Appendix B — Preliminary steps when a death results from lethal force
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After a killing by a member of the security forces in Northern Ireland, a veil of silence generally falls over the incident. The crucial thing for relatives and their legal representatives is that they begin to gather as much information as they can, as quickly as they can.
A number of practical steps should be considered:
- Inform the coroner for your area that you wish your doctor to attend the official autopsy. If this cannot be arranged quickly enough it is also possible to organise an independent autopsy. The importance of this is that it gives families early information on how their relative died to compare with accounts that circulate. Experience has shown that it takes six months for an autopsy report to be released to families and some coroners refuse to release them at all.
- Try and contact as many eye-witnesses as possible and ask them to make proper statements available to the family’s solicitor. This is important because the police refuse to make statements available to the family.
- Note down relevant information regarding weather conditions, date and time of incident, events preceding and following the incident. Ideally, these should be made available to the police so they cannot claim to have been ignorant of relevant information.
- Ask the police for access to any forensic items of relevance to the investigation so that you can have independent examinations conducted.
This is a very preliminary list of tasks. The Committee of the Administration of Justice is compiling a more exhaustive resource for families, but would be happy to give advice in the meantime. CAJ can be contacted on Belfast 232394.
Committee on the Administration of Justice, 45–47 Donegal Street, Belfast BT1 2FG. Phone Belfast 232394 or Fax Belfast 333522.