The principles of justice were set up to ensure that any person who is involved with the law is treated with fairness and equality. Not upholding these principles can have disastrous effects and serious consequences as seen in the Gene Gibson case. In the Gibson case, many principles of justice were compromised, and only a few were followed.
Mr Gibson is from Kiwirrkurra, a remote community near Broome. Mr Gibson’s first language is not English; he also has a low IQ, so his cognitive ability is poor. On the morning of 26th February 2010, Mr Warneke’s body was discovered by a taxi driver, on the side of the road.
Two years later, the WA police named Gibson as a person of interest in this case, and officers from ‘Operation Aviemore’ flew to Kiwirrkurra to interview him. He was not provided with a translator from Aboriginal Legal Service (ALS) during his interview, they did not ensure that he understood the questions being asked of him.
Mr Gibson had a background history of involvement with the police as he had previously been involved in drug and alcohol offences. On the night in question, he was driving a stolen vehicle and rumours had started that the stolen vehicle was involved in the homicide.
When the police interviewed Mr Gibson, he was interviewed as a witness, not a suspect. He, therefore, was not cautioned or arrested, nor was the interview recorded. After six hours of interrogation, Gibson confessed to the killing of Warneke.
In March 2014, before the trial date, Mr Gibson applied to the WA Supreme Court to rule that the police interviews were inadmissible because they were involuntarily obtained, which breached the Criminal Investigation Act. In July 2014, one month before the trial date, the WA Supreme Court ruled that the interviews were inadmissible to court.
Even though the WA Supreme Court ruled the interviews admissible, the trial still went ahead, and Justice Hall sentenced Gibson to seven years and six months imprisonment.
In the Gibson V State of WA case, the principle of a thorough police investigation was partly followed, but also mostly compromised. It was followed because the police continued to investigate the homicide for two years after the incident. Gene spoke hardly any English and was cognitively impaired.
When the police first interviewed Gibson, he was interviewed as a witness. However, when Gibson admitted to the homicide, the interview continued with Gibson as a suspect. It was later found that the police didn’t caution Gibson, provide access to a lawyer and interpreter, nor record the interview. These are all the rights afforded to people who are arrested as suspects. This was because the main investigators were not trained correctly, didn’t follow procedures set in the WA Police Manual and didn’t follow the Criminal Investigations Act (CIA) 2006 (WA).
Also, it could be argued that the principle of having the right to silence was not followed because after Gibson had spoken to his lawyer, his lawyer told the police he no longer wanted to answer any further questions. However, the police ignored this request and continued to question Gibson for a further six hours. Due to Gibson’s cognitive impairment and not understanding his legal rights, Gibson confessed, likely due to duress, to the homicide of Warneke. As Gibson had confessed, Justice Hall sentenced him to seven and half years imprisonment.
Therefore, this was a gross miscarriage of justice and rightly, his sentence was unanimously quashed during his appeal in 2017. It was found that a number of his rights were violated and that the police interviews were inadmissible because they breached the CIA (2006) and the Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC) report demonstrated that the case had ‘systemic weaknesses’. For example, two witnesses fabricated a statement that claimed that they saw Gibson assault Warneke. However, the defence team did not find out until later that one of these men retracted his statement within minutes because they were being pushed for answers during their interview.
Gibson was awarded $1.5 million in compensation for his wrongful imprisonment for a crime that he did not commit.