Lloyd Rayney Perth Case
“Everyone is equal before the law”… This should have been the case for Lloyd Rayney.
introduction:
There are a number of principles that have been created and designed to withhold equality and fairness within the legal system and courts. They each have been properly created in order for each case to have the utmost fairness. Most importantly, there are the four key principles which were formed in order build our legal system and to maintain the rights of all people and ensure their safety and fairness when on trial. This means that those who need to be on trial or involved within a case have their rights maintained and the court system will be as fair as possible. They key principles, such as ‘Equality before the law’ or ‘, all contribute to making the courts fair to all people, which essentially means that individuals must have their rights protected and given, regardless of who they are, their race, identity and so on, and no individual or group will have any upper hand in the legal range. We keep these important principles in place in order to keep our legal system safe, fair and strong. When exploring the Lloyd Rayney case, we will dive into an example of how these principles can end up not strongly maintained, which can cause severe injustice.
Case Summary:
It all started when Corryn Rayney had failed to return home to Lloyd Rayney and her two children. Corryn was attending her usual boot-scooting class and was expected to return home around 9:00pm. When she had not, Lloyd became very concerned as to her whereabouts, but decided she may have just gone out with her friends. The next day, she had still failed to return home, and even did not attend her job. Lloyd then sent out a missing person case. Further into the investigation, he car was found parked and abandoned near Subiaco, and the police decided to follow the oil trail. It landed them in Kings Park, where they also found Corryn Rayney dead and buried. The largest piece of evidence they found at the time was a dinner place card with Lloyd’s name on it. Soon enough, all odds turned onto Lloyd and he ended up facing large quantities of bias within the police force and the community. His house was searched multiple times and was publicly labelled as the “prime and only” suspect. Later, he was then charged with the murder of his wife Corryn, yet 2 years after he was proven innocent. He was given a court room without a jury and faced multiple days of expensive court times.
The principle that “everyone is equal before the law” means everyone has the same rights in a court of law despite race gender etc. Unfortunately, this was not the case for Lloyd Rayney, and throughout the investigation of the case, Lloyd ended up facing large amounts of police bias and injustice during conferences and in the public. A key example of this would be how the officers had investigated the case with the intent to prove Lloyd guilty, as it would be a much easier theory to back up.
This example also ties in with the principle that “everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty”. This was also breached in the case as Lloyd was publicly announced to be the “prime and only suspect”, which created a lot of bias amongst society, and everyone had believed that Lloyd was guilty. Lloyd was not promised the presumption of innocence and ended up having to file a defamation report against the officers on the case. Another aspect in the case was that there were two other people that could have been considered suspect, yet the police officers continued to target Lloyd and decided not to interview the others. The state could have avoided this by simply not targeting Lloyd and instead focused on many different outcomes. These examples demonstrate one of the many ways that the principles of justice were breached throughout the case, including issues such as bias and inequality.
Another unsupported principle in the case was the need for high quality evidence in order for an accusation to be strong and plausible. In order for a correct judgement to be made, key and solid evidence is a must. In the Rayney case, investigators and the state did not have strong enough evidence to prove without a doubt that Lloyd was guilty. For example, it was stated multiple times by Justice Martin that the accusation against Lloyd lacked logical and crucial evidence throughout.
The officers on the case could also only rely on their speculations, as Justice Martin also stated; ” The state failed to fill evidentiary gaps of their circumstantial case with anything more than speculation”. The main captures of evidence provided by the state were weak and simple, including a dinner table place tag that was “apparently incriminating”. This was not enough to prove guilt. alternatively they should have spent more time finding and understanding the evidence, as well as not leaving the cases outcome in the hands of simply ‘speculation’. These statements and examples from Rayney’s case make it clear that the state failed to provide reasonable and strong evidence in order to prove their accusation correct.
Unlike the compromised principles stated before, the principle that “Everyone has a right to a fair hearing” was actually supported and accommodated to during Lloyd’s court trial. This was a refreshing contrast to the many principles that were violated. Once the Rayney case had been exposed to the vast public, opinions against him grew stronger. This created a wide amount of bias against him, as since only evidence against him had been exposed, people equally decided that Lloyd was guilty, before the trial had even commenced.
After the opinions had formed, the bias had to be taken into consideration as well as any other public issues. In this case, right to a fair hearing was upheld for Lloyd as the judge provided Lloyd with a jury-less trial. Despite it becoming an incomplete trial, the judge still granted Lloyd’s wish to not have a jury. This was a smart choice to make as it felt unjust to have a jury that already had negative opinions on his innocence. If there were to be a jury, the bias against him would be too strong, and would therefore make it unfair. It was a necessary adjustment to the case in order to uphold the principle. Upon hearing about this example, it is key to know that some of the principles were correctly enforced, and allowed Lloyd to have a fair court trial, even with the other violated principles.
concluding statement:
Taking each discussed principle into consideration, it is clear to us that from the beginning of the Rayney murder case that the necessary principles were not upheld to their true power, and instead put Lloyd in a tougher position. This includes the violation of “equality before the law” and “presumption of innocence”, where in both cases Lloyd was put at the disadvantage as there was a lot of bias regarding his actions and the police’s ideas of the cases. In comparison, there were many more principles that were not upheld than ones that were kept just. Upon my research and findings, I feel that this case was not in check with the key standards as it created an unjust and biased court trial.