The principles of justice are rules that must be upheld in court in Australia to ensure fairness in the legal system. They are: everyone is equal before the law, everyone has the right to a fair trial, the judiciary is independent/impartial and everyone has the right to a reasonable appeal. There are many cases in which the principles of justice are disregarded, one of which being the case of Andrew Mallard. Andrew Mallard, a British-born Australian man, was wrongfully accused of the murder of Perth woman Pamela Lawrence. Ms Lawrence received several blows to the head on May 23rd, 1994 at her jewellery shop in Mosman Park, and died in hospital hours later. Following her death was a manhunt, with an initial 136 suspects, one of which being Andrew Mallard. He was living on the street after having a mental breakdown and attempting a burglary in which he tried to impersonate a police officer. This attempted burglary landed him in Graylands Psychiatric Hospital, where he caught the attention of police. After several police interviews, Mr Mallard was arrested for murder after speculating how the victim could have died, and drawing a picture of a wrench that police said was the weapon Mr Mallard used to kill Ms Lawrence. Andrew protested, saying the police fed him information to say back to them, but instead the police handled it as a confession, and he received a sentence of life in prison.
The evidence shown in court was heavily manipulated against Mr Mallard. One of the pieces of “evidence” that resulted in his conviction was a video of the last 20 minutes of an interview performed by the police. In this video, Mr Mallard theorises how the murderer could have killed Ms Lawrence, speaking of the killer in the third person. The police disregarded the fact Mr Mallard was speaking in the third person and instead claimed that it was a confession. This among many other instances of tampered “evidence” broke the principle that everyone has the right to a fair trial, as this trial was certainly unfair.
Andrew Mallard was interviewed by police many times during the search for Ms Lawrence’s killer, and most of these interviews were not recorded. One of these interviews was conducted after Mr Mallard had spent a majority of the previous night at a nightclub where he had been beaten and was running on very little sleep. The police conducted this interview knowing what had happened to him the night before. This interview was unrecorded and lasted 3 hours. Normally an interview would not be conducted when the interviewee had such little energy and was not in a good state, which was extremely unfair and definitely disregarded the principle that everyone is equal before the law.
The Court of Criminal Appeal handled the situation very poorly. They said that Mr Mallard had stated 15 things in his “confession” that only the killer could know, even though they were common pieces of information to those handling the case, and they also disregarded a large amount of important evidence. A forensic pathologist did an experiment with a wrench (the weapon police believed Mr Mallard had used in the murder) and a pigs head to see whether or not a wrench could inflict the same injuries that were found on Ms Lawrence’s body, and found that a wrench could not have caused those injuries because it would inflict blunt/crushing injuries, and the injuries found on Ms Lawrence’s body were far more intense. The court ignored this evidence. This disregarded the principle that the judiciary is independent and impartial.
Clearly, this case was handled very poorly and failed to uphold the principles of justice. After his sentence was removed, Mr Mallard said that he was unable to live in Perth anymore because members of the public still treated him as if he was a murderer. This injustice followed Mr Mallard around until the day he died, and his life was ruined by selfish police officers.