On Monday the 23rd of May 1994 Andrew Mallard had been wrongfully convicted of murdering Pamela Lawrence in her Flora Metallica jewellery store. Andrew Mallard had come to the polices attention about having attempted burglary and how he had suffered a nervous breakdown while living on the streets, following his breakup with his girlfriend. The principles of justice (as a general statement) should be defined as a baseline ruling on how individuals should be treated “generally” or in a court trial/case. The principles of justice relate and or link to fairness, entitlement and particularly revolve around equality. In this context I will be talking about the right for an individual to have a reasonable appeal, presumption of innocence until proven guilty, and the need for reliable evidence to be presented in a court case.
The right for an individual to have a reasonable appeal. The right to a reasonable appeal refers to when or if an individual’s court case is unsuccessful, that they have a right to have their verdict re-judged so that they may be able to prove themselves innocent of their accused crime, and, as mentioned in the title of the principle of justice, that the appeal should be reasonable. This principle of justice is important due to the fact that, without it people may not be given a “fair”, second chance to prove their innocence. In the Andrew Mallard case this principle of justice was somewhat violated. Andrew Mallard’s first appeal was unsuccessful, although this may either be due to biases or the fact that he may not have presented enough information, as after this appeal, he had appealed once more and had successfully cleared his name, most likely due to the fact that he had found significant evidence in order to back up his verdict. So, this principle of justice had been both somewhat compromised and supported.
Presumption of innocence until proven guilty. This principle of justice means that an individual should be viewed as innocent no matter what their reputation is, what crime they are accused of, and how they present themselves to be. This principle of justice is significantly important because without it biases would have already been made against the accused or for the accused, and it would most likely, either decrease or increase the chance of the accused to be found innocent or guilty of their crime that they have been accused of. In the Andrew Mallard case the police as well as a majority of the public had, unfortunately, already made their mind up that Andrew Mallard was guilty. Leading to him being treated wrongly in the wide public and, as mentioned before, lowering his chances of him being proven innocent, which is extremely relatable towards this court case as Andrew Mallard had been found guilty of murdering Pamela Lawrence, and was sentenced to 20 years in jail in his first court trial. Clearly this principle of justice was violated in the Andrew Mallard court case.
My last principle of justice is the need for reliable evidence to have been presented in the court case. This means that evidence presented in a court case must be reliable in order to make someone, that is accused of their crime to either be guilty or innocent. This is important because without this principle of justice in play the accused may either be made guilty extremely easily with unreliable evidence or innocent, leading towards the fact that an innocent man could be put in jail, or a murderer (as an example) could be left free to walk in the public. In the Andrew Mallard case, the prosecution (alongside with the police) had presented manipulated evidence in the case with a recorded tape that will be explained in more detail later on. This recorded tape had most likely been used in the court trial in order to make Andrew Mallard even likelier to have been the murderer of Pamela Lawrence, which, is a complete miscarriage of justice. As mentioned in the previous context the “tape” that had most likely been presented in the court trial, was a recorded interview after Andrew Mallard had befriended an undercover officer that had purposely fed him information, so that when it had come time for him to have been recorded in a police interview (following having been interviewed before, without being recorded) he had appeared to have been guilty. Clearly this principle of justice had been violated. Though even with unreliable evidence, that had caused him to have been sentenced to jail for 20 years. He had managed, somehow, to have his name cleared and had been released from jail after 12 years in jail. The evidence shown shows this principle of justice to have been compromised.
With almost 15 years of Andrew Mallards life gone due to many miscarriages of justice, and lots of misleading evidence he had finally been released, though the saddest part, was, just after having a received a monetary compensation of $3.25million from the WA government and having moved to LA to start a new life he had unfortunately been murdered in a hit and run. The true murderer of Pamela Lawrence had been found to have been Simon Rochford who was serving time in jail for having murdered his girlfriend. His fingerprints had been found on a display cabinet in Pamela Lawrence’s jewellery store as well as paint shavings on Pamela Lawrence’s body belonging to Simon Rochford’s knapsack bag.
To summarise, the 3 principles of justice stated, all were violated, significantly, besides a principle of justice that was both protected and violated. And, as mentioned before, somehow Andrew Mallard had cleared his name and proven himself to have been innocent. Which goes to show that nowadays people (generally) should be more careful whether the accused is “truly” guilty or innocent of their crime that they have been accused of.