Death of Corryn Rayney

Corryn Veronica Ann Rayney, née Da Silva, (born 1963) migrated to Australia with her Indian family in 1973 as refugees from Idi Amin's Uganda. Her death occurred on or about 7 August 2007, her body being discovered a week later in a clandestine grave in Kings Park, Perth, with no clearly established cause of death. Her husband Lloyd Rayney, a prominent barrister specialising in criminal prosecution, was charged with her murder but found not guilty after a trial before a judge only. The acquittal was unanimously upheld by a court of appeal in August 2013. The state's police commissioner and attorney general declined to acknowledge documented procedural mistakes, and refused to instigate a fresh search for the killers, leading to calls for a federal investigation into the matter.

The Rayneys had two daughters and resided in the Perth suburb of Como. At the time, Lloyd Rayney was involved in a Corruption and Crime Commission inquiry into the misconduct of police officers in a murder investigation. Corryn Rayney was employed as a registrar at the Supreme Court of Western Australia. She was last seen alive at 9.30 p.m. on 7 August 2007 at a bootscooting class. A week later, police discovered her abandoned car and followed a trail of oil from it to the grave in Kings Park.

Investigation and trial

Although Lloyd Rayney was controversially described by the chief police investigator Senior Sergeant Jack Lee as the "only suspect" at a police press conference in September 2007, he was not charged with the murder until December 2010, more than three years after the event.

An affidavit filed by the prosecutors indicated that the case was circumstantial. The prosecutor's opening address to the trial said that the state's case was circumstantial but the evidence of motive was compelling.

At the request of the defendant in October 2011, the trial was heard by a judge only, with no jury. The reasons for the application were suppressed at the time, but later published in March 2012. Lloyd Rayney wanted a trial without a jury, because he claimed that the extensive publicity would make a fair jury trial impossible to achieve. The decision to conduct the trial without a jury was a subject of debate in Australian legal circles.

Former Northern Territory Chief Justice Brian Ross Martin was appointed as an Acting Justice of the Western Australia Supreme Court in February 2012 to preside over the trial; a judge from outside Western Australia was used to ensure impartiality, given that both the victim and accused had held senior legal positions.

The trial began on 16 July 2012, and ran until 19 October 2012 when final submissions were presented by prosecutor John Agius SC, QC and defence counsel David Edwardson QC. On 1 November, Justice Martin acquitted Lloyd Rayney when he handed down a judgment of "not guilty", saying that the "case by the State is beset by improbabilities and uncertainties". The full reasons for the verdict were published, a requirement which would not have applied to a jury verdict.

The trial judge closely examined evidence on the conduct of Lloyd Rayney and reportedly described him as a barrister who had engaged in "disreputable conduct" by lying to a magistrate, swearing a false affidavit and arranging a phone tap, and "was prepared to engage in an unlawful activity which was the antithesis of the ethical conduct expected of a legal practitioner". Those comments were redacted from the final official judgment "(1594), and Justice Martin's Judgment Summary noted that "The accused has engaged in discreditable conduct including knowingly arranging for illegal telephone interception, making a false declaration and giving deliberately false evidence to a court while on oath. The evidence raises suspicion; in some instances quite strong suspicion. But discreditable conduct does not prove guilt, and suspicion, even strong suspicion, falls well short of proof beyond reasonable doubt."

Appeal dismissed

An appeal by prosecutors against the verdict was held in the Supreme Court of Western Australia in August 2013, before three judges brought in from other states. The prosecution, if granted leave to appeal, proposed to rely on the grounds that the trial judge's findings in relation to motive were not supported by the facts his Honour found in relation to the respective attitudes of the respondent and the deceased. The judges unanimously dismissed the appeal, and upheld the trial judge's verdict. The office of the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions, which ran the case, announced on 18 October 2013 that it would not be seeking a further appeal to the High Court.

Aftermath

Mr Rayney indicated interest in whether there would be consequences for "police who the trial judge said gave misleading evidence, pressured a forensic pathologist to change his report, abused their position of authority and behaved reprehensibly".

An investigation by the Western Australian Corruption and Crime Commission later cleared two police officers of "any serious misconduct" after their behaviour in threatening a female lawyer had been described as ranging from "inappropriate to reprehensible" by the trial judge. A second matter reviewed by the CCC related to "attempts by a third officer to encourage an independent pathologist involved in the case to change a report to better fit police evidence. That officer was found to have acted unreasonably."

In May 2015, Rayney was acquitted of two charges of tapping his own residential telephone line. He is pursuing a multimillion-dollar defamation action against the state over his having been publicly named as "the prime and only suspect".

In July 2015, Rayney's licence was cancelled by the Legal Practice Board, stripping him of his right to practise law in WA. This action resulted from a finding by a magistrate that he had breached the Surveillance Devices Act by taping conversations with Corryn Rayney, then deliberately disposing of the recording devices when he knew the police had a warrant to search for them. In February 2016, Rayney was cleared by the State Administrative Tribunal of the alleged "unlawful destruction of evidence and/or an attempt to pervert the course of justice" and his right to practise was reinstated. He recommenced his career with the successful defence of an accused drug dealer. The trial was aborted when police evidence was shown to have been unlawfully "destroyed, missing and contradictory."

Calls for new investigation

In his judgment summary, Justice Martin noted that police and forensic evidence was consistent with a sexual attack on Mrs Rayney, while defence lawyers identified at least two possible criminals who "should have been investigated with as much rigour as Mr Rayney". In a prime-time TV presentation on 21 August 2014 that was dismissed by Attorney General Michael Mischin as "infotainment that is one-sided", Rayney, backed by senior lawyers and a forensic scientist, spoke out for the first time and called for independent investigators to re-examine the unsolved case. State Premier Colin Barnett did not see any need for a review but would await advice from his Attorney General.

In May 2015, WA Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan ordered a cold case review of the matter.

See also

• List of unsolved deaths

Further reading

• Etter, Barbara. "Analysis of the Rayney Case" at Council for Civil Liberties, Canberra, 4 November 2012. The writer is a former Assistant Commissioner of Police in WA and former Integrity Commissioner in Tasmania.

External links

• The State of Western Australia v Rayney Trial judgment summary, published by the Supreme Court of Western Australia 1 November 2012
• The State of Western Australia v Rayney Full judgment, 369pp., 1 November 2012
• Full trial judgment html version, 1 November 2012
• Timeline: Lloyd Rayney murder trial