Just before nine o'clock last night, the jury returned guilty verdicts against all three defendants. It was absolutely shambles, to tell you the truth.
Just actually really.
Padan blood on his clothing the day after the alleged attap.
On a shallow mud bank and it fits through a river.
Basically, I think most of the people are used to me are good people.
I think a really important question we need to ask is how many Indigenous prisoners in Australia are innocent.
This is Curtain, a podcast where we pull back the blinds to shine a light on the darkest parts of our justice system and ask who are the victims. I'm Amy Maguire and.
I'm Martin Hodgson, a senior advocate for the Foreign Prisoner Support Service. And a warning, this series contains the names of deceased peoples and has distressing content that might upset some listeners.
This special episode of Curtain is dedicated with our love to Elijah and his family.
First and foremost, I just want to pay my respects to the traditional owners and the land we were gathering here today, the elder's past and present. My name is Main White. I'm a one of than man. I'm from Calgarley. Elijah Dohity is my blood. He's my family. My father in two thousand and one proclaimed Calgary the most racist town in Australia. He had lived there since nineteen seventy three.
In nineteen seventy three, my father took a bus from Laverden which is now as Drive, from Calguley and took Indigenous people from the Skull Rock Skull Rock Royal Commission. He took Indigenous people from Kowguley all the way from labor and all the way to Calgouley. When he got there, six policemen beat him brutally. One of those policemen became the Commissioner of Police in Western Australia. For all the years my father had lived there, my father passed away
two years ago. From all the years that my father has lived there, he said, nothing has changed all the way up from then to night to two thousand and one. Elijah Doughty is my family, my blood. I'm from Calgary. I lived in Calgary. I lived there. I lived up until I was seventeen. I lived I know that life. I've been chased. I've been chased by people in cars, white people in cars. I know what it's like. I lived there, I lived that life. But this kid was fourteen,
he was a child. He was murdered. Let's not get the facts. Let's not get the stuff that's twisted.
He was murdered.
It was a manslaughter and reckless driving. Three years three years.
Now. In this episode of Curtain, we'll be looking in more depth into the case of Elijah Dadi. At one of the protests in Sydney, Kevin's friend David tex Chapman, who's been on this podcast before, got up with a poster in support of Kevin, and he made the point that this man convicted of dangerous driving occasioning death over the death of Elijah Dowdy would most likely be out in February when he's.
Eligible for parole. He compared that to Kevin Henry. Kevin Henry is serving time for a crime he did not commit. He's been locked up for twenty six years, and as we've explained on this podcast numerous times, his parole has been knocked back on several occasions, and we've explained a lot of the detail and the reasons behind that. But text made a very good point about the differences in the way the justice system treats white perpetrators and the way it treats black victims.
So we're going to talk a little bit more about Elijah Dowdy's case and what it says about Kevin Henry.
So Martin, I mean, dealt with.
A lot of cases, and you've spoken and become close to a lot of victims, particularly do I think custody of victims, but also victims who have been wrongfully convicted. When you heard about a Elijah Dowdy's case in the recent decision in the Supreme Court of Western Austraia, what was your reaction maybe your personal reaction.
For me, my personal reaction was immediately anger. That was because I understand previous cases where the same charges have been brought in wa where much harsher sentences have been handed out, and they were the sort of sentences you would hope and we were hoping to hear would come down. But to see once again the justice system fail an Aboriginal family, and in particular a young Aboriginal boy who'd
done nothing wrong. You can't kill someone because they're riding a bike you believe is yours to then no one finds out this man would be eligible for parole just early next year, just rub salt into the wound, and you can only imagine how Elijah's family is feeling. And also why there is so much grief and anger in the Aboriginal community right across the country. Too many times people who have murdered Aboriginal people and in this case
a child, have gotten away with it. Too many times when Aboriginal people have been murdered, no one's ever even been charged. So what other response to people expect than grief, anger, and frustration. And I think one thing that angers me in particular is not only the justice system we know it's failed time and again, but some of the media reporting and particularly referencing rioting, fighting behavior when such an injustice takes place. We live in a democracy where the
right to protest is vital to that democracy's existence. And if you can't protest and be angry and call for justice when a child is hunted down and killed by a man in a large four wheel drive, when else can you be angry? And I think that was just part of the feeling that many people had this week.
It just says you can do everything right, play by the rules, and even when they kill your children, you can't get justice, and I think that's an awful message the justice system is sent this week, and it's a disgrace what's happened.
