Lloyd Rayney, presumption of innocence, and the mob.
It is with regret that I admit this: before the start of the biggest trial event in Perth’s recent history, I was convinced Lloyd Rayney was guilty of murdering his wife, Corryn. Obsessed by the media coverage of the story since the early reports of Corryn’s disappearance in August 2007, all of the suspicious pieces pointed towards confirming the soap opera cliché that the husband did it.
Statistically, in real life, women are more likely to be killed by their intimate partners than by somebody else. But the Rayneys soon appeared to be more at home in a soap opera narrative than one reflecting real life. Both were high profile players in Perth’s small legal fraternity and comfortably well-off. Their Como home, soon splashed on the news, was not the stereotypical Perth suburban 4 x 2. Their daughters, we soon learned, went to one of the most privileged private girls’ schools in town. They moved in social circles inclusive of Perth’s professional elite. The Rayneys were, it became more and more apparent at the media’s insistence, not like ‘us’.
And perhaps this is why we so readily believed in the inevitabilities of the most sensational plotlines, and were so convinced - when discussing the case at dinner parties and BBQs all over the city - Lloyd Rayney did it. ‘But of course he’ll get off’, we agreed. We knew that kind of privilege only welcomes more. And there will be some, on the face of Thursday’s not guilty verdict, who will only have had that suspicion confirmed. Twitter quickly reflected this sentiment: from tweets of ‘I still think Lloyd Rayney is the murderer’, to assertions he must have had an accomplice, to comparisons of him to O. J. Simpson. But I, for one, am no longer convinced of Lloyd Rayney’s guilt.
The media coverage pre-trial could only by overly reliant on police and prosecutorial perspectives, so public perception could predominantly only consequentially be one of determining his guilt. But trial by media and its resulting mob mentality, as we should know by now, is a dangerous thing. How quickly we have forgotten the lessons of Lindy Chamberlain, for example. How quickly we forget that it is a fundamental principle of a just society that a person accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. It is to our shame we were not prepared to apply this principle to Lloyd Rayney as he awaited trial.
There will be some who shall never get past the suspicious pieces that point to Lloyd Rayney as the killer. Media inferences convinced them of his guilt before he was even charged with a crime, and nothing will disavow them of this belief. But as Justice Martin noted in the delivery of his judgment, that while such inferences are open, ‘sometimes an apparently incriminating piece of evidence has an innocent explanation that is not obvious; sometimes an apparently implausible explanation is true. Human affairs are not like jigsaws cut to size and shape’. Suspicious pieces and inferences do not prove guilt, and none of us, I’m sure, want to live in a society where they do. Real life is not like a neatly wrapped-up episode of Law & Order, after all.
Despite the immense resources allocated to this case, the prosecution was unable to prove Lloyd Rayney murdered his wife. Their inability to prove his guilt has (ironically for them, I’m sure) proved his innocence. It is impossible to have followed the evidence put forward day after day in the trial and believe it conclusively implicates a guilty man. It is impossible to find fault in Justice Martin’s justifications for interpreting the State’s case as ‘beset by improbabilities and uncertainties’, where ‘crucial evidence is lacking and the absence of evidence is telling‘; and where ‘endeavours by the State to fill critical gaps’ are ‘no more than speculation without foundation’.
To still believe the impossibility that Lloyd Rayney is guilty of murdering his wife is to believe in the improbabilities of soap operas. It is to find comfort in the idea that Rayney, from a world of privilege not like ours, somehow as a result deserves this very public fall from grace, and deserves always to be considered as the murderer who got away with it all. It is to forget that Lloyd Rayney is indeed not a soap opera character, but a real person, a real father, a real worker, and even, a real, grieving husband. But most importantly it is to forget that he is innocent, and to forget that the presumption of innocence is a sacred democratic principle that must always be upheld. We should all be disgusted that Rayney, when leaving court proven to be an innocent man, was subject to catcalls and heckling while walking with his daughter. We must uphold society’s most important principles over the mentality of the mob.
We live in a state where innocent people, like Andrew Mallard, can be convicted of a crime and lose their liberty, and it is a good thing that this did not happen here. But we also live in a state where high profile murders, such as the so-called Claremont Serial Killings, remain unsolved. Corryn Rayney is now, sadly, one more such unsolved murder.
Lloyd Rayney may have gotten a fair trial, but none of this is fair. His trial comes at a considerable cost to the public purse, and at a much more considerable personal, reputational and financial cost to Lloyd Rayney and his daughters. It also comes at the most significant cost of all, the fact that Corryn Rayney’s murderer is still unknown more than five years after her death. This state and its public, owe both Lloyd and Corryn Rayney, and their families, an apology for allowing this to happen.