inquisita

Inquest comes from the Old French enqueste, from the Medieval Latin inquisita — things inquired into, from the verb inquirere: to seek into, to examine thoroughly. The in- prefix intensifies the root quaerere, to seek or to ask. An inquisita was literally a seeking-into, a formal examination of facts by those with authority to compel testimony and draw binding conclusions. The word shares its ancestry with inquisition, inquiry, and question — all built on the same act of demanding an answer.

The institution took its enduring English form from the Normans. William the Conqueror's Domesday Survey of 1086 was itself a kind of grand inquest — royal commissioners rode through every county asking sworn local men to state what lands existed, who held them, and what they were worth. The technique of swearing a panel of local people to report facts to royal authority became the foundation of the English jury system, the coroner's inquest, and the grand jury investigation. All are descendants of the Norman practice of putting questions to sworn witnesses.

The coroner's inquest developed its specific form in the thirteenth century. The coroner — from the Latin corona, crown, the officer of the crown — was required to hold an inquest whenever a sudden or violent death occurred, summoning a jury of local men to view the body, hear testimony, and determine the cause and manner of death. The coroner's jury could return a verdict of murder, manslaughter, misadventure, or suicide, and could name a suspect to be committed for trial. This was not merely administrative: an inquest verdict of murder created a legal obligation to prosecute.

The inquest outlasted many of the legal institutions around it. In England, the coroner's inquest survived the abolition of the grand jury and various other procedural reforms. It acquired new importance in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as the mechanism for investigating deaths in state custody, public disasters, and other matters where the public has a legitimate interest in an official account. Inquests into deaths at Hillsborough, in police custody, and during military operations have produced extensive public records and driven legal reform.