In wa One of the things that angered me quite a lot in this case and also just waiting for it to go to trial, is the fact that Aboriginal
people have to justify the humanity of Elijah Dowdy. They have to actually go to extra lengths to show that, you know, the actions that man took that day in running over this young boy was simply not justified, and yet across social media, even in the media, it was almost as if people were trying to justify his actions, to try and claim that he was right, that somehow his completely disproportionate response was right in taking after that
young boy. And a lot of it's focused on whether or not he stole a motorbike, and we know that there's no evidence that Elijah actually stole that bike. There's no real evidence that it was that man's bike in question. It seems to be a lot of conjecture at the moment, and there definitely wasn't any evidence that if it was stolen,
Olijah actually knew it was stolen. And yet it seems to be there's this emotional burden on Aboriginal people all across Australia, but most particularly on Elijah's family to try and to justify his right to be free and writing around Calgouli. And it's just I don't think any other Australian family would have to do that. When we see other cases of murdered children, they are never acquired to do that. In fact, they automatically had the support and
the sympathy of wider Australia. They end up on sixty minutes, they end up on the front page of newspapers. We saw with Daniel Walcombe that obviously, you know, I remember at one point the Premier and members of the Queensland government, we're out walking with his family. You know, everyone supports
his family. And yet and yet, for some reason, when it comes to Aboriginal families, when they moren their their children, they have to go through so many greater lengths in order to just in order just to get what should
be you know, basic human decency. I mean, I think that's what really angered me as well, is the aftermath and just the racism, the pure racism that's continually shown by a non Indigenous Australia, even when it's something that should be so black and white as to be about the case of a murdered child, a complete innocent child.
I totally agree, and I think that's where a huge amount of frustration has come. And everything you say is
absolutely spot on, and anecdotes never make great evidence. But I want to give an anecdote that touched me the most this week, and that is that I've been fortunate enough, through the organization I work with, Foreign Prisoner Support Service to have worked with the Morchambe family and what amazing people they are and how the community rallied around them, and justifiably so, nobody who kills a child should be on the street. If anyone belongs in prison, it's them.
But then at a protest in Perth this week, a friend of mine took along her little boy. He's an Aboriginal boy of just four years old, and he protested holding up a sign. He's a four year old Aboriginal boy. Four, he's not even old enough for school, and he's having to justify his right to live, that he doesn't want to be the next victim, that his humanity and that of Elijah's has to be honored by the Australian community,
and it's not. What does it say about our society, let alone the justice system and our politicians and our police. When a four year old boy in Australia has to protest because he's scared if he is killed or his two year old sister is killed, there will be no justice. Children should not have to know such things. Elijah should not have had to know what he experienced, and nor should his family ever have had to deal with what happened to him, let alone their appalling treatment ever since
their child was murdered. It might be an anecdote, but it's two groups of people who I've come to know, one white family, one Aboriginal family, and the difference in their treatment says everything about how Australian society treats Aboriginal people. In twenty seventeen, Martin, coming back.
To the details of Elijah's case, and this is what's been reported in the media, is that there seemed to be a focus on the last I think it is twenty seconds of Elijah's life, and because obviously Elijah wasn't there to tell us his side of the story, a lot of it rested on the man's version of events, and what he claims is that while while he was chasing Elijah down, Elijah veered into the direction of his car, and the man claims that he didn't mean to do it.
And yet when police actually got there that day, they drove over the tire marks, and they, i think from whatever in the media, they drove over them quite a couple of times. And so there's no way of being able to piece together what really happens. So a lot of it rested on that man's testimony. What do you think of the police investigation in that sense that it literally come down to the man's version of events, because the police seem to have contaminated a great deal of the crime scene.
I think there's a number of things there. I think we have to start with the fact that the police had already told this gentleman where to go and look for his bike. Now, again, we don't even know if the bike that was involved belonged to this gentleman, and we certainly don't know, and it's highly doubtful in my opinion, that even if the bike was his, that Elijah was
the one who stole it. What we do know, though, as you point out, is that the police arrived on the scene having been called, knowing that this was a serious event that had taken place, in fact so serious a child had lost their life. It doesn't get any worse than that in what at that time they were treating as a traffic incident. And remember a traffic incident can result in a murder or manslaughter charge. Vehicular manslaughter
is not an uncommon thing in Australia. So the way they secure the crime scene so that the police crash investigators could do their job and get to the bottom of it is absolutely crucial. But as you point out, once they'd driven all over the scene, driven through the oil patch that was left behind by the man's four wheel drive, driven multiple times over the tire tracks of his four wheel drive, it made the expert police's job
almost impossible. So those police who responded very early on, and maybe these are the same police who tipped this man off as to where to go looking for his bike, the bike he claims was stolen, are the same ones that destroyed any evidence that would give Elijah his final voice as to what actually happened. There's no way we can ever know if Elijah did in fact swerve in front of the man. If Elijah swerved, it doesn't matter. The man should never have been behind him in the
first place. And I think some of the key facts we need to break down are very important because there's a lot we don't know, and we don't know because we're relying on this man's word, and we can't know because the police drove over the crime scene. But here's what we do know. This man, believing his bike had been stolen, took the day off work, so quite clearly
he had an intent very early on to suggest. I think, as the media has and those who were defending this gentleman have said, is that it all revolves around that last twenty seconds is a total lie. This man had made the conscious decision to take a day off work. Then he made a conscious decision to get in his full wheel drive and lay in wait. He then pursued Elijah at speed and very close to the motorcycle Elijah
was riding. All of these things go to the intent of this man far beyond that final twenty seconds that he claims to be an accident. This has nothing to do, in my opinion, whether Elijah swerved or didn't swerve. This is about vigilante justice in Western Australia that a man is told by police where his motorcycle that was allegedly stolen could be. If the police had gone and looked for that motorcycle in the first place, we wouldn't be
here right now. If the police had done their job the day before Elijah died, none of this would have ever happened. But because the police didn't do their job, and because they interfered knowingly or unknowingly with the crime scene, we see a man take a two ton vehicle and chase after a fourteen year old boy. So while we might never know exactly what happened, I think we have to all agree that placing it on that last twenty seconds of Elijah's life does no justice in getting to the truth.
