Principles Of Justice
There are several principles of justice that are designed to promote equality, fairness, and access for all citizens in Australia. These principles are important because everyone is equal and should be treated that way no matter their race, religion, background, and gender. An example of this is that a person with a criminal background and a person with a clean record should both be presumed innocent until proven guilty by the judge and/or jury. Another example is that a male and female suspect should also be treated fairly and equally in the courtroom. The Australian government displays these principle in order to have a better legal system and make every decision fair.
The Scott Austic trial breached the principle of High Quality Evidance. High quality evidance is where every trial needs to have strong and legitimate evidance to decide on a verdict to prove someone guilty. The Scott Austic case involved 34 year old male, who was falsely accused of killing his pregnant girlfriend, Stacy Thorne in early 2007. Stacey Thorne was found at this scene of this crime with 21 stab wounds all over her body created by a 15 cm knife. An example High Quality Evidance being violated in this case is the cigarette packet being found which was not found three days prior to the search meaning that it was possibly planted by the police which is improper police conduct. Another example is that the alleged murder weapon (a 10 cm knife) does not match up with the wounds meaning that was also planted to frame Austic. These examples demonstrate that multiple pieces of fake evidance was planted in order to persuade the trial against Scott Austic.
Another principle that was violated in the Scott Austic case was the principle of presumption of innocence. The police force only investigated one suspect, Scott, instead of many other that could have also been guilty and it turns out that he wasn’t even the right person. Scott was sentenced life in prison but after 12 years and going over the evidance many times, the police eventually realised that the evidance, timeline and other factors did not add up and he was in fact innocent. An example of this is that as soon as they found one piece of evidance they created the whole verdict based on it without any other further investigation. These examples demonstrate that the principle of presumption of innocence was violated on multiple occasions which cost Scott 12 valuable years of his life.
Overall, multiple principles of justice were breached in this case including the principle of High Quality evidance and the Presumtion of innocence. These breaches has cost scott and his family 12 previous years of his life and he missed important things in his children’s lives. The police force still aren’t sure who has killed Stacy Thorne and his unborn child and have officially made it a cold case. Police are encouraging people to come forward with new information but nothing has been said in over 6 months. If the police investigated multiple people 10 years ago, there might be more information current day.
Good work!