Key takeaways
Visual material needs careful, case-specific handling
Coroners must balance family wishes with fairness and evidential relevance.
Emotive content can impact fairness
Sensitive media may affect witnesses and jurors.
Early disclosure supports fair, efficient hearings
Advance review, editing and proportionate use can help manage sensitive media.
Families have long wished to share photographs of their loved ones at inquests, and in recent years this has increasingly extended to video clips and other digital material. For many, visual material is seen as a way to ensure their loved one is remembered as a real person rather than simply a name in the proceedings.
Despite this growing trend, there remains little national guidance on how coroners should approach family submitted photographs or videos. Chief Coroner’s Guidance No. 41 acknowledges that visual material may be used (including video) but offers little direction on when such material should be permitted, how it should be presented, or what safeguards should apply. As a result, coroners retain broad discretion, and practices vary significantly between jurisdictions and individual coroners.
For families, the desire to share images is often deeply personal. For coroners and Interested Persons (including NHS Trusts and healthcare providers) the key consideration is ensuring that any material shown is relevant and does not risk undermining the fairness of the proceedings.
This is particularly important in jury inquests. Videos of the deceased in life can be highly emotive, and coroners must guard against the risk that jurors may be influenced by sympathy rather than evidence. Some coroners therefore choose to show videos only after the jury has reached its conclusion. Others may allow limited material during the evidential stage, restrict the use of videos to still photographs, or decline to show visual material altogether if its relevance is unclear.
Where photographs of the deceased are displayed in court during witness testimony, coroners must also consider the impact this may have on those giving evidence. Having an image of the deceased facing a witness while they are being questioned can be emotionally challenging and, for some, significantly off putting. In certain cases it may heighten anxiety, distract from the evidence being given, or create a sense of pressure that undermines a witness’s ability to provide clear and accurate testimony. For these reasons, the Bench Book notes that coroners should carefully consider the placement and visibility of such images and may decide that a photograph should be positioned where it remains visible to the coroner but not to others in the courtroom.
Where visual material is proposed, several practical issues arise:
Disclosure: Any photographs or videos should be raised with the coroner in advance before the hearing, rather than being displayed in court without prior consideration, ensuring the coroner can determine what is appropriate and when it should be shown.
Editing and redaction: Videos may need to be shortened, redacted to remove third parties, or reformatted to ensure compatibility with court technology.
Court time: Coroners must consider whether the material will assist the inquiry or risk diverting attention from the statutory purpose of the inquest.
Legal representatives play a crucial role in navigating this sensitive area. For those acting on behalf of Trusts and healthcare providers, this includes:
Reviewing proposed visual material for relevance and proportionality.
Making submissions to the coroner where necessary.
Supporting a balanced approach is particularly important for legal representatives acting for other Interested Persons. Raising concerns about prominently displayed photographs or the playing of highly emotive videos can place those advocates in a difficult position; objecting in open court may risk appearing insensitive to the family’s grief, even where the objection is necessary to safeguard the fairness and integrity of the proceedings.
Given the increasing use of digital media these requests are becoming more common. The wider range of digital material can be valuable, but also raises questions about relevance, accuracy, context and potential emotional impact on those in the hearing.
This article was co-authored by Paralegal, Anna Bunting.
