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From Schwartz Music I’m Ruby Jones this is 7am.

In 2019, a Northern Territory police constable - Zachary Rolfe - shot a 19-year-old Walpiri man - Kumanjayi Walker - in a remote community in the Northern Territory.

Last week, the murder trial for that shooting began. If a guilty verdict is reached, it would be the first time a police officer in Australia has ever been convicted on a murder charge involving an Aboriginal person in custody.
Today - journalist Hannah Ryan, on the charges against Zachary Rolfe and what it was like covering this historic trial from the Northern Territory.

It’s Thursday, February 17.

And a warning – this episode contains graphic and violent content.

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RUBY:

Hannah you’ve just been in the Northern Territory to sit in and report on this trial, can you tell me a bit about what it’s been like in Darwin and how this court case is being talked about there?

HANNAH:

So I've been up in Darwin covering the trial murder trial of Northern Territory Police Officer Zachary Rolfe, who's standing trial for the shooting death of a young Aboriginal man named Kumanjayi Walker, who was 19 when he died.

So obviously This story has captured the community of Darwin. It's been front page news every day. You know, when you walk down Smith Street Mall, which is the main kind of thoroughfare leading to the court, you pass by news agencies with the NT News front page at the front, and it's always something about the Zachary Rolfe trial.

Also because Darwin is a relatively small town. The people involved in the trial kind of spilling through town. So you'll be at the cafe grabbing your coffee before the case starts that day, and Ralph's mother might be there having breakfast as well. And all the reporters are obviously there from interstate as well. Covering the case. So it's consumed a lot of attention in Darwin.

I think it's also grabbed a lot of attention, particularly in the Northern Territory, but also beyond the Northern Territory because of the interest. When something like this happens because of the specifics of that part of Australia.

RUBY:

Mm-Hmm. Okay. So can we talk about that then? Hannah, what's the context in terms of the Northern Territory and the criminal justice system?

HANNAH:

So the Northern Territory has the highest proportion of indigenous residents of their population of any state or territory in Australia, so it's about 30 per cent of the population. And then if you look at a prison population, something like 84 per cent of prisoners are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander in the Northern Territory, and that's way above the national average. I think that gives you an indication of some of the issues around indigenous people in the criminal justice system that a very live in the Northern Territory.

Archival tape -- Protest tape

HANNAH:

And so against that backdrop, this case has been really high profile from the very beginning.

Archival tape -- News:

“Thousands take to the streets of Alice Springs to mourn the death of Kumanjayi Walker.”

Archival tape -- Protest tape

HANNAH:

There were thousands of people who protested the killing.

Archival tape -- Protest tape

RUBY:

Right so now that the trial is underway. What have we learnt so far? What do we know about the night that Kumanjayi Walker was killed?

HANNAH:

So we know that in October 2019, Kumanjayi Walker had left an alcohol rehabilitation centre and he'd removed a monitoring device. And both of those things were conditions for part of a criminal sentence that he had to be suspended.

And then he returned to Yuendumu, apparently to attend a funeral of a relative. Then on the 9th of November, which is the night that he was shot. Officers were deployed from Alice Springs following a request from a local police sergeant that they come and assist. So that night, Constable Zachary Rolfe and Adam Abel, his colleague from that specialist team, entered a house at Yuendumu at 7:20, where they found Kumanjayi Walker.

Archival tape -- Body cam audio

HANNAH:

When I was in the court, we were shown the bodycam footage from Zachary Rolfe and Adam Eberl a number of times.

Archival tape -- Body cam audio

HANNAH:

And basically, what it shows is them entering the house, approaching the house, and then they get into the house. It's very dark and they find a man who is Kumanjayi Walker, but he denies that he is. So then they spend a little bit of time trying to identify him.

Archival tape -- Body cam audio

HANNAH:

They're holding up an iPhone with a picture of the man they're meant to be arresting next to his face, and then very quickly, a struggle erupts.

