Another Aboriginal Man Innocent Inside

that of Kevin Henry. And it's such a troubling case that it's shocking that people like myself who look at these cases every single day and Aimy as a journalist, we'd never heard of this case. It has received some small coverage in South Australia, but this should be a national story. The case is that of Derek Bromley, who spent more than thirty four years in prison. Just like Kevin Henry, He's always maintained his innocence, but just like Kevin Henry, he remains in prison. Amy, just briefly, I

guess to give people a background. We have spoken a little bit about Derek's case, but just if you can explain the basics of why Derek is in prison.

a non indigenous man named Stephen Dukhozer died. His body was found five days later in the River Torrens, which runs through the center of Adelaide. Now, the key witness in the case was a man named Gary Carter who suffered from schizophrenia in paranoia and he implicated Derek Bromley. He claimed that he saw Derek with Stephen Darkoza and

he claimed that Derek assaulted him. Now, there were a lot of problems with that eyewitness in this eyewitness identification, the main problem of which was that this was a man who was suffering from severe paranoia and psychosis. There was another reason that Derek Bromley was implicated and given a very harsh sentence. It had to do with the forensic pathologist, doctor Colin Monok, who was South Australia's chief

forensic expert and has since been widely discredited. And doctor Mannott claimed that there are a number of bruises and cut on Stephen Dokoza's body which were consistent with an assault and He also claimed that Stephen Decoza's caused death was drowning. But those two key pillars that implicated Derek Bromley and resulted in him serving so much time in jail. In fact, he's still in jail serving time over his sentence, like Kevin Henry, is credited by a series of experts.

So that's a very brief rundown of the case itself Mardin for our listeners who may not know about it. But what actually has stood out to you and why do you believe that there are grounds to believe Derek Bromley's please of innocence.

serious questions about mister Carter's mental health. He was the prime witness against Derek, and it's since been found by a series of psychiatrists that he was vulnerable to things like suggestibility, that ideas could have been quite easily placed in his head, that were things that were just not true. And so you go and look at can we find something that he said that doesn't appear to be correct. Well, straight away he places Derek Bromley at the scene, but

he doesn't really know Derek. And that's always a problem with an eye witness. How well do they know a person, because that helps us grade how well they'll know whether they've seen someone or not. Now, a person who knew Derek much better, a prison support worker, had seen Derek earlier in the night, and Derek was wearing casual clothing

in Adelaide. Now, both the taxi driver and to a certain extent mister Carter, who were in a cab with this taxi driver on the way to where the murder happened, describe Derek as wearing a white, flashy suit, sort of dressed like someone out of the twenties. Now, people who know the area in Adelaide where this was a nightclub district have an idea of who this person might have been, a local drug dealer. It wasn't Derek Bromley. So straight away we have the eyewitness. Whether you believe it or

not really doesn't matter. The question you have to ask yourself is is the evidence compelling beyond Deresa doubt. We already have someone who knows Derek much better than the other people there saying that description doesn't match Derek and doesn't match what he was wearing earlier that night. And when Derek was arrested by police, he was still wearing the same clothes he was seen earlier the day before

in by that prison support officer. He was never seen by anyone who can confirm his identity in that white suit. Then I think we have to look at the issue of doctor Mannock. And we've discussed previously about Colin Mannock on this podcast and a horrific autopsy that you almost can't call it an autopsy he performed on an Aboriginal person in an Aboriginal community. I'll link to that podcast because I don't want to go through those details again

because they are quite horrific. But not only did doctor Mannock behave in this way, not only has a number of people like Henry Keoh been found innocent and had their convictions overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeal because

of the shoddy work of doctor Manock. Doctor Mannock was at the time South Australia's chief forensic pathologist, but as has been uncovered, there is no record showing that doctor Mannock has the qualifications that would qualify him to even be a pathologist, let alone the leading one in the state. And so then you can look at Derek's case again

and look at the pathology work. Some of the conclusions doctor Manock comes to are absolutely ridiculous and a series of actually qualified forensic pathologists have rejected them out of hand.

