A Gun To The Head

that piece was my co host Amy maguire. Amy, obviously, today is the biggest revelation in Kevin Henry's case and will come as a big revelation to all those who have been listening to the Curtain podcast and what's happened to Kevin Henry. Can you tell us a little bit about how you first heard about this accusation that Kevin's made.

an allegation. We wanted to investigate this thoroughly and make sure when we finally did expose what happened, that we had all the documents and paperwork, the full pay per trayal dating back all the way to when Kevin Henry was arrested, his trial, and all the complaints that have been made by Kevin over the years about exactly what happened. So it would have been easy to simply make this claim early on, but then who would take us seriously?

Making such a serious allegation requires evidence, And now that we have that, and we were satisfied we'd covered everything we could, now we were ready to reveal this allegation, and for long term listeners have curtain the podcast, I think instantly everything we've discussed previously will now make much more sense. Why did Kevin Henry confess to a crime he clearly did not commit? And now you.

people who have experienced exactly the same thing. Now, it's important to remember that the crime that took Linda's life took place in nineteen ninety one. This was the year when the Fitzgerald Inquiry into police corruption was wrapping up in Queensland. And you have to remember that the highest ranking officers in Queensland going to prison, not just for corruption,

but things like police brutality were rampant right across the state. Now, of course, being the nineties, it might seem like it was a modern time for most people, but police brutality against Aboriginal people continues to this day. Since Kevin's been in prison, nearly four hundred Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have died in custody. So is it really any shock that the police would pull a gun on someone?

And as I say, this has been going on for a long time and there are many, many, many Aboriginal people with a story to tell just like this. So I think the thing we should say too is that as we've discussed these allegations with Aboriginal people. Many had their own stories to of precisely the same thing happening to them. We heard directly from one man who had the same thing happened to him at the same police station in Rockhampton, and he confessed and served six years

for a crime he did not do. And he openly says, how could he say no? It was simply too dangerous. And anyone who questions whether it is too dangerous for an Aboriginal person to fight back has to remember that number four hundred people dead in custody in the last twenty five years, so that is part of the context. We know so many Aboriginal people have died and been brutalized at the hands of police and members of the

corrective services. We know in this case with Kevin Henry, not only was Kevin threatened, but many of the other people involved spoke about on the witness stand the threats that they face, the intimidation by the police, the constant harassment. So this certainly didn't come out of left field. And while I think it's normal for people to believe this happens in America on a daily basis, it's time for Australia to wake up and realize this doesn't just happen

in your own country. This happens in your own towns and cities and to people you may well know. And this is what's happened to Kevin Henry.

he was incarcerated. Not only had he been wrongfully convicted in a court by a jury, but he also had a lot of trouble making his voice heard, particularly these allegations that particularly the allegations where police had acted quite brutally towards him. So, Martin, when did Kevin begin to make these complaints and who did he complain to, what process did he go through?

who would you complain to? We generally think that when a crime has been committed against us, the people we are going to complain to are the police. So when it is the police who have done it, when you've wrongfully been found guilty of a horrific crime that you know you didn't commit, when you're sitting inside a small cell having been found guilty of a murder that again you didn't commit. Being an aboriginal man from a small regional Queensland town, who do you complain to? Where do

you go? And remember again that Kevin Henry. Part of the problem with this alleged confession all along was that it was a long written statement and yet Kevin is illiterate, so how was he going to complain? One thing I found very remarkable is that in my experience, both in Australia, in the United States and around the world, when people make complaints against the police, it often takes years and

years for them to come out. Some people don't make those complaints until they're actually freed because they're too scared.

But Kevin was so sure of what had happened, so honest about his innocence, and so keen to protest what had gone on that less than a year after being imprisoned, he filed a complaint with what was then called the CJC, the Criminal Justice Commission, and wrote first a six page letter that was distributed through the Criminal Justice Commission and then two months later a single page letter detailing the acts he alleged had taken place.

to investigate. Now, a complaint was also written for Kevin and on behalf of Kevin by then Queensland State Government MP, and this complaint too was referred through the CMC, the Crime and Misconduct Commission, to the Ethical Standards Command, who then refer it to the Queensland Police. And worst of remembering that what Kevin says happened to him, his trial where the murder of Linda took place was in Rockhampton.