Archival tape -- Body cam audio

HANNAH:

It's grainy footage, it's kind of hard to tell, but apparently what's happening is Kumanjayi Walker is holding surgical scissors there about 10 centimeters long and is stabbing Zachary Rolfe on the shoulder.

Archival tape -- Body cam audio

HANNAH:

And then very quickly you hear a gunshot.

Archival tape -- Body cam audio

HANNAH:

And then two gunshots followed, and then you see him there handcuffing him and they bundle him into the paddy wagon.

Archival tape -- Body cam audio

HANNAH:

It's hard to make out what's happening, but what stayed with me was really the sound because you can hear the gunshots and you can hear the moaning of Kumanjayi Walker after he's been shot and the wails of people from outside the dogs barking.

The judge kept saying before the footage was played how confronting it would be, and it was indeed very confronting. You know, he invited people who didn't think that they would want to watch it to leave the courtroom. Nobody did.

And then when the footage ends, there's just silence in the courtroom.

RUBY:

Mm. OK, and I suppose, Hannah, that the prosecution their case is that what's captured in that video was murder. So how are they making that case? What's their argument?

HANNAH:

So I learnt what the prosecution case was when Crown prosecutor Philip Strickland stood up at the start of the case and outlined what he says the jury should find. So basically, the prosecution doesn't say that the first shot was murder. Zachary Rolfe hasn't been charged with that first shot. But what Mr. Strickland's focussing in on is those second two shots. So the gap of the 2.6 seconds between the first shot and the second shot, and in that gap, he says, basically everything changed.

So with the first shot. Zachary Rolfe is about a metre from Kumanjayi Walker, and Kumanjayi Walker was standing up and he had the scissors by the time of the second shot. Philip Strickland says the situation had changed entirely. The Kumanjayi Walker had been essentially subdued that Zachary Robb's colleague, Adam Abel, had him pinned down and that the danger was no longer present. Essentially.

So Philip Strickland has described those two shots as a double tap, which are a rapid discharge with a weapon that he says is designed to cause maximum injury or death and obviously to prove murder there, prosecution need to prove there is an intent to cause death or serious harm.

The prosecution has flagged that they think that this trial is going to turn on the defences and whether those shots were legally justified.

RUBY:

We'll be back in a moment.

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RUBY:

Hannah you've recently been at the trial of Zachary Rolfe, he's been charged with murder in the death of Kumanjayi Walker. It's a case that could have big ramifications. It's being very closely watched. So far, we've spoken about the prosecution's case, how they're trying to to prove that murder charge. But can you tell me more about w at Zachary Rolfes lawyers have been arguing?

HANNAH:

Yes. So his defence team are going to rely on a few defences. The first, it's probably most familiar to listeners, is self-defence, because Kumanjayi Walker, at the time of the shooting, was holding scissors and had been stabbing Rolfe. And the jury has seen photos of the wound that Rolfe sustained to his shoulder from those scissors and photos of the surgical scissors that guy Walker was holding. They're also saying that he was acting in the course of his duty as a police officer and that he was acting in good faith. And the defence team has spoken about the training that police officers get. In particular, this idea that an edged weapon, which in this case refers to the scissors equals gun. And that means that officers are trained that if you see an edged weapon within kind of six metres, that that's how you respond to threats. You pull your firearm and you can deploy your firearm, according to the defence counsel.

So they're essentially trying to say that Kumanjayi Walker was the aggressor here and that it wasn't Zachary Rolfe and that he was simply acting in accordance with his training and for both cases as well. There's been a lot of emphasis placed on something that's been referred to as the axe incident.

RUBY:

Mm-Hmm. OK. Can you tell me more about that? What is the axe incident?

HANNAH:

So three days before the killing. Local police had tried to arrest Walker and they were in a house and they found him in a room. But then he emerged from that room with an axe and ran away.

And that was captured on body worn footage, which the jury has seen.

So that's part of the context of why the local police called in this special unit the immediate response team from Alice Springs that Rolfe was a part of, and the jury's heard that that unit watched the video of the axe incident before they arrived in Yuendumu.

So during the axe incident, the police officers involved did not draw their guns, and that's something that the Crown prosecutor has made a little bit of, and that both of those officers have given evidence to the jury.