One of the big problems in a case like this where a person has been in the water, in this case for five days, is it's almost impossible to determine whether they were conscious or unconscious when they entered the water, if drowning was the cause of death, when certain injuries took place, and of course no forensic material was able to be lifted from the body, and all of this means that you can't give an exact time as to when the deceased departed or was placed in the water,

So you cannot place Derek Bromley at the crime scene at a convincing time. You cannot come up with a convincing cause of death, so you can't even allege how Derek has supposed to have killed this person. And because you can't lift any forensic material, you can't override shoddy eyewitnesses and say categorically that Derek was there. So you have, just like Kevin Henry, you have no forensic evidence linking

Derek whatsoever. You have seriously flawed eyewitness testimony in this case. Really, you have someone who should never have been giving witness testimony on the stand. In Kevin's you don't even have anyone get on the stand who puts Kevin at the time of death with Linda. In fact, we know he was elsewhere. And these are the two key things you're looking for. Did the person commit the actual crime that can be proven forensically and do people place them at

the scene, And in both cases you can't. And yet the thing I really want to point out about Derek's case in particular is that while others have been freed on far less fresh and compelling evidence, Derek remains in prison. The only difference being Derek is aboriginal.

nine ninety one. Was there something specific to that time period? Was the technology or the science up to scratch at that point? Is that Does that play any part in how these termen have been convicted based on forensics?

ability to determine certain causes of death. So in the eighties and nineties, particularly causes of arson and drowning were overinflated as to the ability of a forensic pathologist to say how and if a person drowned and when in a time period they drowned, And similar with arson cases as to when a fire was set and how it

was caused. The big difference is not only has the technology improved, not only has the forensic science improved, but what you will hear all forensic pathologists say now about drowning, particularly when the body has been in the water for a considerable period of time, in this case five days, you can't prove absolutely drowning. All you can do is eliminate everything else. So you might eliminate blunt force trauma, you might eliminate things like blood loss, a natural cause

of death such as heart attack. But what you cannot do, and this remains true to this day, is simply find that someone drowned without ruling everything else out first. And the forensic pathologists in both Kevin and Derek's case did not do that. They both came up categorically stating that both Winda and the victim in Derek's case drowned, and they did it based on junk science, science that just

wouldn't be accepted in a court of law today. And I think that alone should cast an enormous amount of doubt over both convictions. That the evidence that was presented and the way it was presented is not considered science anymore. It's no different scientifically to saying the Earth is flat, which people once said. What they said in court is just not true to the way we know it today, and it doesn't stack up with any of the other evidence that was presented against either Kevin or Derek.

couple of years ago. And you mentioned also about the fact that you know Derek Bromley is an Aboriginal man. But it seems that the weight of evidence is just so much that they should just send it back to court. What reasons do you think the Court of Chriminal Appeal would have had to just knock back that application of believe just so quickly when they've seen previous cases like the case of Henry Kio go through on the same statute.

could have this new, fresh and compelling evidence heard. Whereas in cases like Henry Keo's that you've mentioned, the court found that the evidence was fresh and compelling. In Derek's they didn't. Now I'll make two statements about that. One is, in my professional opinion, Derek Bromley has more fresh and compelling evidence in his favor than Henry Keo. That's not to say Henry's case shouldn't have got up. It should have.

