Australia’s longest-serving Indigenous prisoner Derek Bromley will remain in prison, possibly for months, awaiting the outcome of a High Court decision on his final bid for freedom.
The Nurungga Ngarrindjeri man has spent nearly 40 years in a South Australian prison, serving a life sentence for the murder of Stephen Docoza, whose body was found in Adelaide’s River Torrens in 1984.
Bromley has been eligible for parole since 2006 but it has been denied because he has continued to maintain his innocence.
The matter was heard by five High Court justices on Thursday, the second of two days at the High Court in Canberra.
The full bench heard the Crown’s key witness in the case, Gary Carter, was admitted to a psychiatric ward, Hillcrest Hospital, the day after the incident.
“I was unwell, yes, I had been off my medication,” Mr Carter had said at the trial.
“I saw the devil… there were times when I talked about playing for the Port Adelaide Football Club”
Bromley’s lawyer Stephen Keim SC has contested that the South Australian Court of Criminal Appeal ignored new psychiatric evidence that Mr Carter’s evidence “could not be relied upon unless corroborated in every respect”, and that his illness made him susceptible to suggestibility.
He had told the court Mr Carter was suffering “acute symptoms of schizoaffective disorder” in the weeks prior.
On Thursday the court heard the expert evidence by a witness — referred to as Dr Brereton — found it “so inherently unreliable” that almost his entire account would have to be corroborated.
“Even in these circumstances I would have grave concerns about relying in any significant way on aspects of his evidence that were uncorroborated,” Dr Brereton had said in his report.
Lawyers acting for the South Australian office of the Director of Public Prosecutions submitted it wasn’t necessary for ‘all’ Mr Carter’s evidence to be corroborated.
“I do not go so far as to say you can take the whole of the account,” director of public prosecutions for South Australia Martin Hinton QC, told the court.
“But you have enough to be satisfied that there was a violent assault.”
In 1984, Bromley and co-accused John Karpany were found guilty of bludgeoning Adelaide man Stephen Docoza to death on the banks of the River Torrens using a dumbbell after the victim refused their sexual advances.
“The dumbbell is there, there are injuries to the body, the bottom half, the pants are missing - he said they asked for sex,” Mr Hinton said.
The prosecution argued there were seven “substantive propositions” as to why the prosecution case remains that Mr Bromley killed Mr Docoza.
“The body is in the river, the desert boots [with shoelaces still tied] are where he was in the location,” Mr Hinton said. “That is enough.”
Prosecutors also disputed fresh evidence from a taxi driver known as Mr George which cast doubt on Bromley’s involvement.
Mr George had identified the victim, Mr Carter, Karpany, and a “dapper man” wearing a white suit, who Mr Keim argued could not be his client.
But Mr Hinton said the taxi driver had overheard one of the men say he’d just been released from prison, which matched Bromley’s situation.
Prosecutors relied on evidence by South Australia’s former chief pathologist Colin Manock, whose evidence Bromley’s lawyers said, “contradicted the eyewitness account Carter gave as much as it confirmed it”.
In their submissions, Bromley’s lawyers told the High Court the autopsy evidence was challenged.
Mr Manock was later found not to have possessed the qualifications to either certify cause of death or act as an expert witness. But this pillar of the Bromley case will not be considered by the High Court because it was not discussed in the Court of Criminal Appeal
South Australia’s DPP in its submissions said the High Court “must accept the cause of death” given by Mr Manock.
“The limited referral has the effect of leaving the findings and conclusions of the Full Court in relation to the fresh pathological evidence, and hence the cause of death, undisturbed,” the submissions said.
The court has deferred its decision.
