02 Kumanjayi Walker | A cop tried for murder

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I'm Stephen Stockwell, welcome to the case of Kamenjai Walker. This is chapter two. And I'm a chapter of Rolf! Constable Zachary Rolf fatally shot the 19-year-old. Sometimes I think about how he must have fell in his last moments. Was he scared? And I can promise you, consequences will flow. Constable Rolf has pleaded not guilty to one charge of murder. Prosecutors took the case to the high court. There's been a huge outpouring of grief. An organisation with significant hallmarks of institutional racism. When? We are going to get chastis! When? In our last episode, we painted a picture of the night in November 2019, where Zachary Rolf shot Kamenjai Walker. The ramifications for this happened almost immediately. And someone who was there at the time when this happened and has joined us for this series of the case of is Melissa McKay. And Melissa, you would have seen the reaction to this so quickly, right? Yeah, absolutely. It became very clear, very quickly, that there were going to be two very binary sides to this case. There was going to be supporters of Constable Zachary Rolf and supporters of Kamenjai Walker and his family and his community. Yeah, in this episode, we're going to look at the murder trial of Constable Zachary Rolf. That is an unusual situation in and of itself, having a police officer charged with murder over a shooting while they've been on duty. So we'll explore all of that. And also look at how that trial unfolded, what the arguments from the prosecution and what the defence were. And it's kind of building to what was a really dramatic moment in that trial. And Mel, you're talking about these kind of two sides that have formed through this process. But while people formed opinions in this quite quickly, Mel, Zachary Rolf was charged with murder quite quickly too. I was like, you know, less than a week, four days, right? Yeah, yeah. It was four days after the shooting that Zachary Rolf was charged with murder. And it was about 24 hours after members of the government and the police commissioner had been to Yundamu to speak to the community and sort of try to address their concerns about what they had just been through. What happened during those visits? So we saw the then police commissioner, Jamie Chalker, head to Yundamu with the then chief minister, Michael Gunner. They addressed members of the community who were obviously very distressed. A lot of them had witnessed the shooting. They had also just been, as we spoke about in the last episode, had just been through the loss of an elder in the community. And a lot of people were really confused about what had happened. And they wanted to know where the police investigation was at. In sort of a moment, I suppose, of trying to calm community concerns, the chief minister, Michael Gunner, said that there would be a police investigation, then there would be a coronal investigation, and that consequences will flow as a result of that investigation. It seems like a really big call for the chief minister to make at a time like that. Yeah, and those comments went on to follow Michael Gunner for the rest of his political career. That consequences will flow, comment was reiterated by Zachary Rolf's lawyers. It was used later as an argument to say that there had been corruption and political interference with the investigation. It's important to note that there was an ICAC investigation into that incident and that there has been no evidence of political interference found. And I guess the thinking behind that right is the timing of it. You know, the reason that people looked at that so closely was, you know, we have the then chief minister saying consequences will flow, and you know, we talked about how quickly Zachary Rolf was charged with murder following the shooting. It was four days, and it was the following day from when the chief minister said that right, that Zachary Rolf was charged. Yeah, yeah, it was quite quick. Yeah, and I mean, the sort of the unusual process doesn't end there because, I mean, am I right in thinking that he was grounded bail which in itself is unusual people charged with murder, but not only that, but it was done like over the phone. Yeah, it was done over the phone. So Zachary Rolf was refused police bail, but he was granted bail by a judge over the phone out of court, which is something that I had never seen before, as a court reporter to see someone charged with murder, not have to face court the following day to make an application for bail. Yeah, wow. And I mean, you know, there's plenty of unusual parts of this, but I mean, did we have Zachary Rolf arrested by the people that he was working with because, you know, he's a policeman and, you know, it's the police that arrest people, right? So is it his mate's colleagues that are doing this? Technically, it was his colleagues, yeah, but it wasn't his colleagues in Alice Springs. Right. And this sort of also then kind of fed into that, that argument by Zachary Rolf and his supporters that there had been some kind of interference or some kind of, you know, issue with, with this early investigation was that he was flown to Darwin from Alice Springs where he was ultimately arrested. He said that at the time he thought he was being flown to Darwin, you know, to get him out of that central Australian environment, you know, to look after his mental health after this critical incident, but he was then ultimately arrested by police officers in Darwin in front of his mum. Oh, wow. That is another just kind of twist in this story as well. I mean, something