The spotlight on the Supreme Court murder trial of Northern Territory Police Officer Zachary Rolfe has reignited a push to reform Territory laws, including around the makeup of juries and the engagement of Indigenous Territorians with the justice system.
Constable Rolfe was last week found not guilty of all charges over the death of 19-year-old Warlpiri man Kumanjayi Walker in Yuendemu in 2019.
Alice Springs criminal lawyer Russell Goldflam said while the changes would not have necessarily led to a different outcome for Constable Rolfe, he believed the time was right to see reforms recommended by the NT Law Reform Committee over the past nine years become reality.
Mr Goldflam, a member of the law reform committee speaking from his personal point of view, cited three reports the NTLRC had carried out that raised issues that were "touched on directly or indirectly in the (Rolfe) trial".
The committee's review of the Juries Act in 2013 recommended reforms to get more Indigenous Territorians onto juries.
Family 'want yapa' on juries
The family released a statement declaring:
"We feel neglected not to see yapa (Aboriginal people) on the jury.
"We want yapa on the jury so that we can express our culture and feelings based on the truth," the statement continued.
"They can tell other jury members how we see it.
"It's always kardiya (non-Indigenous) people, seeing through their eyes but they need to accept our perspective too."
Mr Goldflam said having more Indigenous jurors would increase confidence in the Territory justice system, the "whiteness" of which he described in an 2011 essay of his own as the "white elephant in the room".
"In a case like (the Rolfe trial), which is such a sensitive case that involves such strong community views, there would be more confidence potentially, (from) a broader section of the community in the outcome of a trial, if the community felt that it was fully represented … on a jury," Mr Goldflam told ABC Radio Darwin and the Northern Territory.
"In the United States, there's a principle that there has to be a representative cross section of the community on a jury; we don't have that.
"However, we've got 86 per cent of the prison population are Indigenous people; we've got about 25 per cent of the population of the Northern Territory [who are] Indigenous people.
The reforms were recommended in 2013 after the NT Supreme Court asked the Attorney-General to examine ways to get a broader community representation on Territory juries.
Mr Goldflam said there was "nothing radical about them …but they would see a better chance of having a broader cross-section of the community on juries".
A spokesperson for the NT Supreme Court said jurors were chosen at random from the electoral roll, which did not collect information about people's racial backgrounds.
Call for more integration of Aboriginal law
The law reform committee's 2020 report, Two Justice Systems Working Together, also recommended the Commonwealth institute the recognition of local Aboriginal laws to help Indigenous communities feel more involved in the mainstream justice system.
"Judges are not allowed to have any regard to cultural practices or customary laws when assessing the objective seriousness of an offence for sentencing purposes, and that needs to be repealed," Mr Goldflam said.
"As well as that, we'd like to see the return of community courts."
Part of the aim of those proposed reforms, Mr Goldflam said, was to enable "Indigenous people who currently feel that their laws don't count at all in the eyes of whitefellas, and the whitefella system, [does] count".
"And that could change people's behaviour."