And you raise a really good point.
I mean, I think we even have to go further back than before that day because it was something that never came up in the trial. There was a.
Group on Facebook where.
A lot of non indigenous residents in cal Gurley were actually congregating to talk about what they say were a spade of stolen bikes and vehicles, and some of the comments made on those social media pages were just completely outrageous.
They're talking about hunting them down. I mean, they were the very examples of the vigilante justice you were just talking about, and yet that was never raised in court from my understanding, so it's even I guess the wider context of what's actually happening in cal Gurley, which is obviously such a place of such extreme racism.
I mean, I think you'd call it one of the.
Most racist towns in Australia. So from that backdrop, I mean you could even bring that into play, couldn't you. I mean, what's the reasoning behind not being able to include those social media pages in court?
Well, I think it goes to the fact that Aboriginal lives are just not given any worth. I think to link what you've just raised, which is a very valid point with what I was speaking about earlier. In light of there being this Facebook group calling for horrific vigilante justice to be dished out against Aboriginal children, why on earth would a police officer suggest that this man go
and look for his own stolen property. Surely the police a should have been taking action to close this Facebook page down, should have been taking action against those calling for vigilante justice against young Aboriginal children, especially given the graphic and violent nature of what people were calling for. And then to know about this, and it's no secret that this group and other Facebook groups around Australia exist
that target young Aboriginal people. For the police then to encourage this man to go and look for his bike himself, was always going to end in tragic consequences. And this comes back to a point we've discussed on this podcast before. Aboriginal people are automatically criminalized. If there was a Facebook group calling for the murder of white children, would we
see that Facebook stay up? And if such a group existed in a small town and an Aboriginal person called the police and said they were looking for something of theirs they thought was stolen by a white child, would they instruct this Aboriginal man to go looking to where these white children are known to hang out. There's not a chance in hell that would happen, And that would not happen because the police police would be setting up
for a situation. Justice has unfolded. So I think, as you suggest, the racism of Calgooli is central to what took place, and the police have to take full responsibility here. If Aboriginal lives are worth those of everyone else's and the police are there to protect and serve, what were they doing to protect the children who are being targeted by this Facebook group? And on the back of this Facebook group existing comes to death and I would say
murder of young Elijah. And yet we're seeing no calls for the people involved in administering in administering this group to face any consequences for their action. We're seeing no calls for reforms of police's action in what they did that led to these events. All we're seeing is Elijah's family in the end Aboriginal community have to justify his humanity. Why a man who killed their child will walk free before the next summer is even over. I don't see
how that can be acceptable to anyone. And again, this is clearly an issue of race, and until people accept that, we're not going to get to the bottom of what happened. And this is not a one off thing for Western Australia so much.
I think even now there's quite a lot of confusion about why sentence was so short and short compared to cases of dangerous writing that you hear about every so often. I mean putting it into the context of other cases like this. Was this a lenient sentence?
Yeah, I think it was an exceptionally lenient sentence. And we've heard this week in the media legal experts talk about this being a harsh sentence. Well, that was another thing that infuriated me this week because in just a matter of seconds, a quick search of the records in Western Australia showed sentences far, far longer and more substantial that had been handed down for exactly the same thing,
dangerous driving causing death. But I also want to go to the issue of manslaughter, and this was something that Chief Justice Martin had to re explain to the jury. And one thing Justice Martin did was use a word that would help make it easier to understand what the jury were having to come to terms with, because often juries are not aware of the legal terms and their complexities.
