Australia’s legal system is based on many rights that must be held true even after they are accused, the principles of justice are used to protect people against being punished for being wrongly accused of doing something illegal. This means that without these principles we would have many people who have broken the law walking free and many people who have done nothing wrong confined in prison. As shown in the Lloyd Rayney case most were not followed correctly, which led to the false imprisonment of Lloyd Rayney. An example of this is where in the Lloyd Rayney case he was presumed guilty by the media, giving the community the false impression of him being murderer before he could face his trial. Through the investigation of the Lloyd Rayney case, it will be shown how the court was not following some of these key beliefs and how it effected the entirety of how well the court system functions, how the court eventually granted his appeal on reasonable grounds and how he over a long period of time won his case.

One principle of justice that was upheld in the case of Lloyd Rayney was having the right to a fair trial. The court upheld an independent and impartial judiciary by not using a jury, so that Lloyd Rayney’s trial was not biased, therefore allowing Lloyd Rayney the equal treatment of others, and having innocence before being proven guilty. Having an independent and impartial judiciary is defined so the person or persons getting prosecuted must not be able to be subject to improper control or pressure, for example judges cannot be influenced by a media platform into believing that an innocent person is guilty before they’ve seen all of the evidence, or be persuaded by government or other interests. These rules also apply to trials with juries. This principle was supported in the trials of Lloyd Rayney by him applying to have a trial without a jury, as he thought that the jury would have already been influenced by the media, he was successful in obtaining a judge only trial. Having applied for a judge only trial was very important for his case, as most of WA had already been exposed to media on the basis that Lloyd Rayney was already guilty of murdering Corryn Rayney. Having a judge meant that the trial would be less biased towards believing that Lloyd Rayney was guilty, due to the judge having better training and experience from past cases distinguishing between bias media and the solid, reliable facts and evidence. Therefore the in the case of Lloyd Rayney the courts upheld having an independent and impartial judiciary, enabling Lloyd Rayney to not have a biased trial.

The principle of presumption of innocence was violated in the Lloyd Rayney case from the police having declared Lloyd Rayney guilty towards the public before the trial occurred. Having the right to presumption of innocence allows the person the be presumed innocent until they might be proven guilty, this prevents people from going through jail time, or receiving other punishments for something they never did. The presumption of innocence was violated by the police influencing the public into believing that he murdered Corryn Rayney. With the most of the public believing that he was murderer he would have had to experience a trial by media. A trial by media refers to having people judge a person on innocence or guilt based on having biased media. In this court case Lloyd Rayney as forced to endure the public presuming his guilt from news stations spreading false information about him. The false information stemmed from the police declaring Rayney as the “prime and only suspect”, focusing the publics attention onto Rayney. Additionally he was arrested in front of the supreme court, before he was proven guilty, attracting the even more of the public’s attention onto Rayney. It could have been prevented if the police did not publicly announce that Rayney was the “prime and only suspect” from the begining. As a result of the trial by media and the police announcing he was the only suspect, it can be seen that the principle of presumption of innocence was compromised in the Lloyd Rayney case.

The principle of high quality evidence was violated in the Lloyd Rayney case, there was false evidence created by the pathologist as they were examining the body of Corryn Rayney, and initially the detective did not find any seed pods on Corryn Rayney’s body, it was later discovered by a pathologist .  This violated the principle of high quality evidence because a police officer encouraged one of the pathologists to make the report seem more biased against Rayney by giving the pathologist an indication of where the case was going in terms of the death of Corryn Rayney. Additionally it was also violated in the report that one of the detectives made, the detective could not see any seed pods, but that in the later court trial he said that he had found seed pods on Corryn Rayney’s body, contradicting his report, and it was later found by the pathologists that there was in fact seed pods on Corryn Rayney’s body, the same seed pods from Lloyd Rayney’s garden, Liquidambar seed pods. These examples suggest that the detective’s evidence and the evidence from the pathologist were both unreliable and should not have been used in the trial of Lloyd Rayney. The trial could have been less biased if the court did not include the false evidence, and only included the reliable evidence found. Altogether the false evidence, this principle because it was not upheld, effected the trial by adding to the belief of Rayney’s guilt.

In summary, in the case of Lloyd Rayney many of the Principles Of Justice, for example high quality evidence, presumption of innocence, were not followed as they should have been and were used to falsely accuse Rayney of homicide, and to bring Rayney to court for something he never committed, adding to the trauma of people believing that Rayney murdered his own wife.