The NT Supreme Court has lifted a non-publication order on text messages that show Constable Zachary Rolfe described his job as "cowboy stuff with no rules" several months before the fatal shooting of Kumanjayi Walker in Yuendumu.
A jury last week found Constable Rolfe not guilty of murder and two alternative charges over the death of the 19-year-old Warlpiri man, who was shot three times after he stabbed the officer in the shoulder with scissors on November 9, 2019.
Earlier that day, Constable Rolfe and three other members of his Immediate Response Team (IRT) were deployed to Yuendumu as part of a mission to arrest Mr Walker, who had threatened two other officers with an axe three days earlier.
Until now, a suppression order had prevented the media from reporting on Constable Rolfe's text messages, which were also not allowed to be tendered as evidence during the five-week trial.
But on Friday, Justice John Burns agreed with an application from media organisations, including the ABC, for the lifting of all suppression orders relating to the case, including a separate, unrelated court matter in which a judge made critical findings against Constable Rolfe.
The court is yet to release the text messages to the media, but the ABC has verified that in one text message, Constable Rolfe said:
"Alice Springs sucks ha ha. The good thing is it's like the Wild West and f*** all the rules in the job really … but it's a shit hole. Good to start here coz [sic] of the volume of work but will be good to leave."
In another text message he said:
"We have this small team in Alice, IRT, immediate response team. We're not full time, just get called up from Gd's [general duties] for high risk jobs, it's a sweet gig, just get to do cowboy stuff with no rules."
The text messages were initially allowed to be included as part of the Crown case but following an appeal by the defence prior to the trial Justice Burns ruled they were inadmissible.
On Friday, Constable Rolfe's barrister, David Edwardson QC, argued against the lifting of the non-publication order, telling the court the text messages could potentially have a defamatory imputation.
"It's the imputation that attaches to the [communication] itself, and how the prosecution unsuccessfully argued, or sought to argue, that there was some sinister connotation to what was said," Mr Edwardson told the court.
"Those text messages were made to members of the army and they were made in the context of the army. Nothing to do with this case. Nothing to do with the context in which he was charged."
But Crown Prosecutor Philip Strickland SC, who supported the lifting of the suppression orders, told the court it was baseless to argue the text messages were defamatory towards Constable Rolfe.
"They are simply communications by [Constable Rolfe] in his own words, which relate to his attitude or his thoughts about the IRT or police at a particular time."
The judge agreed to lift all suppression orders after finding that the ability for the public to scrutinise the court's decisions outweighed any potential risks to Constable Rolfe's reputation.
One of the court documents released was Justice Burns's reasons for his judgement not to allow tendency evidence, including the text messages, in the trial.
In the document, the judge said the text messages were said to have been sent in February and July 2019, several months before the shooting incident in Yuendumu.
"The evidence reveals the expression of an attitude on the part of the accused that the 'rules' do not apply to him in his activities as a police officer," Justice Burns said.
He said the messages were capable of inferring Constable's Rolfe's attitude when they were sent, but to infer he held the same attitude when the shooting occurred required a different "reasoning process".
Jury heard evidence about the IRT during trial
Throughout the trial, the prosecution argued Constable Rolfe was an adrenalin-seeking former soldier who became fixated with tracking down Mr Walker after repeatedly watching body-worn camera footage of the earlier axe incident.
It said Constable Rolfe had actively pushed for the IRT to be deployed to Yuendumu to arrest Mr Walker, and that once he arrived, he failed to comply with several police protocols and ignored a plan to arrest Mr Walker at a "safer" time early the following morning.
Constable Rolfe was charged in relation to the second and third shots, which the prosecution said were not legally justified because, in its view, Mr Walker was effectively restrained by another officer and was therefore no longer a threat at that stage.
But the defence said the scissors still posed a threat at the time Constable Rolfe fired contentious shots, and that he feared his partner would be stabbed to death if he did not immediately remove that threat.
The defence told the jury Constable Rolfe was a courageous officer acting in accordance with his police training, which stipulates that if threatened with an edged weapon, police should draw and potentially use their firearms as many times as necessary.
After seven hours of deliberations, the jury acquitted Constable Rolfe of all charges.
