Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfe has been found not guilty of murder in relation to the shooting death of Kumanjayi Walker.
Rolfe, 30, was also cleared of two alternative charges of manslaughter and engaging in a violent act causing death.
The verdict comes after an almost five-week trial in the supreme court, and after the case was delayed multiple times because of legal argument and the pandemic.
Outside court on Friday, Rolfe said: “A lot of people are hurting today, Kumanjayi Walker’s family and his community.
“I’m going to leave this space for them.”
In harrowing scenes following the verdict, family members and friends of Walker, and Yuendumu elders urged an end to the use of guns in remote communities, and made clear their hopes that an inquest into Walker’s death scheduled for later this year would provide a modicum of closure.
They also questioned why there had been no Aboriginal people among the 12 members of the jury. About 30% of the population of the Northern Territory is Aboriginal.
“We do not want to see another black fella, or a girl, to be shot,” Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves, a Yuendumu elder, said.
Samara Fernandez-Brown, Walker’s cousin, said she had often thought of his last moments, saying he died in Yuendumu police station while his family and friends gathered outside, trying to get answers.
“We were robbed of the opportunity to say goodbye to him. Sometimes I think about how he must have felt in his last moments.
“Was he scared? Terrified, I’d imagine. Was here in pain? Excruciating pain, I would think. He was alone.
“His death has affected our community and our family in ways that we can’t describe.”
Prosecutor Philip Strickland SC said the trial had not been able to explore all of the issues raised by the shooting.
“We anticipate that those issues, and the evidence that could not be examined in this trial, will be very carefully scrutinised at the inquest.
“It is our view that the family of Kumanjayi Walker, and the Warlpiri community, and indeed the Australian people deserve no less than that full scrutiny.”
Northern Territory police association president Paul McCue said it was a travesty Rolfe was ever charged.
“Today we’ve seen justice prevail.”
David Edwardson QC, Rolfe’s barrister, said it was regrettable that the prosecution had occurred and that “a number of public figures” had “a lot to say about the case”, adding: “Consequences will flow.”
The trial heard Rolfe shot Walker, a 19-year-old Warlpiri man, while trying to arrest him in the remote community of Yuendumu, about 300km from Alice Springs, on 9 November 2019.
Walker stabbed Rolfe with scissors prior to the first shot being fired. This shot was not subject to any charges.
But, the court heard, 2.6 seconds after the first shot, Rolfe fired again, and then 0.5 seconds later he fired a third time. These final two shots were fired from close range at a time when Rolfe’s partner, then constable Adam Eberl, was attempting to restrain Walker on a mattress. The prosecution alleged Walker no longer posed a threat to Rolfe or Eberl by that stage.
Rolfe defended the charges on the grounds he feared for the life of Eberl and was acting in good faith and “the reasonable performance of his duties” when he fired the final two shots.
“When Kumanjayi Walker deliberately and … viciously tried to stab both officers with potentially fatal consequences,” Edwardson told the jury in his closing address.
“The only appropriate response was to draw his firearm and pull the trigger, discharging each bullet into … Walker until the threat was removed.”
Rolfe had given evidence in his own case, telling the court he believed Walker was trying to stab Eberl at the time of the shots, and Edwardson said the prosecution “did not land a glove on him”.
Prosecutor Philip Strickland SC accused Rolfe of lying in the witness stand about crucial parts of his evidence, saying that Walker never put his hand on Rolfe’s gun, nor had Rolfe seen Walker stabbing Eberl.
In his closing address, Strickland said the jury should consider the context to Rolfe confronting Walker in the Yuendumu property known as House 511 where the shooting occurred.
This context, Strickland said, included what he alleged was Rolfe’s “preoccupation” with an incident three days earlier, when Walker threatened two police officers with an axe at a separate Yuendumu property known as House 577, Rolfe’s “keenness” to be deployed to Yuendumu, his “insistence” upon leaving the Yuendumu police station to immediately track down Walker, and the “manner” and “state of readiness” in which he searched House 577 minutes before the shooting.
“All of those matters, we say, are evidence of a particular state of mind,” Strickland said.
“They’re all evidence of a mentality the accused had at that time and that mentality was that if Kumanjayi Walker showed any resistance, if he presented with an edged weapon, he would be prepared to draw his weapon, and if necessary fire it at Kumanjayi Walker.”
Strickland claimed that Rolfe had lied to the court to “justify the unjustifiable”. The defence said that was “absurd”.
The jury retired to consider its verdict on Thursday afternoon.
