Andrew Mallard

Andrew Mark Mallard (16 August 1962 – 18 April 2019) was a British-born Australian who was wrongfully convicted of murder in 1995 and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Almost 12 years later, after an appeal to the High Court of Australia, his conviction was quashed and a retrial ordered.

However, the charges against him were dropped and Mallard was released.

At the time, the Director of Public Prosecutions stated that Mallard remained the prime suspect and that if further evidence became available he could still be prosecuted.

Andrew Mark Mallard was born in England on 16 August 1962 to parents Roy and Grace Mallard, who already had a 10-year-old daughter.

The Mallards immigrated to Perth in 1967, and Andrew, unusually tall for his age, had trouble settling in to their new life, and was bullied throughout his school-life.

Leaving school at 16, by 18 he was unemployed and often spent his time smoking marijuana and at nightclubs, and unsuccessfully attempted to join the army, before briefly trying to return to the UK.

His experiences affected him psychologically, and therapy helped him gain enough confidence to move out of home, but by May 1994 he was homeless and living temporarily at his "girlfriend's" flat in Mosman Park.

Pamela Lawrence, a business proprietor on Glyde Street, Mosman Park, was attacked at her jewellery shop, called "Flora Metallica", on the afternoon of 23 May 1994.

A staff member had finished work at 3:00 pm, leaving Lawrence alone in the shop, and at 5:02 pm, the staff member's school-age daughter was passing by the shop and saw a stranger standing behind the counter, describing him as Caucasian, tall, with a bandanna and a ginger beard.

At 6:15 pm Lawrence's husband, Peter, became worried when she had not returned home and tried unsuccessfully to call the shop, then drove to the premises and found her barely alive.

Lawrence died of severe head wounds around 7:00 pm in the ambulance on the way to hospital.

Mallard quickly became a suspect in the murder.

He had been arrested the same day as the murder for a break-in and theft (of his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend's apartment), had been released around 4:00 pm, before arriving via taxi in Mosman Park around 5:00 pm.

Despite his personal issues and being unable to clearly account for his movements, Mallard had no history of violence, and no murder weapon connecting him was found.

Furthermore, no blood was found on Mallard, despite the severity of the attack, nor was his DNA or trace evidence found.

The evidence used in Mallard's trial was therefore scanty and obscure, and it was later revealed that police manipulated or withheld vital information (including an undercover operation) from his defence team.

He was convicted chiefly on two pieces of evidence.

The first was a set of police notes of interviews with Mallard during which, the police claimed, he had confessed.

These notes had not been signed by Mallard.

The second was a video recording of the last twenty minutes of Mallard's eleven hours of interviews.

The video shows Mallard speculating as to how the murderer might have killed Lawrence; police claimed that, although it was given in third-person, it was a confession.

He was convicted on the confessions purportedly given during unrecorded interviews and the partial video-recording of an interview.

The review quickly located a record of a palm print which matched that of Simon Rochford, who had confessed to murdering his girlfriend, Brigitta Dickens, on 15 July 1994, seven weeks after Mrs Lawrence was killed.

The print had been found on the top of a display case in Lawrence's shop, which was significant, as it had been the practice of the shop staff to wipe the top of that case after each customer left.

Rochford's appearance, in particular his beard, was more consistent with the original accounts of eyewitnesses than was Mallard's.

Despite the issues in his conviction, Mallard's appeal to the Supreme Court of Western Australia in 1996 was dismissed.

In 1998, Mallard's family enlisted the help of investigative journalist Colleen Egan, who in turn managed to get John Quigley MLA and Malcolm McCusker QC involved.

All were appalled at the manner in which Mallard's trial had been conducted and eventually came to be convinced that he was innocent.

Based on fresh evidence uncovered by this team, including a raft of police reports that, against standard practice, had never been passed to the defence team, the case was returned to the Court of Criminal Appeal in June 2003.

Despite the fresh evidence and an uncontested claim that the DPP had deliberately concealed evidence from the defence, the Court of Criminal Appeal again dismissed the appeal.

In October 2004, Mallard's legal team was granted special leave to appeal to the High Court of Australia and on 6–7 September 2005, Mallard's appeal was heard in the High Court and the justices subsequently judged unanimously that his conviction be quashed and a retrial be ordered.

During the hearing, Justice Michael Kirby was reported to have said that on one of the pieces of evidence alone—a forensic report, not disclosed to the defence, showing that Mallard's theory about the weapon used in the murder could not have been true—a retrial should have been ordered.

The Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) did not immediately drop charges against Mallard but did so six months later immediately before a directions hearing was due.

He was released from prison in 2006 after his conviction was quashed by the High Court, and was paid $3.25 million compensation by the state government.

The Western Australian Commission on Crime and Corruption investigated whether there was misconduct by any public officer (police, prosecutors or members of parliament) associated with this case and made findings against two policemen and a senior prosecutor.

After almost 12 years in prison, Mallard was released on 20 February 2006.

However, in announcing that the trial would not proceed the DPP stated:"'Finally, I note for the record and for the future that this decision is made on evidence presently available to the prosecution. The discharge of Mr Andrew Mallard on this charge does not alter the fact that he remains the prime suspect for this murder. Should any credible evidence present in the future which again gives the state reasonable prospects of obtaining a conviction again, the state would again prosecute him.'"

Following the discontinuation of the prosecution by the DPP, the Commissioner of Police instituted a review of the investigation to establish whether there were sufficient grounds for a "cold case" review.

Mallard died on 18 April 2019 in Los Angeles, the home area of his fiancée, at about 1:30am local time, after being involved in a hit and run.