The principles of justice are rules made so that no matter what you did or how rich you are, you are treated the same and don’t get special treatment. These rules are equality, fairness, and access. Within these principles are rights you have that are encompassed by these principles. The principle of equality means that each person no matter what age, race, gender, or sexuality will be treated the same as any other person if they were convicted of the same thing. Fairness means that it’s fair and that there will be no faking evidence and that people won’t lie or harm one another. Access is about the ability to get everywhere like getting to the courtroom but it also means getting out like getting an appeal to leave jail.
These rules are required because otherwise, it wouldn’t be fair. A principle of justice that ensures it is fair would be the right to a fair and unbiased jury. Since the jury decides whether someone is guilty or not then them using only the information shown in the case and not from the media or elsewhere is crucial.
An example of when a jury wasn’t involved was in the Lloyd Rayney case. The reasoning behind this is to support another principle of justice: to have an unbiased and fair trial. If they had indeed used a jury they would have had to get it flown in a long with the judge which isn’t reasonable. So instead they just went without the jury.
Via a revised look at the Mickelbergs case along with some confessions, it will be shown that some of the principles weren’t upheld and because of this, some innocent people were kept in jail.
The principle of fairness was compromised in the Mickelbergs case. The rights that were compromised in this case are the right to remain silent and police conduct. These two were both compromised in one action. This action was to take peter Mickelberg to a secret location, strip him naked, beat him, and then give a fake confession. This isn’t fair for a number of reasons, one being that the police lied in court, and because of their higher ranking, people believed them. It is also unfair because they gave a fake confession and stripped and beat the youngest of the three Mickelberg brothers. Another right that was compromised was the right to high-quality evidence. the police had a witness lie in court to back them up. Because their lying wasn’t enough apparently.
One thing that was unfair about the Mickelbergs case in terms of equality was that the police arrested them just because of their prior convictions and because of said convictions were so sure it was them they didn’t do any proper investigation.
The other principles were upheld, however. The principles of equality and access were upheld. Apart from the unfairness of the evidence they were treated equally as other crimes of a similar kind were. The Mickelbergs also had plenty of access to the court, case, and other useful things they could do like appeal which they did several times before it was accepted.
The people that were involved in this case were: Peter, Ray and Brian Mickelberg, Don Hancock and Tony Lewandowski. the crim which was the stealing of 49 gold bars colectively worth $653,000 at the time occured in the 22nd of june 1982. the three brothers were sentenceed in 1983. Peter got 16 years but only served 6, Ray got 20 years but only served 8 and Brian got 12 years and only served 9 months. all the convictions were overturned in 2004. Brian got out earlier in 1984 because his conviction was removed because of appeal how ever he sadly died in 1986 because of a plane crash. all three convictions were found out to be false in 2004. despite having to upkeep the law the police opted to try anything to get the Mickelbergs in jail. one of things they did was to strip and beat Peter, the youngest of the three and then in court say that during questioning they all confessed. the police did this because since they had a prior conviction of a similar crime the police thought that it had to be them so they did nearly no investigating and also got a witness to lie in court for them.
Bibliography:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth_Mint_Swindle
https://www.mediastatements.wa.gov.au/Pages/Gallop/2002/06/New-evidence-on-Mickelberg-case-referred-to-Police-Royal-Commission.aspx
http://forejustice.org/db/Mickelberg–Peter-.html
http://forejustice.org/db/Mickelberg–Brian.html
Good work Chris. You might want to think about introducing the principles in your introduction that you are going to discuss when talking about the Mickelberg case.