Australia’s legal system is based on many principals which is deigned to give everyone a fair chance in court. These principals are important so no person with more importance or more power will be treated differently than a regular citizen. A example of a principal of justice is the right to high quality evidence. This is so an assumed offender won’t get punished off weak and possibly un trustworthy evidence such as tampered evidence. Another example of a principle is everyone has a right to have a presumption of innocence so before someone is proven guilty by unreasonable doubt.

In the case of 30-year-old Scott Austic killing 34-year-old Stacy Thorne. He was convicted of stabbing her 21 times. There were many problems in court regarding the principals of justice. The principal of high-quality evidence was violated in the fact that the police tampered with the evidence. This principal was made so a jury won’t be persuaded by bad or false evidence. If planted evidence is presented to the court (which it was) it could imprison the person and that isn’t justice. In the case of Scott Austic there was a search of a nearby area of the murder with nothing found. Then a few days later the detectives did a second sweep and picked up a 10cm knife. I believe that this is planted because the people who conducted the sweep are trained to do what they did and have had lots of previous experience in this subject. and the knife was stained with blood and the land is plain with no grass. It would be difficult to miss. There was also a cigarettes packet found with Stacy Thorne’s blood found in Scott Austic’s veranda. However, when the forensic people took images of his house after the murder on the table in the veranda there wasn’t a cigarette packet. However, when the detectives came back the following day they came across a packet with blood on it where a photo was taken a day earlier in the same spot without the packet.

The principal of the judiciary is independent and impartial was supported in the Scott austic case. This principal means that the jury of 12 randomly selected people will not have any bias. In the first trial held in 2009 Scott austic had a trial in front of a jury who didn’t have any previous connection to him or Stacy Thorne so they didn’t feel more compassion for one than another. The jury hadn’t seen much of the news so their perception of Scott wasn’t swayed by the media. The case for Scott Austic was not bias and the judiciary was independent and not bias to one or another and hadn’t been swayed by any not court evidence or factors.