I've noticed about the courts is that you will be expecting something to start on one day and it won't quite work out that way. You get pushback, you'll get pushback, you'll get pushback. I mean, what were some of the things that were holding up this proceeding because there seems to be this kind of like obstacle course on the way to the trial? Yeah, absolutely. Well, we had initially there was this argument from Zachary Rolf's lawyers to have the case moved from Alice Springs to Darwin. That was one of the first applications that they made pretty immediately arguing that there had been so much media coverage of the shooting that there was no way he could have access to a fair trial in central Australia. Initially, that was knocked back. All of this sort of local court, the lower court proceedings did happen. in Alice Springs. So we had the committal hearing, ultimately the trial was set. Then there was the argument again to move the trial itself to Darwin. That was successful. The trial was moved to Darwin. We then had a trip to the High Court. There was arguments over what defences were going to be available to Zachary Rolf. Hold up a second. So this was on the way to trial, just broadly challenged all the way to the High Court. So this was going right to the top. So the High Court argument happened before the trial to narrow what defences were going to be available to Zachary Rolf when he faced a jury. And when you say, like, ruling out of defense, I mean, there's lots of different types of defense. The one that I'm immediately thinking of is like self-defense. And I can't imagine that was the what was ruled out. But I mean, what was the discussion they were having in the High Court? So there's this element in Northern Territory legislation which was interpreted one way by Zachary Rolf's lawyers to mean that essentially any police officer who was acting in good faith in their role as a police officer was immune to prosecution essentially for anything that they did on the job. And prosecutors wanted to make sure that Zachary Rolf couldn't use that argument. So that's a very simplistic way to put it. But essentially we had to go to the High Court for the High Court to rule on essentially the scope of that argument. That delayed the trial itself because that was pretty critical to the way the trial was going to run. Right. Okay. So it couldn't run the good faith defense. But I mean, the terrible example I gave was the self-defense defense. And he was able to run that one, right? Yes, he was still able to run the self-defense defense. So there were still defenses available to Zachary Rolf throughout his trial. It was this good faith defense that was ruled out. Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. It's a level of detail. And the sort of lawyering that I really appreciate learning about on the case of because it is real classic lawyering, something like that, going all the way to High Court to split hairs over different parts of legislation. Mel, the first thing that happens at a trial is the the impediment of the jury obviously. But then also the the openings of the of the arguments, both prosecution and defense, they kind of laying out their their cases for this. And this is often where we get so much detail about what has happened. And it's the first time often we'll do a report on some of that detail as well. So you know, it's a really big part of a trial. I mean, what did you learn or what did you see in the openings of the murder trial for Zachary Rolf? The prosecution began their opening statement with the body one footage of the shooting. So it was played to the court? It was played to the court. And and that was the first time that a lot of people had seen it. And this was something that people beforehand, before the trial, you know, the the conversations on the street were, well, you know, it'll all be in the body one. And Mel, I mean, this is a courtroom that, you know, does not just have, you know, Zachary Rolf in it doesn't just have the lawyers in it, doesn't have the jury. There's also members of the family of Come and Joy Walker in that room. You're in there, the media's in there. What was it like seeing that video? It was pretty shocking. And I remember there being a warning before the video was played that this footage was very confronting and that it was about to be played to the court. And there were several members of Come and Joy Walker's family who left the room. You know, it was it was simply too too distressing into traumatic to watch, especially given that we watched it over and over throughout the course of the trial. Yeah. I mean, how did they spell out the case against Zachary Rolf? What were the kind of the claims that they were making allegations are making at this stage of the trial? The crown case relied quite heavily on the 2.6 seconds between the first shot and the second and third. And so we saw in their opening statement, not only the body one footage in full, but they also broke it down frame by frame. They slowed it down. They showed what they said was the difference in circumstances between the first shot and the second and third, which were the two shots that the that the murder charge relied on. Yeah, right. I mean, we spoke about this in the first episode of this series. You know, there were the three shots that were taken. There was the first shot. There was that two and a half seconds pause, which again seems like it might be a short time, but kind of feels longer when you time it out. And what had changed in those moments. So that was all the prosecution was pulling apart. They were like, look at this first shot. That's one