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 September 2014, lawyer and former state governor Malcolm McCusker supported calls for an independent review, and also a Corruption and Crime Commission investigation of "claims that police manufactured evidence to incriminate...Lloyd Rayney". As of 2017, the senior investigating officer in the Rayney murder case continued to regard Lloyd Rayney as "the prime and only suspect" despite Rayney's comprehensive exoneration by the courts. A defamation action brought by Rayney resulted in a record compensation award of over $2.6 million and legal costs of over $10 million. Wrongful prosecutions Justice Martin's criticism of the Corryn Rayney investigation followed the exposure of a number of notorious cases of wrongful prosecution by Western Australia Police, including those of John Button, Darryl Beamish, the Mickelberg brothers and Andrew Mallard, resulting in reversal of long-standing convictions and large compensation payouts by government. In the case of Mallard, who spent 12 years in prison after an unjust conviction, a former WA assistant commissioner has concluded "Mallard is a very clear example of how police and prosecutorial misconduct can lead to a wrongful conviction and a miscarriage of justice...It is also another clear example of the difficulties in holding people to account." Scott Austic A clemency petition drafted by the eminent barrister Malcolm McCusker, and lodged with the Western Australian attorney-general in 2012, alleged that key evidence was planted, withheld and misrepresented in police investigations leading to a 2009 murder trial in which Scott Douglas Austic was found guilty and sentenced to a minimum 25-year jail term. After two successive attorneys-general declined to act on the petition, a fresh petition for clemency was lodged in March 2018 with a more receptive Attorney-General John Quigley, who also proposed legislation to allow people convicted of crimes to apply directly to the Court of Appeal. Quigley, formerly an honorary life member of the Police Union of Western Australia, has subsequently become a fierce critic of the WA Police culture and hierarchy. After spending over a decade in jail, in May 2020 Scott Austic won an appeal against his conviction, was acquitted at a re-trial in November 2020. and is seeking compensation. , there have been no reported charges against police officers for perverting the course of justice. Aboriginal man, Gene Gibson