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Amy Winehouse’s Second Inquest Confirms the First: Alcohol Poisoning

Amy Winehouse

The results were never really in doubt, but now it’s doubly official: For a second time, a coroner has ruled that Amy Winehouse died from alcohol poisoning.

According to the Guardian, coroner Shirley Radcliffe entered a finding of death by misadventure, saying, “She voluntarily consumed alcohol, a deliberate act that took an unexpected turn in that it caused her death.” The inquest reiterated the previous determination that Winehouse had 416 milligrams of alcohol per deciliter in her blood. (A pathologist confirmed that more than 350 milligrams can be lethal.) Paramedics discovered Winehouse’s body in her apartment in July 2011, dead at age 27.

Winehouse’s parents had questioned their daughter’s cause of death, but a family spokesperson previously said they weren’t responsible for the new inquest. Instead, it turned out that the coroner at the previous hearing, Suzanne Greenaway, stepped down just a month after her Winehouse ruling. Her qualifications were under investigation, and she had been appointed to the job by her husband.

This latest inquest, then, effectively just confirms the first was on the up and up, like Chief Justice John Roberts giving President Obama a second oath of office in 2008 after both flubbed the words the first time around.