An Open Verdict on Terry Newton’s Death

Terry Newton’s death left a question the coroner could not resolve with certainty: whether he had been capable of forming an intention to end his own life. The former Great Britain rugby league international was 31 when police found him dead at his home in Orrell, Wigan, on 26 September 2010. At the subsequent inquest, Wigan coroner Jennifer Leeming recorded an open verdict after hearing evidence that drugs and steroids may have impaired his judgment.

His wife, Stacey, had told a friend she was concerned for his safety before police discovered him. The hearing was told that Newton had left notes around the house expressing a desire to end his life. But Leeming distinguished that evidence from the question of his capacity at the time of his death. “I cannot be sure beyond all reasonable doubt that at the time Mr Newton did that act that he had the capacity at the relevant time to form an appropriate intention to end his own life,” she said.

Seven months earlier, the Rugby Football League had suspended Newton for two years after a positive test for human growth hormone. Wakefield Trinity Wildcats terminated his contract. A hooker who had also played for Leeds, Wigan and Bradford, Newton had won 15 Great Britain caps. After the ban, he became a pub licensee. In his autobiography, “Coming Clean,” published that June, he said he had used human growth hormone to revive his body.

The inquest’s toxicology evidence concerned substances found after his death. Reports showed that Newton had taken the anabolic steroid nandrolone within the preceding week. Traces of cocaine and amphetamine were found in his urine, along with alcohol and antidepressants. The hearing was told that none of the banned drugs was a direct factor in the cause of death, though those drugs could have lowered a person’s mood. Human growth hormone could not be tested for in post-mortem samples.

Leeming said steroid abuse may have led to behavioural changes and concluded, on the balance of probabilities, that those changes had left Newton unable to form an appropriate judgment about the nature and quality of his actions. That finding did not establish suicide as the legal conclusion. Her uncertainty about his capacity to intend his death was the reason for the open verdict.

The coroner also said Newton had indicated that he hoped to work with the Rugby Football League to warn other sportsmen about the dangers of drugs. His wife and close family members attended the hearing at Bolton Coroner’s Court, but Stacey was too upset to give evidence. Newton left two young daughters. “His loss is a tragedy to his family and to the community,” Leeming said, “particularly here in Wigan.”