Australia’s legal system is based on the principles of justice which is used to ensure fairness for all citizens. This means that regardless of one’s identity, race or looks they should receive a fair trial in court and should be judged by an unbiased court. One example is the presumption of innocence, which means that the accused shall remain innocent until proven guilty by valid evidence. Another example of a principle is the right to remain silent. This means when the accused is interviewed by authorities they have the right to not say anything and remain silent.Furthermore the principle of high quality evidence is very important. This means that in order for the accused to be proven guilty there needs to be lots of reliable evidence that supports the case. Through an analysis of the Andrew Mallard case, it will be shown that the principles of justice were upheld and violated.
The principle of presumption of innocence was violated in the Andrew Mallard case as the police just assumed Andrew Mallard was the killer. This value is very important as it ensures that all individuals are treated equally before the law, so the accused must be treated innocent until proven guilty by the verdict. In this case there were many instances were police wrongfully accused Mallard as the murderer of Pamela Lawrence. On the afternoon of Monday May 23rd 1994 Ms Lawrence was bludgeoned to the head. Mallard became a close suspect, as before the crime was committed, he was recently in a psychiatric hospital for attempting a burglary where he impersonated a police officer. During this time the police had many suspects and who ever had an alibi would be crossed off their list. The police questioned Andrew but he never told them about anything of his whereabouts during the many interviews. He was also suffering from bipolar mood disorder, a mental illness. Andrew was prone to delusions so when he was interrogated he genuinely thought he was assisting the police in their investigation. Andrew made up many different theories including one that the murderer killed Pamela with a wrench. From this the police assumed that Mallard killed her but from the analysis of her body there were no marks indicating that she was killed with a wretch. The police essentially fed Mallard with information and tricked him into making a confession. This violates the principle of presumption of innocence as there was insufficient evidence supporting the idea that he even killed her. These examples demonstrate that the investigation of Andrew Mallard was very inconsistent with the known facts and that this principle was not upheld by the prosecution.
Another element of the Andrew Mallard case was the right to remain silent which was violated throughout his case. With the investigation of Pamela Lawrence’s murder the police strongly believed that Andrew Mallard was the prime suspect. Due to this they kept in close contact with Mallard. They interviewed him a numerous amount of times with over 10 hours worth of questioning. As said before Mallard came up with many theories on what he thought the murder would have done such as how Mrs Lawrence may have been killed but this was never a confession. After many hours of interrogation the police claim to have had Mallard confess to the murder even though he claimed to never have said these statements. The police unfairly took advantage of Mallard’s psychological illness to make him ‘confess’ to Mrs Lawrence’s murder. During his trial he claimed that the detectives fabricated information and parts of the interview and that they had ‘harassed, intimidated beaten and threated to shoot him as they interrogated him.’ This violates the principle of the right to remain silent as Mallard was forced against his will to answer the police. Also, there were many interviews which were unrecorded meaning that police could’ve done many harmful things to Mallard. Andrew’s family hugely supported him as his family members believed that the police made up many statements to prove that he was guilty. This demonstrates that the principle of the right to remain silent was compromised as Mallard was unwillingly forced to answer the many questions asked of him.
With the investigation of the Andrew Mallard case the principle of high quality evidence was definitely compromised. This principle is very important when determining the verdict for an accused. It means that if the accused is proven to be guilty it must be supported by reliable and valid evidence. Mallard had a very unfortunate outcome from his trial as the persecutors provided the court with very unreliable and incorrect evidence which was unjust and unfair. During his trial the police with held vital information from the court that would favour Mallard in any way. This makes Mallards chances of having fair case low. An of example how this principle was violated is the trinket that Mallard supposedly had on his person which was from the jewelry shop that Pamela Lawrence worked at. When the police were very suspicious of Mallard they assigned an undercover team to spy on him and frame him by placing a piece of jewelry on him so that it could be used against him in court. One detective pretended to befriend Mallard and also supplied him with drugs to make him high so that they could place the trinket on Mallard proving him guilty. Another example of this violation is the theory Mallard made up about the murder weapon being a wrench. As stated earlier the police say that Mallard had claimed to have killed Pamela with a wrench but after a forensic analysis of her body none of the marks indicated show that a wrench could possibly do something like that. In addition there was blood found on Mallard’s jacket which so happened to be a rare blood type that Pamela also had. From this the police just assumed that the blood was Pamela’s meaning that Mallard killed her but after DNA testing it was found that it was a positive match with Mallard’s blood. These facts illustrate how Mallard’s case was partial towards one side and how unfair it was for him.
