Zachary Rolfe case: NT police officer’s murder trial delayed after high court agrees to hear appeal application
The trial of a police officer accused of murder will be further delayed after the high court granted an application for the case to be stayed pending a legal challenge.
Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfe is charged with murdering Kumanjayi Walker in November 2019. He has pleaded not guilty.
The prosecution has applied to the high court for leave to appeal against a NT supreme court ruling that Rolfe’s lawyers could argue in his defence that he shot Walker while believing “in good faith” that he was performing his duties as a police officer.
That application will not be heard until 10 September, so the prosecution had asked the high court on Friday to stay the trial, which was due to start today.
High court judge Jacqueline Gleeson granted the stay, noting that the matters subject to the special leave to appeal application were of significant public importance.
On Friday, Philip Strickland SC, for the NT department of public prosecutions, told the high court that the full court of the NT supreme court’s ruling “eviscerated” protections provided to the community against the use of force by police.
“That it is open for a jury to conclude that the respondent was not criminally liable at the time he fired those lethal shots … if the jury find there is a reasonable possibility he is acting in good faith … he would avoid criminal liability without any consideration as to whether the use of force is reasonable in the circumstances,” Strickland said.
“We say that the reasoning of the full court really eviscerates the protection … provide[d] to the community about police officers, in particular, using
lethal force where the law does not otherwise provide.
“It is an essential part of this case, of this murder case, to be tried.”
According to assumed facts released as part of Rolfe’s application last month, Rolfe shot Walker three times as he tried to arrest him in the remote community of Yuendumu.
It is the second and third shots, fired when the gun was no further than five centimetres away, that are the subject of the murder charge. Walker had been armed with a pair of scissors, which he had used to stab Rolfe before he was shot.
Bret Walker SC, for Rolfe, told the high court on Friday that there was a “very clear, emphatic policy against fragmentation” of the trial process.
He said that the trial had already been delayed, referring to two instances when Covid-19 restrictions resulted in aborted court hearings.
“The matters that I might characterise as being the social significance or community interest in the allegation of murder against a police officer acting as such are matters that were relied upon below to add to the usual imperative to have criminal proceedings heard as quickly as reasonably possible,’’ Walker said.
“It can hardly be said that this is a case that has been precipitant, that is unreasonably rapid, in its progress to trial.
“More recently, Your Honour has seen some unavoidable circumstances that have led to a delay in trial. Those are not matters that to the slightest degree indicate that this is a case which should, or could, with equanimity be viewed as appropriate further to be delayed.”