In humanities we had to research the principles of justices and connected then to a case of our choose. The case that I chose was Andrew Mallard case. We had to choose a case that the person in question was wrongly convicted and where they have not had the principles followed my police, the government, parliament and many more people. The reason I choose Andrew Mallard was because when we were hearing about the options, I took an interested to this case and I wanted to find out more. When I started to do research, I got more and more interested in the case and what was going on in it. I found it incredible how so many of the principles of justice where not followed in this case.
Summary of Case
23 years ago, there was a brutal murder of a beloved female that followed with an innocent man going to jail. Perth, 24 May 1994, Pamela Lawrence was closing her store when someone came in and violently beet her to death. In the next days there was a big man hunt for who had killed her which led to 166 suspect one of them being Andrew mallard. At this time Andrew Mallard was living on the street, he had mental illness and had been convicted of petty crimes e.g., steeling. He was committed to Gray Land Mental Hospital and was there for 21 days while in hospital he was interviewed by the police. In this interview he did not get any legal representation and they did not film it at all in the 8 hours he spent there. After that they said that he confessed to the murder, but they still let him out on the streets. While he was on the streets, they hired an undercover officer to become his friend and surpliced him with drugs, alcohol and hotel rooms. He was later arrested, and police told the publics that he was the prime and only suspect of the murder. Ken bale was the prosecutor in this case. The case was based on the supposed confection as there was no DNA, no fingerprint and no blood even though this was a very bloody murder. The main piece of the evident was this drawing that he had supposably done in the first unrecorded interview of a ranch that was the suspected murder weapon. The judge and jury found him guilty of this murder. He was then sentenced to 20 years in jail in 1995. He appealed to the supreme court and the high court, but it failed. His family got a legal team to help them fight his case. His legal team found lots of underlying evidence that was very imported to his case. The attorney general gave then some information so that they wouldn’t make a public speech, this evidence was evidence that the lawyer had kept a secret from the court. The evidence was saying that the drawing of the ranch could not have killed her. They knew this because they had done a test on a pig’s head, which showed that it would have not been possible to have killed her that the ranch. With this evidence they now could reappeal to the court. In this new appeal they were able to release him, and the high court quashed his convictions in 2005, ordered a retrial. He then got relisted after 12 years of being in jail. But the police still thought he was the prime suspect. Andrew Mallard legal team and other people put a lot of pressure on the police to have another look at the case. The police decided to do a cold case review. With the new technology they detected a fingerprint that match a man that was in jail for another murder. His name was Simon Rochford, and he was serving life in jail for the murder of his girlfriend, 7 weeks after Pamela Lawrence murder. Both victims had similar injuries in their head which where coursed by an instrument that Simon had made. There was also other evidence e.g., Paint that marched the paint in Simon rucksack that the police still had. Within days of Simon Rochford being questioned by the police he took his life in prison. After this Andrew Mallard was not considered a person of interest to the police concerning this murder. There were investigations that where take to see why this append and who was to blame for this wrongful conviction. After this Andrew Mallard started art therapy, he also got compensation of $3.25 million. He then moved to England for a couple of years then moved to Hollywood. In Hollywood he met someone, and we engaged to her. On 19 April 2019 Andrew Mallard was in a hit and run and sadly died. His family was devastated with his death.
Paragraph 1 (About Right to Legal Representation)
In Australia our legal system is based on the principles of justice, some of them are, everyone has the right to appeal, right to legal representation, high quality evidence. These are just some of the principles of justice that we use. Australia uses these principles so that everyone gets a fair trial in court and that everyone can take responsibility for their actions. If we didn’t have these legal systems, then people would be wrongly accused of crimes and people who did the crime would not take any responsibility for their actions. An explanation of one of the principles of justices is the “Right to legal representation” this comes in to place no matter if they are poor or rich or have a disability of any sort. This is to make it a level playing field for everyone in court and so that people don’t get convicted unfairly. An example of where this is displayed in Western Australian history is with the Andrew Mallard case. In this case when they held their first questioning of him, they did not allow him to have any one to represent him and they did not film the questioning where, he supposable confess to killing her. This is a perfect example of when the principles of justice were not followed with in this case. Throughout some case in Australia’s history not all the principles of justice are being followed when dealing with some cases an example of one of these cases is Andrew Mallard case.
Paragraph 2 (About Right to High Quality Evidence)
The principle of everyone gets the right to high quality evidence was violated in the Andrew Mallard case. When the police collected evidence to convict Andrew, they got witness. When they got the witness evidence if it did not follow with what the police wanted, they would just go back to the witness and get them to change it. This violated the principle of high-quality evidence as they evidence was only of high quality when they had changed it. The evidence was not enough to convict him if they hadn’t change it which means it was not high quality. This example demonstrates that the principle of justice was not being upheld in the conviction of Andrew Mallard.
Here is a video if you are sick of reading
Paragraph 3 (About Right to Appeal)
Another principle of justice is that everyone gets the right to appeal this was supported in Andrew Mallard case. In his case when he got convicted and sent to jail, he was still allowed to appeal for his realise which he did several times. To appeal you must go to the high court and they will look to see if it was unjust or unfair. In Andrew Mallard case he had to appeal a few times till be got relist. On the appeal that worked it was because they had discovered new information about his case and the evidence which led the court to believe that he was not the murder. This meant that he was able to be relist from jail after 12 years. This is supporting the principle of everyone gets the right to appeal because they allowed him to appeal several times while he was in jail. As a result of this, it can be seen that the principle of everyone gets the right to appeal was supported in the Andrew Mallard case.
Conclusion
In conclusion the Andrew Mallard case there were times when the principles of justice were upheld and there were times when they were not upheld. I have found by researching this case that we need to do something about the principles of justice not being followed. After writing this essay I feel very sorry for Andrew Mallard and his family and anyone else who have faced such injustice as Andrew has. I think that this has been a very interesting project to do and I have liked doing it.