Hearings in the ongoing coronial inquest into the November 2004 death in custody of Mulrunji Doomadgee, a member of the Indigenous community on Palm Island, were held on the island and in Townsville from March 8-12.
In 2006, a coroner found that police officer Christopher Hurley was responsible for Mulrunji's death. Only Hurley had been able to inflict the blow which split Mulrunji's liver and killed him. The pathology suggested this had been done with a small body part, such as a knee, applying a crushing force to the upper abdomen.
Hurley and his lawyers instigated the reopening of the inquest to try to overturn the coroner's decision.
The recent hearing, however, is revealing how an inadequate police investigation and changing or contradictory testimony created enough doubt at Hurley's 2007 manslaughter trial to secure his acquittal. Hurley's defence relied on the possibility that he had accidentally struck Mulrunji when they fell together through the doorway of the watch house onto the floor.
On March 9, an Indigenous eyewitness, Roy Bramwell, told the hearing the investigating detective, Darren Robinson, had destroyed Bramwell's initial statement.
Bramwell was being interviewed without being accompanied by a member of the local community justice group. The March 10 Cairns Post reported Bramwell said Robinson told him: "Hurley is a good man … If anything happens to him I'll certainly come after you."
Bramwell's subsequent evidence has been criticised as inconsistent. He was not a witness at Hurley's trial. Yet even in the statement that Robinson did take, Bramwell still said he could see Hurley's "elbow going up and down …[three times downwards] in a punching motion" — although his view was obscured by a filing cabinet, so he could not see Hurley's hand or Mulrunji's body.
At the recent hearings, Bramwell repeated what he said in his 2006 statement to the Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC): that he could see both Hurley and Mulrunji in a surveillance mirror. Monique Bond reported on her blog Moniquesnotes.blogspot.com that Bramwell told the recent hearings "first Hurley was leaning down punching Mulrunji and then he was kneeling on him and punching him".
The mirror was not present during the police investigation. Yet Vincent Thimble, a former police liaison officer and ambulance officer who visited the watch house fairly often, told the hearings that the mirror had been in that position then and subsequently, Bond reported.
The police procedural manual states police involved in or witnesses to incidents "should not discuss the incident among themselves prior to being interviewed". However, Robinson, the investigating officer, and Hurley, the prime suspect, actually had dinner and a drink soon after Robinson arrived on the island.
Police officer witnesses have admitted discussing their testimony with each other before hearings. Moreover, a single police union-appointed lawyer, Glen Cranny, initially represented both Hurley and at least one police officer who could perhaps have presented evidence against Hurley.
Cranny accompanied Kristopher Steadman when he gave evidence to the CMC, but was also representing Hurley. Steadman conceded the situation was not appropriate and that "given what has happened, a layman may think there was some sort of bias", the March 11 Townsville Bulletin reported.
In March 2007, in the lead-up to Hurley's manslaughter trial, police officer and witness Michael Leafe discussed, but only with the defence lawyers, a reduction of his estimate of the time he was away from Hurley and Mulrunji from 10 seconds to seven seconds — time during which Mulrunji received the fatal blow.
At the inquest, lawyer Peter Davis, who prosecuted Hurley in 2007 and represented the attorney general in the hearings, suggested that this was "sabotage" because those few seconds mattered, the March 12 Townsville Bulletin said.
Presumably the shorter time allowed much less of an opportunity for Hurley to have done anything after he and Mulrunji fell.
On the last day of the hearing, Hurley appeared himself. He accepted that he "touched" Mulrunji, but has continued to claim to "just remember picking myself up from beside him", the Townsville Bulletin reported. "You are kidding", responded Davis.
Since his first police interview Hurley has stated he fell beside Mulrunji.
Brisbane Indigenous activist and Socialist Alliance senate candidate Sam Watson, who attended the inquest on March 12, told Green Left Weekly that Hurley now claims to have no clear recollection of the short time during which, he claims, Mulrunji received the massive internal injuries which caused his death. This contrasts with his initial statement, when he testified to a total recall of the critical events.
Watson said that every police officer in the Palm Island watch-house that day seemed determined to defend their workmate, rather than assist investigating officers to determine the facts.
"This would be a matter of great concern to the public", he said, and called for an end to police investigation of police. He proposed investigations by an independent panel of lawyers instead.