It's just that Derek has far more to work with and far more evidence that he's both fresh and compelling as to his guilt and involvement in the crime. But the other issue I think is that Henry Keo's case had garnered a great deal of media attention, and there was a lot of coverage of both his first conviction and then of all of his appeals and everything that

led up to that. And while courts will say they are immune to that sort of outside pressure, I think it's pretty clear that when you have more evidence in Derek's favor but he's knocked back as opposed to Henry, who had all this pressure, that that certainly must have played a part. And I guess the last thing we have to say is the court was not being asked to find Derek guilty or innocent. All Derek was asking for was for a new trial, a chance to present

this evidence. Why after thirty four years, were a man who has maintained his innocence that whole time, in fact, could finally confess, do parole programs and walk free, but he's refused to do it. That's how positive he is about his innocence. He knows he didn't do it because he wasn't there, and he didn't do it. The evidence shows he could not and should not have been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and all he is asking for is a chance to present that new, fresh and

compelling evidence to a court. And what I find most egregious by the decision is that this wasn't a court saying we uphold the predest decision, or that we find you innocent based on the new evidence. This was a court saying we will not even look at new evidence. We will not consider that a mistake has happened, where the same forensic pathologist was involved in making serious other mistakes that saw innocent people go to jail for decades.

I think that's unconscionable and I hope in the future Derek's final appeals opportunity to the High Court is successful because for a court to say we'll keep our eyes closed to evidence while a man sits in prison for a crime he didn't do, is the worst failure the justice system can make.

It's just not a possibility in Queensland. And sadly, as we've seen for Derek, while it works for non Indigenous people, this change in the South Australian law, even this change has not worked for Derek, and so he's sat and waited every single day in prison while his legal team have worked their guts out and have done a great job,

but still the legal system fails him. And so I think we have to come to another conclusion, which is that people like Derek and Kevin require mass community support if the criminal justice system that previously failed them, that previously failed their victims or their alleged victims who have never got justice because the wrong people are in jail.

We see by the example of Henry Keo, we see by the example of Andrew Mallard in Western Australia, in Jane's case more recently, that the only way justice is done is to apply vast public pressure, and that even new evidence as we've presented in Kevin's case, as could have been made available and was to the court had they chose to consider it. In Derrek's that they will look away and do nothing. And I just want to add this about both Derek and Kevin. Derek, as a

young Aboriginal child, was snatched away from his family. He was targeted throughout his life as we know, and sent to prison as a young man for simply being present when a crime was committed, not a crime he partook in in any way, He was simply present during that time. He was incarcerated at the Yatla Labor Prison, a prison that no longer exists. Such were the hellish conditions and remember the word labor prison. That's not what a prison is supposed to be in a country like Australia. You

don't force people to work as slaves. And Derek fought back against that. He was one of the key protesters and he spoke outwardly about his treatment. We also know that Kevin had a childhood and a young adult life of being targeted by police and being brutalized by corrections

officers just the same. In Derek's case, the police and corrective services had said they get him back in Kevin's case, as we know, with so many people who were present that night, they were hounded and hounded by the police until some ended up in prison and some tragically took

their own lives. So not only is the difference between someone like Derek and Henry key Oh or Kevin and Andrew Mallard the fact that they're being judged in a court of law differently because they're Aboriginal, and that the evidence is not considered, it's that the first contact they had with the state, the first contact they had with the criminal justice system, was because they were criminalized because they were Aboriginal. It's the only crime they really ever committed.

And until we wake up to that fact and realize that once an innocent person is in prison has been through the criminal justice system, getting them out and removing them from that deadly state apparatus is almost impossible. Look at Miss dw she died in custody. She was criminalized because of some small unpaid fines despite being the victim of domestic violence. Just this week, we've seen a victim of domestic violence be placed in handcuffs and taken to

prison because she was aboriginal. For no other reason, could anyone argue. So when you start by criminalized people purely because of who they are, we will continue to have this problem. And as Derek's case, and as Kevin's case continues to prove, despite all the evidence, despite the most modern forensic science, despite the witnesses being disproven, Kevin and

Derek remain in prison. So what we're left with is not the ability to turn to the courts who have failed Kevin and who this year have now failed Derek despite welcome changes. Once again, it shows what we've been pushing for is to expose the sheer number of Aboriginal people who are innocent and incarcerated, and not for them to have to wait for years and years of appeals, but for them to be pardoned by the state governors who have the power to do it tomorrow.