Exrigger/Dervish
You both raise good points. Perhaps I can shed light…
The reason why Ms Sutherland, the Coroner, overruled her predecessor on Article 2 was the submission to her by the family that there were 12 common factors between the 2011 death of Sean Cunningham, and that of Jonathan Bayliss. She accepted the evidence that MoD had assured the Cunningham Coroner that all these issues had been, or were being, dealt with. She put this to MoD, and it admitted the ongoing breaches. Additionally, she cited another case, at RAF Mona in 2007, criticising MoD again for not reducing risks to tolerable and ALARP.
But, when considering the question of corporate manslaughter, she did not take these prior breaches into consideration, only looking at them as they applied to the Bayliss case. She ruled that these breaches (and the lies) ‘did not fall far below what can reasonably be expected of the organisation in the circumstances’. She also said that ‘there was not a sufficiency of evidence’ of MoD’s breaches (despite it admitting them).
Nor did she take not account that the same underlying breaches – refusal to implement mandated regulations, accompanied by a series of false declarations that they had been implemented – had led to scores of avoidable deaths in accidents where the root cause had been notified in advance to senior officials, officers and Ministers.
Like me you will find this strange, and I’m sure there is a proper legal explanation, or a legal nicety that I’m unaware of.
Dervish, in reply to your question about the evidence, in addition to written submissions the family raised all the above in court, and the Coroner accepted it all as true.
It is worth noting that the family did not ask the Coroner to consider gross negligence manslaughter against the pilot. Quite the opposite; they noted ‘he was as much a victim of MoD’s negligence’. It was corporate manslaughter she was asked to consider, because that is where the evidence lay. Inexplicably, in her written decision the Coroner said the family had asked her to consider manslaughter against the pilot.