Indigenous campaign seeks a ban on all-white juries in some trials

Certain trials involving Indigenous people should never have all-white juries, argues a new reformist campaign.

Labor legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus wants to see more Indigenous people join the electoral roll as a means of increasing their presence on juries. Picture: Sean Davey

An Indigenous campaign is calling for a ban on all-white juries in cases where a police officer or other person in authority is being tried over the death of an Indigenous person.

Debate over jury representation was triggered after an apparently all-white jury acquitted Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfe on charges arising from the March 2019 shooting death of Kumanjayi Walker.

Campaign leader Desmond Blurton/Cuiamara said he was taking his local campaign national, with a planned public protest on April 7 at Western Australia’s state parliament building; he was also considering launching a petition through social media.

“We need our mob represented,” said Mr Blurton, a Nyungah Ballardong man and deputy chair of WA’s Deaths in Custody Watch Committee. “I don’t care if it’s 20 per cent of the jury or whatever, but we still need to be represented in the jury.”

He had also written a submission to the Law Society of WA, emailed the state’s Attorney-­General John Quigley and appealed to top barristers for public support. “I would like them to stand with us, the First Nations mob, in solidarity to let this society know this is unjust, unfair, racist and cannot be tolerated in a fair society.”

A Law Society spokeswoman said it did not have a formal position regarding Indigenous representation on juries “but the campaign has been brought to our attention and we will raise it with our committees, for their feedback”.

Commenting on the jury composition in the Rolfe trial earlier in March, Labor legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus called for a concerted effort by the commonwealth to get more Indigenous people on to electoral rolls, given they are the source of jurors.

“Unfortunately, as we know, there is significant under-­enrolment of Indigenous people in the Northern Territory, and as such they are under-represented in jury pools,” he said.

The latest Australian Electoral Commission data shows enrolment of eligible Indigenous people nationally at 79.4 per cent compared with 74.7 per cent in 2017.

The current figure for eligible non-Indigenous people is 96.3 per cent. NT Indigenous enrolment is 69.6 per cent, up from 67.1 per cent in 2017.

The AEC’s Indigenous electoral participation program, established in 2010, employs Indig­enous and community engagement officers to help facilitate enrolment. The program was allocated a further $9.4m in Oct­ober for initiatives including educational podcasts in various languages and youth mentoring to drive enrolment.

The question of Indigenous representation on juries is a matter of justice being seen to be done, according to a lawyer who challenged the NT Juries Act in the Supreme Court over the issue more than a decade ago.

“The court affirmed that in Australia there is no right to have any particular racial representation on juries,” retired criminal lawyer and specialist in the area Russell Goldflam said of the result.

Mr Goldflam, a member of the NT Law Reform Committee that recommended reforms in 2013, said he did not know whether there had been Indigenous people on the Rolfe jury and was “not suggesting that having Indigenous people on the jury would have changed the verdict”.

“What I do believe is that had there been Indigenous representation on the jury, that would enable the community as a whole to have more confidence in the outcome,” Mr Goldflam said.