E quick heads up. This podcast features the name of a deceased Indigenous person and also contains distressing themes.
Already and this is the Daily this is the Dahlias. Oh now it makes sense.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily Os. It's Wednesday, the twenty sixth of February.
I'm Zara, I'm Billy.
The trial of four people accused of murdering fifteen year old Cassius Turvy in Perth has begun in the WA Supreme Court over two years after his death. It's a case that prompted widespread rallies across the country and prompted broader discussions about the treatment of First Nation's children here in Australia.
Zara, I think a lot of our audience will remember this case because when it happened about two years ago. Now, like you said, it really dominated the news cycle. But it has been quite a long time since we have spoken about it, at least on this podcast. So do you want to start with who was Cassius Turvy?
Yeah? So, Cassius Turvy was a fifteen year old Nunga Yamajee boy and he lived in Perth. As I mentioned, he enjoyed playing basketball, and he also ran a small community business called the lawn Mower Boys, and that was where he would cut other people's lawns in the local community. He has been described by his mum and by his family in the time after his death, and some of the descriptions talk about him being a jovial, kind and
larger than life figure. And the reason that we know of Cassius Turvy is because of his death and the case that has ensued since. So just to quickly run through a bit about the case. So, on the thirteenth of October twenty twenty two, Cassius and his friends were attacked on their way home from school in Perth. At this time, he was allegedly beaten with a metal pole. The fifteen year old was rushed to hospital where he
spent five days recovering before he was discharged. Almost immediately after he was discharged, he suffered a seizure and he was rushed back to hospital where he was placed in an induced coma. Just ten days after this alleged attack, he died in hospital. Now four people have since been charged with the murder of Cassius Turvey. Their names are
Jack Braley, Brody Palmer, Mitchell Fourth and Alisia Gilmour. And these are the people who are currently on trial and the reason that we're talking about this case again today, So.
That trial is now underway. What has happened so far?
Yeah, Well, I just want to run through a bit about the trial itself because I think it's interesting. So the first thing to note is that the trial for the four people I just mentioned began in the WA Supreme Court on the tenth of February and it remains ongoing. So you know today tomorrow there's going to be more evidence presented. It's expected to last for about ten weeks all up, so a fairly long case there of significance.
All four people or four defendants have pleaded not guilty to murder and so they will be defending these charges during this trial. Three of them, so Brainy, Fourth and Gilmore, are also facing charges for allegedly kidnapping and assaulting another fifteen year old boy in the days before the alleged
attack of Cassius Turvey. They've also pleaded not guilty to those charges, and those charges are actually going to be heard as part of this trial in court because there is some connection that's being alleged between these two incidents. And the other thing I'll just note is that this trial is going to be decided by a jury, and I think that this is important to talk about because the Cassius Turvey case was and is extremely high profile.
As I said at the top, there have been widespread protests and demonstrations since his death, and so it's interesting that this is a jury case, and it's one of those cases where the judge will be keeping a very close eye on jurors to ensure that they're not prejudice and that they can come to a conclusion at the end of the trial.
Just for anyone who's not exactly clear on that. The thinking is that in high profile cases, it is a risk that jurors will see commentary on the media or that they have on social media which will influence their opinion. And my understanding is that during a trial, the ideas that jurors are not influenced by anything or any evidence outside of what is presented in court.
Absolutely so they're not allowed to bring in any resources. They're meant to be purely assessing it on the evidence that's presented to them in court, which, as you said, is difficult when so much of the country would have read about this case for weeks and weeks and weeks on end.
Yeah, really interesting, and that's why often in high profile cases there will be a judge only trial instead of a jury because there's not the chance of a fair trial. But that is a whole other kettle. Oh yeah, sure, will stick to this. You said that this trial is expected to last up to ten weeks. We've had about two weeks so far, two in a bit weeks. What have we learned so far?
So basically, the first two weeks have just been setting up the details or the timeline according to the prosecution, So we've only heard from the prosecution because then the defense will come afterwards. But so far, I think one of the most striking testimonies has come from a school friend of Cassius. And remember he was fifteen years old. So a lot of the witnesses here are really really young. And it also means that a lot of their identities
have been concealed because they are minors. So we don't know who a lot of these people are, but we are hearing their testimonies.
So Cassius Turvey was really young. What about the defendants? How old are they?
So all of them are under the age of thirty currently.
I believe over the age of eighteen.
Correct, So two of them are in their early twenties I believe, and two in their late twenties, but all under the age of thirty. So yeah, this is a case full of young people, really, and so to go to what this school friend has provided as evidence. So she alleges that while her and her school friends were walking home from school, the four defendants drove by and yelled racial abuse before claiming that Cassius and his friends
had smashed their windows. I'm not going to verbatim recall what this abuse was because I don't think that that's necessary, but comments were made about the race of the kids. She says that the group of school children denied smashing anything, but despite this, she went on to allege that after the group accused the teenagers of smashing windows, they returned, stopped the car, and got out armed with metal poles.
The witness described one of the men as muscular and said the other two were skinny, and she told the court that the boys started running and the men were chasing after them. She claimed the Cassius was one of the boys fleeing from the defendants and that they ran
into bushland, including Cassius. She then alleges that the men ran into the bush with those metal polls, and that sometime later Cassius emerged from the bush and he was quote holding his head and it was bleeding down like his head and ear, and he was crying.
Mile And so we don't know yet, because, like you said, the defendants haven't been on trial yet what their defense actually is. We know that they are pleading not guilty, but we don't know what part of this they are saying is not true.
Yeah, because the only things that have happened so far is that you know, CCTV has been provided of the last minutes before this alleged attack. We've heard from a number of witnesses who said they saw it. We've heard from friends of Cassius, but like you said, we haven't heard from the defendants or from their lawyers.
And do we know anything about what happened prior to the alleged assault.
So the details of this are still emerging, but prosecutors have described Cassius's death as quote the endpoint of a complex series of events that had absolutely nothing to do with him, and so much of this trial so far has been unpacking this series of events, and different people have different ideas or different recollections about what this complex chain of events actually looks like. But ultimately, what the prosecution is saying is that none of these events had
anything to do with Cassius. In terms of what those series of events are, we are, as I said, still in the early days of the trial, but essentially it's been described in court as this kind of tit for tat that includes things like the accused allegedly snatching two kids off the street and abusing them following some social media exchanges. That was before the alleged assault of Cassius Turvy.
Another incident relates to this alleged smashing of windows that Cassius and his friends were accused of doing, and also of threats made against the accused to damage their property. Again, none of this has been tested in the court of law yet, but ultimately what the prosecution is saying is that none of these events should have led to the death of Cassius Turvey.
And so we've said a number of times that this is expected to last for ten weeks, and we're only a couple of weeks in what can we expect to hear in the coming weeks.
Well, like we said, we'll expect to hear from the defense about how they intend to defend these charges. There are different groups of charges, all kind of relating to these series of events. We'll be sure to keep an eye on this because, like we started with at the top here, this is a case that really galvanized the broader Australian society. It opened up bigger conversations about how Indigenous children are treated and First Nations communities more broadly.
So definitely one that we will be keeping an eye on.
Sara, thank you for explaining that, and thank you for listening to this episode of The Daily os. We'll be back again this afternoon with your evening headlines, but until then, have a great day. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bunjelung Kalkutin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to
all Aboriginal and Torres s Right island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present,