In this project we learnt about the principles of justice that upheld Australia’s legal system. I studied the case of Scott Austic and analysed how the principles were supported or violated. The Australian legal system is built on a number of key principles that are designed to help protect Australian citizens. These principles are important because they ensure that all people who come before the courts, a fair or unbiased hearing or trial and respect all reasonable and fair standards for determining what people deserve. For example, the right to appeal means that a person can request for a higher court to look at a case to see if the decision was unfair, and if so, to re-do the trial. Australia uses the principles of justice to assess case fairness and the administration of justice. The Scott Austic case involved the principles of presumption of innocence until proven guilty and high quality evidence which was found unreliable.
Case summary
Scott Austic was wrongfully found guilty of stabbing his pregnant lover Stacey Thorne in December 2007. Noongar woman Stacey Thorne was stabbed 21 times in her home, and she stumbled 100 meters down the road and died in the arms of her neighbor. She was 22 weeks pregnant and “She was looking forward to having her baby. She wanted to be a mother” Stacey’s sister said. After a week of investigations, police arrested a mechanic, father of two, Scott Austic, for her murder. Scott and Stacey had known each other all their lives and Scott was the father of Stacey’s unborn child. After 12 years of imprisonment, Scott was released after suspicions that evidence shown at trial had been placed or tampered with. The police was later found guilty for planting the evidence against him.
High Quality Evidence
The case mostly involved the principle of “high quality evidence”, meaning how evidence has to be reliable or obtained correctly, in this case, the evidence shown into court were unreliable and failed to be upheld. Police found crucial evidence on the night of the murder, a can of Jim Beam, 10 cm knife which was covered in Stacey’s blood and found on a paddock between both of the homes of Scott and Stacey, police also found a cigarette packet with Stacey’ s blood on it which was discovered on the table of Scott’s home. The jury found Scott guilty of Stacey’ s murder, a decision his current lawyer says was warranted based on the evidence presented at trial. However, after 12 years, Scott was later acquitted after revelations that crucial evidence had been planted against him. This is because Scott’s mother acquired a private investigator to look at the case because she knew that something was off. The investigator found something that was crucial to Scott’s release. The investigator noticed how the cigarette packet found in Scott’s home was only seen on a digital photo and not a video footage taken the day before. This meant that someone came into Scott’s home and planted the cigarette there, which questioned the integrity that the police had sworn to. It was later revealed that the location of the Jim Beam can, and the knife had already been searched through a few days before by professionally trained officers, and there was no way that they would off missed it if it was hidden in “plain sight”. The knife was also not long enough to have inflicted Stacey’s deep wounds. Through all of this, the police failed to uphold to principle of “high quality” evidence, as they were found guilty of planting the evidence against Scott. This is the reason that this principle was severely breached in the Scott Austic case and the consequences that followed like Scott Austic’s life sentence.
Presumption of Innocent until Proven Guilty
Another element of the Scott Austic case was the principle of presumption of innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt, meaning when an accused comes into a court the judge and the jury must presume that they are innocent, until the prosecution proves then guilty so that there is no other explanation as to who committed the crime, or how the event happened. Scott was wrongfully accused of murdering Stacey Thorne after police claimed that on the night of the murder that Scott grabbed a Jim bean can and went to Stacey’s house to stab her, police says that this because Stacey had been 22 weeks pregnant and had been hiding it from everyone, and apparently Scott had despised it, messaging Stacey that he would do anything for her to not have the baby because he would lose access to his two other daughters. But Scott claimed that he had not been aware that she was pregnant, and he had refuted this after being shown the text messages he had sent to Stacey. In the trial in 2009, the prosecution claimed that Scott had lied about the clothes he was wearing on the night of the murder and that he had burnt them in a stove to conceal the crime, he was then proven guilty by the jury. His release was due to suspicions that police had planted evidence against him, planning to prove him guilty. The police failed to uphold the principles of their duty and were found guilty for their actions against Scott. This had compromised the case due to false accusations made by the police which made Scott follow the consequences for a crime he didn’t even commit.
Conclusion
In Scott Austic’s case, justice was upheld to a disappointingly low extent, due to the hindering of many principles of justice. Scott had suffered a miscarriage of justice which shows that the principles of justice were severely compromised in this case. The outcome of the case was after 12 years he spent in prison, his conviction was revoked in a suspicion that evidence had been tampered with and planted against him. Scott Austic could prepare to sue for his miscarriage of justice since the case is still ongoing but there are many other things that could happen. In this case the principles of justice were definitely not upheld, which shows the miscarriage of justice, when justice is upheld, the court system works well and fulfills its purpose.