The Australian legal system is based on 4 key principles that were created to make sure justice is served; 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 trial, the judiciary is independent and impartial, and individuals have the right to a reasonable appeal. Of course, the principles are very complex and have many sub-principles, I will be going into detail about them later on. These principles are held at very high value in the federal and state courts as they are the building blocks of a fair conviction. When there is a miscarriage of justice, one of the principles has most likely been compromised. To closely analyse how the principles may be supported or compromised, I studied the case of John Button, which is widely known as one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in Australian history.
On the 10th of February 1963, John Button and his girlfriend Rosemary Anderson were playing cards at his parents’ residence in Perth, Western Australia. Anderson left the house in a huff after the couple had argued and began to walk home despite Button’s best efforts to drive her home. When Anderson vanished from view beneath an underpass, Button pulled over to the side of the road and waited, hoping she might reconsider her decision. After waiting for numerous minutes, he chose to drive through the underpass in search of his girlfriend only to find her laying on the dirt a few metres from the road. Upon further inspection, he discovered that she had been severely harmed and rushed her to the emergency room. After Button explained what had happened, the doctor contacted the police and began trying to save Anderson’s life.
From the minute police saw Button, they assumed he was the one that had harmed Anderson. Whilst Anderson was in the hospital, Button was taken to the police station to be questioned. It was five hours later when he was released, and the police had obtained a confession to the wilful murder of Rosemary Anderson. In these five hours, Button was heavily questioned, beaten, and verbally abused by the police, and due to his stutter and just finding out that his girlfriend had died, he was jittery and unsettled, police took this as ‘suspicious behaviour’. In an interview that occurred sometime later, Button stated “As I signed both the statement and the confession, I justified it by telling myself that they were never going to believe me, fully confident that no one could be charged for something that they had not done. I could see no danger in confessing and thereby removing myself from any further physical and mental abuse.”
The first injustices fall under ‘All individuals must be treated equally and reasonably by the law and police’. To elaborate, this principle was put in place to ensure that all Australians are to be treated equally by the court system and those enforcing the law, no matter of race, sexuality, gender, or social status. To be more specific, the part of this principle that was compromised is, the right to remain silent. John Button was not at all treated fairly by the police, as his right to remain silent was taken from him when the police began physically abusing him to get a confession, although Button had exclaimed multiple times that he did not kill Rosemary.
The right to a fair trial is probably one of the most well-known principles of justice, and one of the most important. Essentially it means that all Australians no matter what are entitled to a fair and equal trial. Some things that can happen to secure this is, an unbiased jury and judge, parties can only present relevant and factual evidence, adequate legal support, the accused must be presumed innocent before the trial begins, and the judge must make sure all parties have an equal chance of proving their side correct. As I said before, from the minute police saw him, they assumed he was the perpetrator, they were so set in stone that he was the only suspect, that all the ‘evidence’ they found was lacking perspective, and police linked it to Button in any way they could. So, it is obvious that this principle was compromised, in more ways than one. The second is, that much of the evidence presented in the court was circumstantial, and the state had made a lot of assumptions, which did not support the rule that parties must only present factual evidence. In the days before the trial commenced,
Button began to understand the severity of his situation and the fact that everyone thought he had killed his girlfriend. Button’s lawyer organised a deal, so he pled guilty to get a reduced sentence. He was charged with manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Button applied for an appeal many times, but it was always rejected, even though new evidence had come out. This evidence was a confession that came from an Australian serial killer, Eric Edgar Cooke, he had confessed to Anderson’s murder and many others, he even explained in detail that he hit Anderson with his car and drove away. But the police labelled this as ‘hearsay’ and said the timing of his confession was too good to be true, and it must have been fabricated. This is another example of one of the principles of justice being compromised as Button did not have the right an appeal, although he had reasonable grounds to want one.
After five years Button was released from prison and put on parole, in the following years he and his lawyers never stopped trying to prove his innocence. Which brings me to a principle of justice that was supported – the right to legal assistance – Button had access to a very strong legal team throughout the trial and the appeal, they consistently worked and looked for new evidence to prove his innocence.
He applied for an extension of his appeal, and in February of 2002, over thirty years after he was convicted, it was finally accepted by the court of criminal appeals. It took that long for the principles of justice to be followed correctly in this case. The new evidence that had been gathered after the first trial served as the foundation for the appeal. The Court concluded that they were authorised to re-examine a previous conviction when new technology showed that a possible miscarriage of justice had occurred and accepted the evidence that there had been considerable developments in the investigation of automobile crashes, and this could paint a better picture of what actually happened that night. In addition to the results of the crash tests, the court heard testimony from survivors of Cooke’s “hit and runs,” a witness who confirmed the position of Anderson’s body, and medical testimony that the injuries Anderson sustained could not have been caused by a car moving at the speed described in Button’s statement.
Almost 40 years after John Button was accused of killing the girl he loved, he finally showed the world that he was an innocent man, he had won the appeal, and on the 25th of February 2022 his conviction was overturned. John Button was innocent. In this case, the principles of justice were mostly comprised, there was a very large miscarriage of justice, and although Button got justice in the end, it ruined a very large portion of his life. The case of John Button is an extremely valid example of why the principles of justice are so important, because without them, things like this would happen so often. People’s lives would be ruined for no reason, and murderers would walk free.
Violet Wellisch, 24th June 2022.