The Justice Tarot card assumes truth and fairness will prevail. Depicted as a figure holding a balanced scale in one hand and an upright sword in the other, it signals that actions have consequences and encourages objective, clear-minded decision-making.
Lindy Chamberlain & Catherine Folbigg
What happens when Justice gets it wrong?
Lindy Chamberlain was convicted of murdering her baby, Azaria. Catherine Folbigg was convicted of killing her four children.
Both women went to prison. Both maintained their innocence.
And in both cases, the story eventually changed.
For Lindy, a tiny piece of clothing and the evidence surrounding it helped expose the failures of the case against her. Her convictions were finally quashed.
For Catherine, new genetic and medical evidence challenged the assumptions on which her convictions rested. After twenty years in prison, she was pardoned, released, and her convictions were quashed.
Two women.
Two devastating miscarriages of justice.
Two verdicts that could not survive the arrival of new evidence.
Perhaps this is the Justice we need to remember:
Justice is not being certain.
Justice is being willing to change your mind.
The scales must be able to move.
Because sometimes the bravest act of Justice is simply to say:
We were wrong.
Shadow of this Archetype
Chamberlains story contains almost every shadow-side of the Justice archetype:
- Evidence can be wrong. Forensic evidence presented as persuasive was subsequently shown to be unreliable.
- Prejudice can masquerade as evidence. Lindy’s demeanour, motherhood, religion and refusal to behave in the expected way became part of the story told about her. Later examination found the assumptions about her as a mother were profoundly misplaced.
- The majority can be wrong. A jury convicted her; the Federal Court rejected an appeal; the High Court upheld the conviction in 1984. Yet eventually the convictions were quashed.
- Justice can correct itself—but painfully slowly. It took the discovery of Azaria’s matinee jacket, a Royal Commission and further legal processes before Lindy and Michael were exonerated in 1988.
- * And then comes the extraordinary final piece: in 2012, thirty-two years after Azaria disappeared, a coroner formally found that she had been attacked and taken by a dingo.
But what really makes Lindy compelling is that didn’t merely receive justice in the end. She had to keep faith with truth while the machinery of justice was telling the world that she was a liar.
