Stuart v The Queen [1959] HCA 27

High Court of Australia Dixon C.J. McTiernan, Fullagar, Taylor and Windeyer JJ. Stuart v The Queen [1959] HCA 27

ORDER Application for leave to appeal refused.

Cur. adv. vult.

The Court delivered the following written judgment:—

June 19 Dixon C.J., McTiernan, Fullagar, Taylor and Windeyer JJ.

Certain features of this case have caused us some anxiety, but we are of opinion that it would not be in accordance with the principles governing the exercise of our jurisdiction to give special leave to appeal after a conviction upon indictment to grant this application.

Stuart, the applicant, was convicted of murder after a trial in Adelaide before the Supreme Court of South Australia, and was sentenced to death. He appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeal of South Australia against his conviction, but his appeal was dismissed. From that decision dismissing his appeal he now seeks special leave to appeal to this Court.

The crime of which the prisoner has been found guilty was committed at Thevenard near Ceduna on Saturday, 20th December 1958. On that afternoon a girl aged nine years who had been playing on the beach was raped and murdered in a cave by the seashore. Her body was found there on that night by those searching for her. It is unnecessary for us to say anything of the horrifying details of the crime; it is enough to state that there was nothing to be seen which would identify the guilty man, unless it be some footprints which next morning were traced by black trackers from the cave to a pool of water and thence back and to a roadway above.

The applicant is an aboriginal of the Arunta tribe, not quite of the full blood, aged about twenty-seven years. He had come to Ceduna on the previous day with a travelling show by which he was employed. On Monday 22nd December, that is two days after the commission of the crime, at about ten o'clock at night a party of six officers of police went to the place where by that time the prisoner was quartered and took him to the police station. There he was questioned for some time. According to the evidence of the police officers, at first he denied all implication in the crime and then, by steps which it is needless to trace, came to admit it and described the circumstances. A confession was typed out, and this he signed in block letters. He was charged with murder and locked up. Next morning in the cells, so the evidence of the police officers stated, he made further admissions of guilt when they showed him certain things found in the cave and questioned him about them. He was warned, they said, that he need not answer and that his answers would be given in evidence. The confessional statements of the previous night and these admissions formed the substance of the case against the prisoner. All that was added to connect him with the crime was an opinion expressed by the black trackers that the footprints on the beach were his. There was of course much evidence besides, and none of it was inconsistent with his guilt, but it was not evidence which implicated him as the author of the crime.