Report of the Inquiry into the circumstances of the Death of Bernard ...

The Court said that any failure to comply with the procedural requirements of Article 2
should be met by a different investigation complying with those requirements.
2.6 The High Court also said that the family’s application raised issues similar to
ones already being considered by the courts in some other cases. Therefore the
application should not be reconsidered until the other cases had run their course.
Related cases were decided by the House of Lords by 2004. Among other things, it was
established that the English courts could not impose requirements that investigations
should comply with Article 2 when considering events that happened before the Human
Rights Act 1998 incorporated the European Convention into English law. As Mr Lodge
died before the Act came into force on 2 October 2000, the only recourse for the family
lay in an application to the European Court of Human Rights.
2.7 Instead, Mr Lodge’s family asked the Prison Service to agree to set up an
investigation complying with the procedural requirements of Article 2. I was approached
by the Prison Service in 2005 about the possibility of conducting an independent
investigation. I reviewed the documentary evidence held by the Prison Service. I met
family members and their legal representatives in November 2005 to find out their
concerns and objectives. With the Prison Service’s agreement, I shared with the family
the report and supporting evidence from the Prison Service investigation and other
documents that I had obtained.
2.8 The family made submissions to the Prison Service about the scope and nature
of the investigation they sought and the arrangements to meet legal costs. In 2007 broad
agreement was reached between the family and the Prison Service and I was
commissioned to investigate the circumstances surrounding Mr Lodge’s death, in
accordance with Article 2 and drawing on evidence gathered in a Prison Service
investigation and additional documentary and oral evidence at my discretion.
2.9 The inquiry was commissioned initially as an ad hoc investigation with no
statutory powers. The investigation was converted to a statutory inquiry under section 15
of the Inquiries Act 2005 on 23 February 2009.
2.10 The purpose of the inquiry was to examine the care afforded to Mr Lodge by the
Prison Service in the period leading to his death, in order to identify any deficiencies that
may have had an influence on his death and to help prevent future such tragedies.
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