The principles of justice aim to uphold equality and fairness for all who are convicted and placed on trial. Andrew Mallard, is a victim of police corruption who was falsely convicted for the death of Pamela Lawrence and imprisoned for almost 12 years. Police had convicted Mallard for killing Pamela Lawrence in her store, Flora Metallica on the 23rd of May 1994. The case was littered with actions conducted by police that imposed the principles of justice and the oath they had sworn. Due to numerous principles of justice being compromised such as high-quality evidence, individuals having a fair hearing and the presumption of innocence before proven guilty, the extent of justice and fairness upheld was minimal.
High-quality evidence entails how all evidence should support the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The concept of high quality evidence is to ensure the entirety of the evidence shows that the convicted has intentionally committed the crime. The principle of justice and high-quality evidence was compromised in the Mallard case through many actions the police had done. This principle of justice is very important as everyone is presumed innocent from the start, and the prosecution would need high-quality evidence to persuade the judge that the convicted has intentionally done the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. The video which had Mallard’s “confession” had compromised this principle. At this time, Mallard was suffering from many mental illnesses. He had suffered from depression and bipolar disease which can cause mood swings. The prosecution had used this as their main evidence against Mallard and during the interview, Mallard was suffering from unpredicted mood swings, he was forced to sit in an interview for 13 hours and had no guardian or parent to help him. Because of his mental state, he had thought that he was helping the police in the investigation and had theorized based on what the police had told him. Police also had witness statements on seeing Mallard robbing Flora Metallica, but the witness statements had been tampered with by police. Witnesses were told what to say and police had retaken their statements over and over to make them fit in with the case. From this evidence, we can understand that the principle of high-quality evidence was fully compromised throughout Mallards case and trial. Instead, the police could make sure Andrew Mallard had a lawyer or guardian to help him understand the situation and the witness statements could’ve been recorded.
The right to a fair hearing is a principle of justice that was relevant to the case. This means that all individuals in a trial should have a fair, unbiased and independent judge and or jury. This principle is important to the justice system as without this, the rates of people falsely getting convicted will raise dramatically and no justice would be served in trials. The principle, the right to a fair hearing was compromised through unpresented evidence the police had found, how the jury did not remain impartial and more. Later throughout the case, it was found out that police had not disclosed evidence that might have helped Mallards case. The disclosed evidence was a test to see if the Sidchrome wrench could’ve been the murder weapon. The police had specialists who used the Sidchrome wrench on a pig’s skull to see if the wounds matched Pamela Lawrence’s. The test results had led to a negative, the Sidchrome wrench had a much different wound pattern than the ones on Pamela Lawrence. However, despite this information, the police had still prosecuted Mallard as the killer without even disclosing this information in court. Police had also tampered with witness statements and had even given Mallard a piece of Jewelry from Flora Metallica which had affected the trial to become more unfair than it already was. During this trial, the jury had not remained unbiased as they knew the police were prosecuting, so obviously the police are right. Police are police, so they are doing the right thing, the jury had thought so they made the decision of finding Mallard guilty and imprisoned him for at least 20 years. Overall this principle of justice was compromised entirely throughout the trial with police tampering with information, undisclosed information and the jury being biased. The jury being biased because of police prosecution is a major flaw in our judiciary system as there is no way on preventing this without changing the judiciary system. The police could get an independent trusted party to gather information/evidence for them to reduce and or stop police corruption/tampering.
The presumption of innocence is a principle of justice that states that all people in a case or trial should presume the prosecution is always innocent before proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The right to presumption of innocence was compromised as police had acted like Mallard was the murderer throughout the case. The police had known Mallard was suffering from mental disorders, despite this, they had demanded information from Mallard, forcefully took his only shoes and clothes to sample and forcefully interviewed him without a parent or guardian to help him understand the situation better as he was suffering from many mood changes throughout the many interviews the police had taken with him. The jury had also compromised this principle of justice, as they had seen the police immediately at the start of the trial prosecuting Mallard, so they had suspected Mallard to be guilty of his crimes as police are police and the jury thought they were doing the right thing. This principle of justice was completely compromised, as the jury had believed Andrew Mallard was guilty from the start because the police were prosecuting him and the police had presumed Andrew Mallard guilty from the very start and had acted very harsh on Mallard during many forced interviews. Instead, the police could make sure that Mallard had a lawyer or guardian to help him understand the situation better. The jury being biased towards the police is also a major flaw in the judiciary system.
Due to certain principles of justice being compromised by a large margin, the conviction has not upheld the standards of the judiciary system. High-quality evidence was compromised by false witness statements and false evidence such as forced interviews. The right to a fair hearing was compromised by unpresented evidence in the trial as the evidence greatly suggested that Mallard was not the murderer, the police tampered with information and biased the jury toward a higher authority. The presumption of innocence was compromised by the treatment of police towards Mallard as they treated him like he was the murderer and the biased jury’s towards higher authority. Wrongful convictions are detrimental to an individual’s reputation and self dignity, therefore to prevent these types of cases in the future, every person should have the right to a fair trial where the principles of justice are upheld to the highest degree.
