“In this project, we learnt about the principles of justice that uphold Australia’s legal system, such as the presumption of innocence, an impartial judiciary, and the right to legal representation. I studied the case of Lloyd Rayney and analysed how these principles were both upheld and violated in this case. After writing an essay on the topic, we were required to incorporate feedback and edit the essay so that it was fit for online publication. This essay is the end result of that editing process. It demonstrates my ability to take feedback and refine a piece of written work to produce a professional result. I also learnt how to work with others because I got help from Shray Patel which helped me add more to my essay.
In 2007 Corryn Rayney went to a dance lesson but when the class finished, she did not return home. The next day Lloyd Rayney got a phone call saying that she did not come into work and this is when they started looking for her. They then found her car at king’s park. When doing a search of king’s park, they then found her body in the ground.
When the investigation started, they interrogated two suspects, but they were let go. A bit into the investigation they announced on live news that Lloyd was the prime suspect. This caused almost everyone to believe that Lloyd was the prime suspect, but Lloyd acted like he did not care for the case. When searching his house, they then made a link between soil on Lloyd that was also at the front of their house.
Lloyd was later arrested on the side of the road in front of lots of people and then they ended up going to court and pleading not guilty. This time of the investigation they found two seed pods in Corryn’s hair after searching her hair the day before and not finding any. The defence accused them of planting evidence. This made the judge not use the evidence as they did not know if it was planted or not.
I think that the principles of justice were upheld in some circumstances but were also not in some areas like fairness because they were much more thorough than they were the other suspects that the interrogated and soon later Lloyd would have the whole media and people who knew the case against him which would make it much harder. There was one moment where I do not think equality was not upheld because they arrested him in the middle of the street so everyone could see which is a part of the case that made people against him. I think access was not broken because everyone knew the law and rules and him being a barrister would have also helped.
Presumption of Innocence means that the accused is innocent until proven guilty. Evidence: Media coverage, Prime suspect from the police. On live news, they said that Lloyd was the prime suspect without even interrogating the others as much as him. Through this whole case, almost everyone that knew this case thought that he was guilty which would have made it much harder to get proven innocent.
Reliable evidence was a big part of this trial because there was not much evidence pointing towards Lloyd being the killer which forced them in my opinion to plant evidence in Corryn’s hair. This is the main part of the trial that I think was unacceptable because them planting evidence is something that I hate. Them not having enough evidence even made them think of why she was buried the way she was.
In the end, Lloyd was found not guilty which I feel is because he did not have a jury which I feel gave them a much better result. The killer still has not been found today and I think this is because Lloyd didn’t kill her, and they have no clue who else could have done it.