AustLit

'On the morning of November 19th, 2004, an Aboriginal man named Cameron Doomadgee died in a prison cell on Palm Island, off the coast of North Queensland. He had been arrested less than an hour earlier by Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley, for being drunk and causing a public nuisance. A post mortem revealed that he died as a result of a burst portal vein and a split liver; injuries of the sort that normally occur only in high impact accidents. Throughout the inquest and trial that followed, Chris Hurley maintained that he had not assaulted Cameron Doomadgee. Through a controversial series of legal processes he was found to have a case to answer and charged with assault and manslaughter — the first time in Australia that a police officer had been charged over an Aboriginal death in custody. He stood trial and was acquitted by a Townsville jury in June of 2007.' (Introduction)