The Lloyd Rayney case is known to be the most publicized case in Western Australia. It has many ways to support and/or compromise the Australian principles of justice. This case had many twists, turns and surprises. On July 16, 2012, the trial began. The prosecution produced circumstantial evidence including a dinner place card with Lloyd Rayney’s name found near the burial site, brick dust and soil allegedly consistent with being dragged along a driveway, and seed pods in her hair. Justice Martin handed down a not guilty verdict on November 1, stating that the “case by the State is afflicted by improbabilities and uncertainties”.
Australia has many principles of justice to be sure that all Australian citizens are treated equally under the law, but the four principles that I will be focusing on are, All individuals are equal before the law and must be treated fairly by the law and by the police, Individuals have the right to a fair and unbiased trial, The judiciary (court system) is independent and impartial and Individuals have the right a reasonable appeal. Australia’s legal system is based on English Common Law which is a trial law that has a judge, jury, and such. These principles are important to ensure that all decisions made by authority are unbiased, consistent, and reliable. An example of unbiased decisions from the Lloyd Rayney case would be when Lloyd requested a trial by judge which is a trial that has no jury, he felt the need for a trial by judge because he knew that it would not be possible to have a fair and unbiased trial. This demonstrates that the principles of justice are very much needed in Australia’s legal system and if we did not have them, Australia would not have the fair and unbiased trials they have today.
The Lloyd Rayney case involved Lloyd Rayney being accused of willfully murdering his wife and being named the prime and only suspect of the case. Despite Chief Police Investigator Senior Sergeant Jack Lee’s controversial description of Lloyd Rayney as the “sole suspect” during a police-only press conference in September 2007, he was not charged with the murder until December 2010, more than three years after the incident. The principle of all individuals are equal before the law and must be treated fairly by the law and by the police was violated in the Lloyd Rayney case. The Lloyd Rayney case was a case of a 44-year-old mother being killed and buried in a clandestine grave. Her body was later discovered in Kings Park, Perth, about a week later, with no obvious cause of death. The principle was violated because the police completely ignored other crucial evidence because they were so convinced that Lloyd was the only suspect and the only one who could’ve killed his wife. And even after Lloyd was found not guilty, the police refused to start a new investigation to find the real killer after Lloyd’s request. This example demonstrates that the police officers that took the lead of this case did not take enough time to investigate other possible suspects as they were too focused on Lloyd which made him, and many other people feel that he was not being treated equally under the law as the principles of justice suggest.
The trial for this case was handled by a judge only, with no jury, at Lloyd Rayney’s request in October 2011. The reasons for this were unknown at the time but were eventually revealed in March 2012. Lloyd Rayney desired a trial without a jury because he believed that the trial’s publicity would make a fair jury trial difficult. In February 2012, former Northern Territory Chief Justice Brian Ross Martin was appointed as an Acting Justice of the Western Australian Supreme Court to preside over the trial; a judge from outside Western Australia was used to ensure impartiality, as both the victim and the accused had previously held senior legal positions in the state. This is an amazing example of how this case is supported by the principle ‘Individuals have the right to a fair and unbiased trial’.
In August 2013, prosecutors filed an appeal against the verdict in the Supreme Court of Western Australia, which was heard by three judges from various states: Mark Weinberg, Anthony Whealy, and Terence Buddin. If granted leave to appeal, the prosecution planned to argue that the trial judge’s findings in relation to motive were not supported by the facts his Honour discovered in connection to the respondent’s and deceased’s respective attitudes. The appeal was unanimously dismissed, and the trial judge’s decision was upheld. On October 18, 2013, the office of the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions, who was in charge of the case, said that it will not pursue a new appeal to the High Court. Although the appeal was dismissed it still demonstrated and supported the principle of justice that gives all individuals the right to reasonable appeal.
In the end, Lloyd Rayney was not sentenced because the case lacked key evidence, and “discreditable conduct does not show guilt, and suspicion, even strong suspicion, falls far short of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” “Evidence concerning such conduct was not permitted to indicate that the accused is a person of poor character,” the Judgment Summary continued. The fact that the accused participated in discreditable conduct and thus could be considered a person of bad character cannot be used to infer that he is the type of person who might kill his wife, or that he is likely to have killed her because of his bad character. Such argument is unreasonable and therefore prohibited.”
Lloyd Rayney and his family never had the same life they did after this case even after being proven not guilty, but the four principles of justice helped him stay away from a sentence.