They've both said that they've had the edge weapon equals gun training, but they felt that they didn't have to pull their weapons in that situation and they made a choice not to.

And then when the defence counsel has spoken about the axe incident, he said that that's part of the context that Zachary Rolfe knew about when he entered that house on the 9th of November. And that and that it shows that Kumanjayi Walker was a violent man. And in truth, the aggressor in that struggle between Zachary Rolfe and Kumanjayi Walker.

RUBY:

Hmm. And Hannah, this trial, it's come to represent more than just what happened between Kumanjayi Walker and Zachary Rolfe, because it's bringing to the surface a number of wider issues around inequality and racism and tensions between Aboriginal communities and police, particularly in the Northern Territory. So I'm wondering, did you get a sense of that in the course of covering this trial?

HANNAH:

I think that some of those larger themes, there will be a lot of analysis of that in time, but the evidence within the courtroom is obviously quite tightly focussed on what happened that night, particularly within those, you know, five or so seconds where the gunshots unfolded, because that's what the jury really has to look at. And unless it's relevant to legal issues, some of those bigger questions don't come into the courtroom.

But I think there's been a theme of the evidence so far that's been quite interesting, which is the difference between policing in a remote community and policing in town because we've heard from officers who were stationed in Yuendumu about their approach to policing. And obviously, Zachary Rolfe was part of the Alice Springs team that was called in. And the local police officers have said repeatedly that they've tried to avoid using force where possible because they live in the community. They know other people and they have to go down to the shops and see people's families and that sort of thing. So they sort of live with the consequences of the use of force. And the immediate response team we've heard was this Alice Springs team in some ways had paramilitary aspect to it. They were armed with more weapons. One of the officers had an AR 15 and that sort of thing. So there's quite a difference between the backgrounds of those two types of police officers.

RUBY:

So, Hannah, there are several more weeks to go in this trial, and after that, the jury will take as long as they need to come to a decision on this. But. Can you talk to me at all about the importance of a verdict in this case either way? What impact would either are guilty or not guilty verdict have when you take a step back and look at the bigger picture here?

HANNAH:

Yeah, I think we can all say for sure right now that there's going to be a big reaction, whichever way this goes. I think that if Zachary Rolfe is acquitted, you can bet that there will be despair from some corners of the community and probably some anger.

But if there were a conviction, particularly a conviction of murder, that would also be a huge moment. He would in fact be the first police officer to be convicted for the murder of an indigenous person in custody. So that would obviously just be a historical moment.

But you've also got to think about the community of Yuendumu. It's a very small community about six to eight hundred people, and that's where Kumanjayi Walker was from and where this happened. And so we heard from Ned Hargraves, who's a Warlpiri elder from Yuendumu, who spoke outside the court on the first day, and he spoke about how the community's feeling. And he said It's been two years, two solid years.

Archival tape -- Ned Hargraves:

“It's been two solid years. Two much. We are still morro morro hurting every day.”

HANNAH:

Everything that they're very, very angry and they want to see justice

Archival tape -- Ned Hargraves:

“We are very, very angry. We want to see justice. Let the court. Everything and deliver whatever it's going to make us happy.”

RUBY:

Hmm. Hannah, thank you so much for your time.

HANNAH:

Thank you.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

Federal Labor has announced that it will support the federal government's bill to expand the immigration minister's powers to deport convicted criminals.

The proposed new laws will give the minister the ability to deport any non-citizen who has been convicted of a crime with a minimum sentence of over two years.

The bill has been heavily criticised by human rights groups, including Amnesty International.

**
And, Prince Andrew has settled a sexualt assault case alleged against him by Virginia Giuffre.

The case has been settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, in which Andrews will make a donation to Giuffre’s charity in support of victims’ rights. Specialist lawyers speculate the cost to Andrew could amount to more than 10 million US dollars..

The Duke of York was accused of alledgedly sexually assaulting Giuffre in 2001 when she was 17 years old, allegations he denies.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See ya tomorrow.