Deaths
All suspicious, sudden and accidental deaths must be reported to the procurator fiscal, and they have a responsibility to identify if any criminal action has occurred and, where appropriate, prosecute. Where a criminal offence is suspected to have occurred the procurator fiscal will instruct the local police to investigate.
Fatal accidents can be subject to a Fatal Accident Inquiry, a form of judicial inquiry akin to an inquest but conducted without a jury. Fatal accident inquiries are conducted in the Sheriff Court. An inquiry must be held for all deaths in custody and fatal accidents, with other accidental deaths subject to inquiry at the discretion of the procurator fiscal.
Read more about this topic: Procurator Fiscal
Famous quotes containing the word deaths:
“You lived too long, we have supped full with heroes,
they waste their deaths on us.”
—C.D. Andrews (1913–1992)
“On almost the incendiary eve
Of deaths and entrances ...”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“As deaths have accumulated I have begun to think of life and death as a set of balance scales. When one is young, the scale is heavily tipped toward the living. With the first death, the first consciousness of death, the counter scale begins to fall. Death by death, the scales shift weight until what was unthinkable becomes merely a matter of gravity and the fall into death becomes an easy step.”
—Alison Hawthorne Deming (b. 1946)