Justice is Blind but has a Strong Bias

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There's something rather odd about an inquest report written by Georgia Loney (Jail law call for careless drivers, The West, 18 Jan 2011). Loney reports that State Coroner Alastair Hope made an "open finding" as to whether a pedestrian died due to "unlawful homicide [caused by the driver of the car that hit him] or as a result of an accident".

The report also says that, "Mr Hope said two possibilities were that [the driver] was either looking out of his car's rear-view mirror or had fallen asleep before the collision." The coroner recommends that the law be changed to allow the driver to be charged with "causing death".

Let's get this straight.

• The coroner does not have enough evidence to know what happened.
  
• The coroner is willing to guess that the driver was careless in either one of two ways.
  
• With a lack of evidence, the coroner decides to blame the driver.
  
• The coroner sees no possibility that the pedestrian was at fault.
  
• The driver has broken no law but the coroner would still like to charge him with something.
  
• The driver is not charged and cannot be charged but -- according to the coroner -- he is guilty.
  

And I always understood that we are all innocent until proven guilty.

There is no evidence to allow the driver to be charged. If exhaustive evidence had been collected, the worst it would indicate -- according to the coroner -- would be that the driver may be "guilty" of a non-existent law.

So the driver is innocent. If we had the extra law, there is not enough evidence to charge the driver so he is still innocent. We do not have the coroner's recommended law so the driver is innocent.

If we did have the law and if we did have the extra evidence, the driver could still be innocent... We don't know -- because the case has not been taken to court.

Why is the coroner implying that the driver is guilty?

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