This referral of the complaint by Kevin Henry about the treatment he suffered at the hands of police was handed to the Rockhampton CIB branch to be investigated. And so it won't come as any surprise that the Rockampton Police who were being investigated were being investigated by their own colleagues at the Rockhampton CIB cleared themselves of any wrongdoing. Now what that leaves us with is the complaint Kevin has made repeatedly over the years has never been properly investigated.

No one outside of the Rockhampton CIB has ever examined what took place police investigating police, and we were not the first people to have problems with what happened. Remember what the judge said at the start of Kevin's trial before any witnesses were called, before the prosecutor or the defense started making their cases. The very first thing the judge raised was this supposed confession, this statement Kevin made and remembering now you know this is when Kevin says,

during this process, a gun was pulled on him. And this is what the judge says. Clearly, the record of interview from the middle of page nineteen onwards at the CI branch is tainted and cannot be received as a voluntary statement. That is one sentence, that's the same CI branch that investigated the police who did this to Kevin. The judge says that it is tainted and cannot be received voluntarily. The judge did not know at that time, and we don't believe was ever informed of Kevin's allegation

of a gun being pulled on him. But here you have a judge clearly knowing by just reading the statement that something was wrong. And the judge continues to go on and explain that Kevin had repeatedly said he had nothing further to say, and that these police officers continued to press Kevin, and he details how they did that on page twenty one and page twenty three and earlier on page nineteen and for hours after on video and on tape they pressed him and the judge makes mention

that this happened at the Rockhampton c I branch. And years later, when Kevin's allegation was finally investigated, it was this same CI branch at Rockhampton who investigated the allegations. Is it any wonder the police cleared themselves of wrongdoing?

And what did the report actually say? Because all the paperwork that we've obtained and we have all that is believed to be available, simply states that the officers in question are cleared and that the complaint was not substantiated. But there's no detail of what was actually done to ascertain that. The only thing we know is a single claim by the investigating officer looking into Kevin's allegation that

they reviewed some CCTV footage. Now that CCTV footage is no longer available and it wasn't looked at by this investigating officer for years after Kevin made the complaint. You have to remember that this is pre the digital age. These things were not stored on large files on computers, as the police them said say. These were recorded on Achi video tapes, which, to explain to our listeners, are either three hours in standard play or six hours in

long play. For the police to still have a copy of the video from when Kevin Henry alleges would mean just in the time between when the incident took place and when the investigation into whether it took place happened. The police at just the Rockampton Police station would have had to have maintained up to ten thousand video tapes. So I would suggest that it stretches all kinds of credibility to believe that that occurred. And so while we don't know, I find it very hard to believe any

video tape was ever examined. So clearly the should have looked at this matter themselves. What could be more serious than police misusing a firearm and using it to threaten an individual to confess to a murder they say they did not commit a murder, where all the other evidence suggests this person is innocent. There is no forensic evidence against this person, no DNA evidence against this person. There's eyewitnesses who point the finger not at this person, Kevin Henry,

but at other people. The sole piece of evidence is a confession, and here you have an allegation that it was obtained under severe duress, and no one sought to look at the fact that the police were investigating the police and to this day, as you've mentioned, we don't see any follow up to that matter. So I would suggest this is when the politicians have a job to do,

that they demand that this is looked into. Further, that if we are to be sure that everybody in prison in the state of Queensland and for that matter, Australia, is there because they are guilty, that we need to know how much of this behavior has been going on and if it's been stamped out. And I also want

to mention one other thing. Remember on an earlier episode of this podcast, when we interviewed Patrick McGinnis, the public defender from Florida who was able to prove that a young African American man did not commit a murder the police alleged he did. He too, supposedly confessed, he too made complaints about police roughing him up and punching him. But the police investigated themselves in that matter and they

too cleared themselves. But what we know about that case is that Patrick McGinnis, this public defender who was documented in the Academy Award winning movie A Murder on a Sunday morning, he decided to investigate it himself, and not only did he prove that the police had roughed up this young black man who did not commit the murder,

he found the real murderer. This is the job that organizations like the Crime and Misconduct Commission and the Ethical Standards Command inside both the Queensland Government and Queensland Police should be doing, because if Kevin Henry is innocent, then we know not only has he been denied justice, but Linda has been denied justice too, because the people really responsible have never faced accountability for what they did and the sole read and that is true is because Kevin

was forced to confess to a crime he did not commit by police who were acting unethically, immorally, and I would suggest criminally.