And it's quite easy again with a quick search of WA's records to see that this same word has been used by many judges across the state to help juries in their deliberation. And that word is not just did this individual drive in a manner that was criminally negligent, but was it grossly negligent, and if so, that would constitute the man slaughter charge and would have seen the man face more like ten years in prison. And I just want to go to that word grossly negligent, and
this is how it's defined. A very obvious and unacceptable manner is chasing a fourteen year old child at high speed in a two ton four wheel drive a child on a small motorbike that may not be yours, and gaining on that child at a rate of five point six meters a second into rough dirt road where you have no control of your vehicle.
Is that.
Is that obviously flagrant and dangerous. All the jury had to decide was that that was the case based on the facts and the facts alone, And once again, as we've spoken about on this podcast, I would suggest that if the people listening don't go off the facts of what we said, it's been reported very clearly as to what was presented in the courtroom, and that alone should have been enough for a jury to find that this was grossly negligent. And yet they didn't come to that determination.
And all I can assume is that that was because of the race of the child. And how can I prove that, well, what do we know about Western Australia's criminal justice system? Just recently, an Aboriginal man, Gene Gibson, was released after five and a half years behind bars. He was found guilty of manslaughter and an unlawful killing and sentenced to seven and a half years, of which he served five years behind bars. But here's the thing. Gene didn't commit the crime. Gene has a cognitive impairment.
Gene was forced to confess to something he didn't do, and because of that he's been released despite losing five years of his life. This man has been found guilty of a charge, admittedly a lesser charge, and will be out halfway through the next summer. But had he been found guilty of the same charge that Jene was found guilty of when there was no evidence at all, no forensic evidence, no witness testimony, and a forced confession alone, Whereas here we have forensic evidence even if it had
been to disturbed. We have CCTV footage, we know the man took the day off, we know he lay in waiting, and yet a Western Australian jury could not find this man guilty of manslaughter as they could find Gene Gibson guilty despite there being no evidence. What more do we need to know? And here's another thing to suggest that this was a harsh sentence if we look it back to Western Australia twenty fourteen, a very similar incident where
neither party was Aboriginal. The offender in an almost identical situation, but where the person who died was not a child received eight years. Eight years That person who committed that crime will not be free to enjoy this Western Australian summer. This gentleman will be and Elijah will never come back. So to mount the argument that this is based on race is quite simple as far as I'm concern, and
the facts on it are clear. So I don't want to hear any more about Aboriginal people rioting or misbehaving. This is the state that killed mister Ward. This is the state that killed Miss dw This is the state that set up Gene Gibson and falsely imprisoned him and deprived him of his liberty for five years. Stop blaming Aboriginal people. Aboriginal people did not kill Elijah. A non
Indigenous person did. And it's your fault that it's this way, and it's your fault that Aboriginal people are angry, and it's your fault that this injustice exists. Stop asking Aboriginal people for the solution, Stop asking Aboriginal people to justice. Fire the humanity of their children, of themselves, of their families, of their communities, Politicians, the justice system, broader society, and finally, the police, the ones who are supposed to protect all
of our community, have to take that responsibility. It's not for Aboriginal people to do. It's for everyone else to do and take responsibility for why this occurred. And all that racism, all those deaths in Western Australia and around this country is why Elijah is dead. A non Indigenous man will walk three this summer and Aboriginal Australia is grief stricken and angry, and it's your fault that that's the case.
Mightn't taking that all in? Is there anything that people can do?
What I would call on the public to do. Aboriginal people and non Aboriginal people to join me in calling on the Western Australian Department of Public Prosecution to appeal this decision and ensure that Elijah's family receives justice, that receives justice people can write to the Attorney General of Western Australia, will put the information on our website and all people need to do is call for justice to be done. This sentence is grossly unfair, it's not just,
it's not right, and it has to be appealed. The DPP in a number of states have appealed such decisions and done so successfully. What we're asking for is no more and no less than what non Indigenous people get from the justice system every day of the week in Australia. So if the Western Australian government wants to prove there is no racism in their justice system, if Australian people want to prove there's no racism in Australia, and quite frankly, that can't be done just by this, but this is
a start. Right to the Western Australian Attorney General and demand the DPP appeal this lean and unjust conviction that was handed down to the killer of Elijah. And we won't rest until we've done everything we can to bring justice for Elijah and his family. Behind the scenes, our work has already begun. It started just moments after the decision was handed down, and we won't stop until we've literally done all we can. All we're asking is that
you write that one email. And that's what this podcast, Curtin is all about. It started with Kevin Henry and the fact that he's still in prison for a crime he didn't commit. But throughout the last year, as you've gone on this journey with us, we've been contacted by endless Indigenous Australians and their communities who have faced injustices all over the country and so we're here to pull back that curtain and bring justice. That's our fight and all we ask is that you support us in doing that.
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