A 15-year-old boy was charged with murder and spent almost a year in custody after Victoria police detectives used a process described by a judge as “corrupted” to gather evidence against him and disregarded information pointing to other suspects, a Guardian Australia investigation has found.
The case then collapsed during a pre-trial hearing in which the judge said she was “incredulous” that the prosecution was pushing ahead with it despite flaws in the evidence used to identify the boy as the murderer. She described police conduct in investigating the case as “remarkable”. The murder charge was later withdrawn.