thing. These other two shots. That's potentially something else. Exactly. That was the crown case was that there had been a fundamental change in circumstances between that first shot and the second and third. And it was that second and third shot that the crown argued were murder. And if not murder, they were manslaughter or engaging in a violent act causing death. So while Zachary Rolf was charged with murder, there were also these two backup charges, which were available to the jury at that point too. Right. And so the prosecution had spelled that out at the early stage of the trial. They've said, look, if it's not murder, we also think it could be manslaughter or engaging in a violent act causing death. Exactly. Right. Zachary Rolf in this trial, in the trial where he's been accused of murder and he's answering the various evidence that's presented. He has his own legal team. He was actually represented by David Edwinson, KC. It's actually Matt Wright's barrister. So it's a name that the case of listeners may be familiar with from the case of the Croc Wrangler. He's delivering an opening address to the jury as well, just kind of like basically kind of laying out often their side of the story. What was he saying? What was he doing in his opening? So David Edwinson, KC delivered his opening address, which was a lot shorter than the prosecutions. And he reiterates the fact throughout his opening that he doesn't have to prove anything. Zachary Rolf himself doesn't have to prove anything. The onus is on the crown to prove Zachary Rolf murdered Kumajaya Walker, not for Zachary Rolf to prove that he didn't. And David Edwinson's style, which listeners might remember from the case of the Croc Wrangler, his style is very theatrical. He sort of delivers his addresses as if he's telling a story. There's always a through line for his opening address and his closing address. And in this case, his through line was that knife equals gun. He said that this was something that would loom large throughout the trial, essentially arguing that Zachary Rolf was trained as a police officer to respond to a knife or an aged weapon, such as a pair of scissors, with his gun. That police officers were trained to meet an aged weapon with lethal force. Yeah. And we were talking about the prosecution case, which is that the intention had changed in the time between the two shots. The first shot was one thing, the second shot was this other thing. And the defence officer saying the whole thing is self-defense. He was following his training, doing his job. I mean, did the prosecution accept that Rolf was justified in firing his weapon at any stage? The first shot was seen as essentially as justified by the prosecution. The charges related only to the second and third shots, because as we touched on, the crown argued that the situation had changed between the first shot being fired and the second and third. And the way that they showed that or the way that they argued that was that in the 2.6 seconds between the first shot being fired and the second, Kumajai Walker had gone from being on his feet, standing face to face with Zachary Rolf and his partner, Adam E. Burl, to being on the ground with Adam E. Burl, Zachary Rolf's partner, sort of on top of him attempting to put him into handcuffs. Yeah, right. And I mean, as you were talking about with David Ebwin, Sir Casey's opening, he's made this point that it's not up to him to prove anything. It's up to the prosecution to prove its case against Zachary Rolf. How was it trying to do that? Was it just the body worn footage? What was some of the key evidence that was being put forward to kind of back them up? We saw the body worn footage over and over and over again throughout this trial. It was interesting because the prosecution relied quite heavily on the body worn footage. footage, but the defence also relied quite heavily on the body-worn footage, and keep in mind we had the body-worn cameras of both Zachary Rolf and his partner, as well as other officers from the IRT who were there in Yundumu at the time. Obviously no one's body-worn was quite as clear as the two police officers who were in the room, but the crown relied quite heavily on the body-worn by slowing it down and showing the jury frame-by-frame how things were moving, whereas the defence used the body-worn to argue how quickly everything had unfolded, and also argued quite a lot that the body-worn camera didn't show everything, and that there were limitations to what was in the body-worn. You talk about the two approaches to time, almost in that situation. You've got the prosecution slowing this thing down, showing each moment as it's in its own entirety, in its own moment, and then you have the defence showing it probably in real-time, and it's just like this all happens so quickly, and then that being put to the jury. What happens? What did you see after the shooting, after Kamenjai Walker's on the ground? Was that something that was talked about very much? Yeah, there was also this argument around whether or not Kamenjai Walker was still a threat to the police officers when he was on the ground. There was this whole argument around the hand that he had the scissors in whether or not that arm was pinned underneath his own body when he had been taken to the ground by police. The defence argued that no, his arm was not fully pinned to the ground, that the police in the police speak, that the threat had not been incapacitated at that point, whereas the prosecution argued that in the moment that Kamenjai Walker had been taken to the ground by the police officers, that his arm was pinned under his body and he simply