Failure of justice system that feels all too familiar

ROBYN Kina can smile broadly now. Her partner has stood by her these past 13 years. She holds close the nieces and nephews in her mob.

ROBYN Kina can smile broadly now. Her partner has stood by her these past 13 years. She holds close the nieces and nephews in her mob.

And her day job at Sisters Inside, a Brisbane advocacy group, gives her personal satisfaction that her efforts to help indigenous prisoners, in a criminal justice system that failed her, is making a difference.

But for all the positives in a life turned around after a shocking start, Ms Kina knows better than most the challenges facing indigenous people who come before police, lawyers and courts.

She says she shares the grief and frustration of friends and family members of Mulrunji Doomadgee, whose death on Palm Island led to riots, a police cover-up, an inquest that found he was killed by a police officer and, on Thursday, a decision by the Queensland Director of Public Prosecutions to lay no charges.

Because of Ms Kina's own life experience, she was saddened but unsurprised by the controversial decision.

"I think that what happened on Palm Island sucks," she told The Weekend Australian yesterday.

"I know how they are feeling up there. When I was going through my court case I felt that the odds were stacked against me, too. They probably thought it was an open-and-shut case. I think it would have been different if I was a white woman."

For "snapping" one day and killing a sadistic boyfriend who had subjected her to prolonged physical and sexual torture and was about to rape her niece, Ms Kina faced a lifetime behind bars for murder.

The justice system went like clockwork. A Brisbane jury took only 50 minutes to reach the guilty verdict in 1988, after listening to evidence lasting just three hours. No evidence was called by Kina, who did not enter the witness box.

Recalling a litany of misunderstandings and missed opportunities as she faced trial, Ms Kina says that as an indigenous woman who had a limited education she had little idea what was happening.

"The lawyers and the solicitors used big words and a lot of Aboriginal people can't understand what they're talking about. I didn't have a clue."

After Ms Kina had served five years in prison, the brutality she had suffered at the hands of her boyfriend made it obvious to a few people that she had always had an outstanding defence of provocation.

Her conviction was promptly quashed.

In the Palm Island tragedy, the inability of indigenous witnesses to properly articulate their grievances and meet white legal standards of certainty has played a significant part in the DPP's decision not to charge police officer Chris Hurley with manslaughter.

Ms Kina believes that the system as it presently works cannot justly deal with either indigenous victims of crime or alleged perpetrators.

"I think the lawyers and judges need to be more understanding," she said.

In the mid-1990s in Queensland, the miscarriage of justice that led to Ms Kina's conviction prompted promises of legal reform.

Similar promises were made after a more extreme case, involving Aboriginal man Kelvin Condren, who was convicted of the 1983 murder of a Mount Isa woman despite evidence he was in police custody at the time. Another man in Darwin had admitted to the murder, but Mr Condren served seven years in prison until authorities admitted their mistake.