verdict of Unlawful Killing. Why, or how, is it the business of the coroner, rather than the jury, to decide what a verdict can be? And what is the point of being a juror on such an occasion? And what would happen if the jury returned & said, "We are all agreed that this was unlawful killing, and that is our verdict whatever you say, and what are you going to do about it?"

Perhaps one of the lawyers who infest Mudcat could explain these things, which are beyond my poor layman's powers to comprehend.