could not have been a threat to either Zachary Rolf or Adam E. Bill, whereas the defence argument was that he was trying to stab Adam E. Bill after he had stabbed Zachary Rolf. And I mean, some of you are interested in is how were, you know, the kind of the two people involved in this kind of characterised during this trial? I was Kamenjai Walker spoken about and how was Zachary Rolf kind of painted by both the prosecution and the defence as they were working through the main heart, the main bulk of this trial? It was really interesting for a lot of the trial because there were also, there were so many suppression orders over certain elements that were happening outside of what was being put to the jury. And so what we heard throughout the trial about Kamenjai Walker, particularly from the defence, was, you know, we heard a lot about his criminal history and there was a lot said about the fact that he had, you know, stabbed Zachary Rolf with this pair of scissors and that he had wielded this axe against other police officers two days earlier and so he was very much characterised particularly by the defence as a violent offender, as a threat to these police and that he was capable of using lethal force against police officers. What would we hear in the trial about the injuries that Zachary Rolf suffered, you know, as this happened, as you know, as he was stabbed with these scissors by Kamenjai Walker? We saw this was the first time that we saw the pictures of the wound that Zachary Rolf had suffered on that night. We'd heard a lot in the lead up about Zachary Rolf having been stabbed by Kamenjai Walker, which triggered his response to use his weapon. And so we saw for the first time evidence around exactly the impact of that. There was ultimately a three millimeter puncture to Zachary Rolf's shoulder that didn't require stitches. Right. And I mean, you know, we talked a bit about how Kamenjai Walker was characterised in the trial. What about Zachary Rolf? How was he spoken about, you know, for, you know, for the main body of the trial? The prosecution characterised Zachary Rolf as someone who was reckless as a police officer who hadn't followed his training, who had sort of rushed into this situation with Kamenjai Walker. The defence characterised Zachary Rolf as a hero, as someone who was protecting himself and protecting his partner from Kamenjai Walker, who had just stabbed a police officer with a pair of scissors. Yeah. Right. Okay. Mel, did the court hear any evidence or was there any challenge to whether Zachary Rolf really did follow his training? Yeah, there was. And there was this senior Northern Territory Police Officer Andrew Baram, who was one of the crown witnesses who really challenged a lot of Zachary Rolf's decisions on the night. He was used as the person to explain where things had gone wrong on that night. And this is, you know, one of those senior police officers that I think, you know, was one that Zachary Rolf was sort of implying, you know, didn't know what it was like for the men and women on the ground anymore. You know, Andrew Baram, the crux of his evidence essentially was that Zachary Rolf should never have put himself in the situation that he was in, in House 5-1-1 on that night anyway. He should never have gotten so close to Kamenjai Walker in that moment that there should have been, you know, a court and a contained sort of approach by the police officers on that night to try and coax Kamenjai out of the House or that they shouldn't have gone into those houses, searching for him in the way that they did because there were other people around. And so he, his evidence was quite strong in the sense that he was arguing that Zachary Rolf hadn't followed his training on the night of the shooting. Right. And I mean, Mel, this case, as we've spoken about, really comes back to the timing of the shots fired on that night. Now, according to the prosecution, the first one was justified by the second and third shots that come a couple of seconds later, constitute murder. I mean, is that kind of what the prosecution was relying on? Pretty heavily, that was a lot of it. There was also this argument around whether or not the scissors that he was armed with could have possibly killed Zachary Rolf or Adami Burl. And the prosecution argued that know that they couldn't have, that the tips of the scissors were too blunt, they were rounded. They argued that they couldn't have killed Zachary Rolf or Adami Burl. Whereas the defense characterized this attack with the scissors as one which could have been lethal. Yeah, it's so interesting to hear the kind of descriptions of these people of Zachary Rolf and of Kumanja Walker in the courtroom. As they're being talked about in this trial, in this instance, in the trial sense, because the way that they're talked about in the inquest that we'll get to in a couple of episodes time, Mel is so different, you know, often the same details, but talked about in a very different way. But I mean, you know, in the case of this trial of Zachary Rolf's murder trial, I mean, he's in the room watching all this unfold, right? Like he's there hearing all this being said about him. Yeah, Zachary Rolf was, as we spoke about, Zachary Rolf was on bail this whole time. So he was coming and going from the Supreme Court building every day. He was walking through town to get from his hotel in the CBD to the Supreme Court building in the CBD every day. He would walk in with his lawyers, with his supporters, with the police association every morning, and he would walk back every afternoon. And throughout the trial itself, because we were still in the middle of