Reproducibility and open access are central to the research process, enabling researchers to verify and build upon each other’s work, and allowing the public to rely on that work. These ideals are perhaps even more important in legal and criminological research, fields that actively seek to inform law and policy. This article has two goals. First, it seeks to advance legal and criminological research methods by serving as an example of a reproducible and open analysis of a controversial criminal evidence decision. Towards that end, this study relies on open source software, and includes an app (https://openlaw.shinyapps.io/imm-app/) allowing readers to access and read through the judicial decisions being analysed. The second goal is to examine the effect of the 2016 High Court of Australia decision, IMM v The Queen, which appeared to limit safeguards against evidence known to contribute to wrongful convictions in Australia and abroad.
