ABSTRACT
Every jurisdiction has its celebrated miscarriages of justice, both old and modern. In Australia’s most famous contemporary example, the eventual pardoning of Lindy and Michael Chamberlain long after their 1982 convictions for the murder of their baby Azaria revealed a failure not only of the jury system, but also of forensic science, the appeal system, the High Court, the media and the general public, all of which were complicit to some degree in their wrongful conviction. Miscarriages of justice, when detected, reveal not only that someone has been wrongly punished, but also that it is likely that many other undetected cases exist.
