All-White Jury and the Rolfe Trial
By Suki Dorras-Walker
On Friday 11 May 2022 Constable Zachary Rolfe was found not guilty of the murder of Yuendumu teenager Kumanjayi Walker. After the verdict, Walker’s family gathered on the steps of the Supreme Court in Darwin saying, ‘We thought we were coming to a neutral ground, where we would have a multicultural jury … It’s always Kardiya [white] people on that jury, they see through their eyes, but they need to see our eyes too.’
The jury was indeed ‘to the eye … all-white … bar one young Asian woman,’ with the defence using the majority of their 12 peremptory challenges against persons of colour.
Kumanjayi Walker’s family are not the first to voice their concerns about all-white juries. Aboriginal underrepresentation on juries is a serious issue for Indigenous rights activists. It is often a focal point for Aboriginal communities who feel a lack of legitimacy in verdicts reached by all-white juries, especially in cases involving loved ones as either defendants or victims of violence. It has also been the subject of many Law Reform Commission Reports across Australia, and mentioned in the National Inquiry into Racist Violence in Australia.
The Commonwealth’s Recognition of Aboriginal Customary Laws (ALRC Report 31) tabled on 12 June 1986, questioned whether ‘steps should be taken to ensure greater representativeness of juries hearing cases involving Aboriginal defendants.’ It stated that, '[I]t is still rare for an Aborigine to sit on a jury. Aborigines may be excluded due to their inability to understand English, or because not being on State or Territory electoral rolls, their names are not on jury lists … It is a matter for concern that Aborigines are so disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system, but so seldom appear on juries.’
In 2013, the NT Law Reform Committee released the Report on the Review of the Juries Act. It stated that it was ‘to the Aboriginal population that the amendments are directed, in the hope and expectation that a greater number of Aboriginals will become qualified for jury service.’ It suggested a number of amendments to the Juries Act 1962 (NT) (‘Juries Act’) including expanding the catchment pool of jury lists by taking names from Centrelink and other databases, widening the jury districts for Darwin and Alice Springs to include nearby Aboriginal communities, and amending section 10 which disqualified jurors who had served a prison sentence in the last 7 years. These recommendations are yet to be implemented, and the Juries Act remains unchanged.
Countless studies have found that all-white juries lead to prejudicial outcomes for defendants who are persons of colour, including shorter deliberation times, less time spent analysing evidence, less inclination to discuss the impacts of racism, harsher sentencing, and higher conviction rates.
We know Indigenous Australians are disproportionately criminalised. The Uluru Statement from the Heart declares that Indigenous people in Australia are ‘the most incarcerated people on the planet’ with their youth languishing in detention in obscene numbers. The Northern Territory is a glaring example of this: although Aboriginal people make up around 30 per cent of the population, they represent 84 per cent of the Territory’s prisons. Given what we know about all-white juries, it is egregious that the NT government has failed to implement recommendations from as far back as 30 years ago.
Zachary Rolfe’s acquittal by an all-white jury is yet another blow to the confidence Aboriginal communities have in the administration of justice. To achieve the ‘fair and truthful relationship’ demanded by the Uluru Statement of the Heart, Australia must focus its attention on Aboriginal underrepresentation on juries and its impacts.