COVID restrictions, Zachary Rolf was sitting in the public gallery of his own murder trial. Really? This is something I had never seen before, and obviously, you know, things with COVID were unprecedented. So, you know, the court had to kind of scramble to figure out how to socially distance a jury, because if one juror got COVID, the whole case, which had already been delayed several times, would have been thrown into absolute disarray. So to sort of get around that, the court separated the jury across you know, the jury box and the dock where the accused would usually sit. So half the jury was on one side of the room, the other half were on the other side of the room. There was nowhere for the accused to go, other than the public gallery behind his lawyers in front of journalists, next to his parents and Kumanjai Walker's family. Wow, oh my God, that is just a kind of incredible situation to be in. And I guess kind of points to just the strangeness that we're dealing with through COVID, but also the kind of incredible nature, you know, in so many ways of this trial as well, right? - Absolutely. I mean, this was a man who we had already seen bailed immediately after being charged with murder and was then walking through town to get to his murder trial every day. Was sitting in the public gallery of his own murder trial. You know, this trial went for about six weeks. Everyone was sort of milling about the courthouse during breaks to the point where in the four year of the Supreme Court building, there were sort of almost two distinct camps which developed. We had Kumanjai Walker's family sat around one group of couches, journalists sat around another group of couches, and then we had Zachary Rolf and his team sitting in another area of the Supreme Court for you. It was just a very strange situation to be in. And, you know, during these breaks, people are sort of trying to avoid one another, but also, you know, politely saying hello or politely saying good morning, you know, Zachary Rolf would walk into court every morning and he would give a wave to the police officers who were sort of standing guard outside of the Supreme Court building. He would give a fairly polite good morning to all of the journalists who were waiting out the front of the building for him every day. You know, there were times where his parents and his lawyers would interact with members of the media and members of the public who were in the building. - Yeah, right. You know, when we see a trial like this, what happens the way it unfolds is that not a prosecution is kind of running it. They're sort of dictating the speed, the witnesses, everything that's coming forward is the case unfolds in the main. How did it feel when the kind of, when the prosecution rested their case after they'd called their last witness? - It was really sudden to see and to hear the crown, very calmly say that is the crown case. It was really strange to have gotten to that point after so long, you know, finally, sort of hearing in open court the allegations against Zachary Rolf in full. And, you know, we'd seen the body worn camera footage over and over of this incident but there was still the defense case to come. - Yeah, and that's the thing, right? Like you don't know what is gonna happen in these cases. You know, the prosecution calls all their witnesses and then the defense may have some witnesses to call as well and there is this huge question that kind of hangs over a murder trial about whether or not the accused will give evidence, that is in this instance Zachary Rolf. What were you expecting at this point? You know, the prosecution closes their case. I know there would have been conversation around that with the media team or the various media crews about whether or not Zachary Rolf would give evidence. What were you thinking? - I had no idea whether Zachary Rolf was going to give evidence or not. It's a huge risk, right? And there had always been, you know, this rumor, I think, at least among court reporters that you only ever call the accused if you think your case is going really poorly. And so no one really knew where this was going to go and because of how big of a risk it is, no one really thought that Zachary Rolf was going to get in the box. - Yeah, be back in your feed on Tuesday next week. I'll give you a little spoiler at this point. Mel, what ends up happening? - Zachary Rolf was called to give evidence. - It's a kind of incredible turn of events in a murder trial. So yeah, we'll be back in your feed on Tuesday. Mel, thank you so much for taking us through the first part of this trial. - Thank you. - I have all the details of what evidence Zachary Rolf gave in his murder trial and the verdict that the jury ultimately delivered in our next episode. Make sure you grab yourself the ABC Listen Up. It's the best place to listen to episodes of the case of. And if you have any questions that you'd like, Mel or right of answer, let's be honest, it will be Mel. Please email us the case of at abc.net.au and we'll collect them all together for an episode where we ring Mel back and answer all of your questions when we wrap up this series. We're back in your feed on Tuesday. (soft music) The case of Common Joe Walker is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News. It's reported by Melissa McKay and presented by me, Steven Stockwell. Our supervising producer is Greg Muller and our executive producer is Claire Robinson. Thank you to senior lawyer Jasmine Simms and to senior cultural advisor Miriam Korawa for their help making this series. This episode was produced on the land of the Gadigal and Moruntary people. (soft music)