Supreme Court allows appeal against fresh inquest into ‘Good Samaritan’ bombing

Sean Dalton with his wife Polly at home in the 1980s.

The Supreme Court has allowed an appeal by the Attorney General of NI against a bid to secure a fresh inquest into the death of Sean Dalton in the ‘Good Samaritan’ bombing.

The court delivered judgment on Wednesday on judicial review proceedings originally brought in 2014 by the family of Sean Dalton, who was 54 when he accidentally triggered an IRA booby-trap bomb in Kildrum Gardens on August 31, 1988.

Mr. Dalton’s neighbour Sheila Lewis, aged 68, and friend Gerry Curran, aged 57, were also fatally injured in the bombing incident.

The judicial review, in the name of Mr. Dalton’s daughter Rosaleen, which originally challenged the decision of the Attorney General NI not to order a further inquest into the death of her father, was refused in 2017.

However, in 2020 the Court of Appeal ruled that ‘an Article 2 investigative obligation’ had not been satisfied. This referred to Article 2 of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) which obliges states to safeguard life.

This was subsequently appealed by the Attorney General to the Supreme Court which on Wednesday delivered judgment on ‘whether the procedural obligation to investigate pursuant to Article 2 of the ECHR applies to the State in respect of Mr Dalton’s death’.

This case concerned the extent to which the positive obligation on public authorities to investigate an individual’s death under article 2 of the ECHR, which deals with the right to life of citizens, and was given effect in the UK by the Human Rights Act 1998 (extends to deaths that occurred before the HRA came into force).

Justices Lord Reed (President), Lord Hodge (Deputy President), Lord Sales, Lord Leggatt, Lord Burrows, Lady Rose and Dame Siobhan Keegan unanimously allowed the Attorney Generals’ appeal on the grounds that the, ‘Act does not impose any procedural obligation to investigate deaths which occurred more than 12 years before it came into force on 2 October 2000 (“the commencement date”), absent exceptional circumstances which are not present in this case’.

In an 115 page judgement Lord Reed said: “Since Mr Dalton’s death occurred more than 12 years before the Human Rights Act came into force, and the Convention values test is not in issue, the Attorney General’s decision not to order a further inquest into his death cannot be challenged under that Act.”