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The Australian legal system is built up of courts, tribunals and legal procedures. All of these are protected and ran by many people such as the police force, legal representatives and judges. All of these places and people use seven principles to make sure that while crimes are committed, accused people and defendants are all given fair and equal treatment by the law. These are used in courts and tribunals to ensure everyone is fair and equal. The seven principles are

• Equality before the law – This makes sure that all people are equally protected by the law and that no individuals or groups are above others.
• Right to a fair hearing – This ensures that there are unbiased trials, and the judiciary is independent and impartial meaning they must be unbiased and separate from parliament.
• Right to appeal – This means that if a person is unhappy with the outcome of their trial they can appeal to a higher court.
• Right to silence – This protects people from saying something under pressure to incriminate themselves and protects people that may struggle to communicate with law enforcement.
• Presumption of innocence – This means that everyone is equal and considered innocent until it is beyond reasonable doubt that they are guilty.
• High quality evidence – This ensures that the person convicted is found guilty beyond reasonable doubt

To ensure that everyone is protected by the law there are some things that police officers can say to people to ensure that they know what their rights. These are the right to remain silent to make sure that the person doesn’t say anything they shouldn’t, The right to a present adult/guardian if under 18, the right to be warned that anything they say can be used against them in court, the right to have a translator/interpreter if they don’t understand English and the presumption of innocence which ensures that no guilt can be presumed.

In this case that I am looking at a man called Lloyd Rayney was falsely accused of murdering his wife Corryn Rayney. On August 8, 2007, Corryn Rayney was reported missing by her husband. After a couple of days of searching the police found her body buried in Kings Park and she was pronounced dead. As the investigation went on and their was a lack of evidence the blame quickly turned toward her husband. On December 8, 2010, Lloyd Rayney was formally charged with his wife’s murder.

In this case is will be mainly speaking about the principles of justice that are High quality evidence, Presumption of Innocence and The right to appeal. In this case I feel that there is a lack of high quality evidence but also a lack of fairness when they found Lloyd guilty but I believe that they held up the right to appeal as they let him appeal.

In this Lloyd Rayney case one of the principles of justice that was compromised was high quality evidence. This Principle is used to make sure only high quality evidence is used and to avoid wrong convictions. In this case a large portion of the evidence was not high quality and lots of clues did not add up or make much sense. For example of the pieces of evidence was a card from the game celebrity heads which had the words “The queen” on one side and “Lloyd Rayney on the other.” Another one of the examples of this was that the night that they think he killed her the police estimated that he would have needed to walk a 90 minutes to get home from Kings Park (where she was buried), although nobody saw him during that walk. Another moment when they didn’t use high quality evidence was when they didn’t find a single bit of blood around their house but after all of it still convicted him of the crime. To correctly follow this principle the police would have to ensure that all of the evidence that they use makes sense and that it links up to the suspect. These instances demonstrate how seriously this principle was compromised throughout the course of the case.

This principle was comprimised as the police suspected that he was guilty of the murder before they had any evidence on him and as a result the case was all focused on him. This principle says that no guilt can be presumed until the charge is beyond a reasonable doubt which in this case it wasn’t. The police put out a statement saying that Lloyd Rayney was “the prime and only suspect.” This lead the police to launch many searches of his house where they found nothing. Throughout the investigations of Mr Rayney, the police did not treat him like an innocent man and Mr Rayney’s defence team said that the police were “single-minded and bias.” This principle was heavily compromised and the police did not follow any part of that principle. The police should not have released that statement and they should have kept an open mind that Lloyd Rayney may have not been guilty.

Although in this case many of the principles of justice were comprimised there was a few that were supported such as the right to appeal. Lloyd Rayney appealed his defamation case to a higher court so that he could receive a bigger payout for “damages and economic loss.” He won the case and won a then record payout of 2.6 million dollars. He was allowed to appeal his defamation without any problems which meant that the court allowed him the right to appeal. This principle of justice was supported and courts allowed him to fairly appeal his defamation.

The principles of justice are so important to ensure that the Australian legal system is fair and treats everyone equally. In this case exploring Corryn Rayney’s murder lots of the principles of justice were heavily compromised throughout the case such as, presumption of innocence and high quality evidence. These principles affected the case a massive amount and the police did not do a great job of handling his case. One of the principles of justice that they did do the right thing for was the right to appeal. This case overall was not handled very well but there was some things that the police did right.