Scissors not lethal, Zachary Rolfe trial hears

The ‘very lightweight, very small, blunt’ scissors Kumanjayi Walker used to stab the police constable were not capable of inflicting a lethal injury in the circumstances, a court has heard.

NT police body-cam footage showing Kumanjayi Walker in the days before he was shot by police officer Zachary Rolfe.

The “very lightweight, very small, blunt” scissors Kumanjayi Walker used to stab Northern Territory police constable Zachary Rolfe were not capable of inflicting a lethal injury in the circumstances, a court has heard.

The dramatic evidence from prosecution witness and chief NT forensic pathologist Marianne Tiemensma directly contradicts the expert testimony of another prosecution witness last week.

On Friday, military trauma surgeon Keith Towsey told the jury in Constable Rolfe’s murder trial the 130mm scissors “could cause a fatal wound if applied to the right blood vessel”. He spoke generally, whereas Dr Tiemensma spoke about the incident.

Constable Rolfe shot Mr Walker three times after the latter stabbed him with the scissors during an attempted arrest in the outback community of Yuendumu. Constable Rolfe received a less-than-3mm puncture to his shoulder. Mr Walker died about an hour later.

Dr Tiemensma told the NT Supreme Court she had conducted about 2800 autopsies, about 250 involving “sharp force” or stab wounds, and observed “hundreds more” done by colleagues. “Fatal stab injuries by scissors are not common,” she said.

To determine what damage such a weapon could cause, one needed to consider “intrinsic characteristics” such as how sharp it was, the speed of the attack and force generated, and the resistance provided by skin, clothing and other materials.

She said Mr Walker was “partially restrained within three seconds” of stabbing Constable Rolfe. The jury has seen footage indicating Constable Rolfe fired the first shot in that period. When Constable Rolfe fired twice more at “point-blank” range 2.6 seconds later, Mr Walker was “pinned” to the floor by another officer, Remote Sergeant Adam Eberl, who is 184cm tall and weighs 95kg.

“Kumanjayi’s own body weight is lying on his arm, and Eberl is applying his body weight on top of Kumanjayi, so that means that he has very limited ability for the right arm and right hand to move,” Dr Tiemensma said of body-worn video footage.

“It’s a small pair of scissors, so it only expands about 3cm from the hand. So in order to get that relatively blunt, thick tip to any part of Eberl’s body and cause significant penetrating injury, I don’t think he would have been able to generate enough force to overcome all the resistance posed by the covering, into the skin and soft tissue and structures of importance to cause serious injury.”

The conclusion matters because Constable Rolfe’s available legal defences are that he was acting in self-defence or in defence of Sergeant Eberl, acting reasonably in the course of his duties or acting in good faith while exercising police powers.

Constable Rolfe’s barrister, David Edwardson QC, challenged Dr Tiemensma by demanding to know why she was “distancing yourself from the notion that this particular … pair of scissors had the capacity to inflict a lethal injury?”

“Because that is my opinion,” she replied.

The trial continues.