The family of a youth who endured multiple taser and baton strikes from police in Byron Bay five years ago has vowed to continue their fight for justice.
Magistrate Michael Dakin on Tuesday afternoon again dismissed a common assault charge against one of the four officers involved, former Senior Constable Michial Luke Greenhalgh.
Beaten boy never arrested
Mr Greenhalgh no longer works for New South Wales Police and has so far declined to speak to media.
The state’s police watchdog singled the former constable out of the four for the state to consider charging after a high-profile public investigation in 2018.
Video footage of the incident went viral at the time and showed Mr Greenhalgh hitting an unarmed naked youth eighteen times with his baton.
The boy was later taken to hospital with a broken rib and police never laid arrest.
Instead, the state agreed to charge Mr Greenhalgh with one count of common assault.
Unfolding tragedy after Lateen Lane incident
Mr Greenhalgh, who had grown a moustache since the 2021 verdict and could no longer wear a police uniform, sat in the public gallery on Tuesday in simple beige chinos with his head bowed throughout most of the re-hearing.
The former constable’s wife, by contrast, who also worked at Byron Bay Police Station at the time of the incident, appeared to have barely changed, clad in her usual elongated silhouette of black and holding the same poise.
Mrs Greenhalgh sat next to her husband, nearer to the wall, and gazed steadfastly at the magistrate.
The former constable’s legal representative, Brent Haverfield, sat alone on the lawyers’ benches, with the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) beaming in via video link on two screens, one either side of the court room.
Two police officers in uniform sat among supporters of the Greenhalghs, including Byron Bay Chief Inspector Matt Kehoe, who took up his position after the Lateen Lane incident.
The matter has been tragic on far more than the one count focussed on in court: the boy had been diagnosed on the autism spectrum before the incident and later suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, meanwhile, one of the four police officers on-scene that very early morning in January 2018 went on to suffer a brain injury and was excused from giving evidence in the trial.
Supreme Court verdict: error of law in Magistrate Dakin’s original judgment
A prolonged trial against Mr Greenhalgh ended two years ago with Magistrate Dakin dismissing the assault charge because he considered the use of force reasonable under state law.
But the New South Wales Supreme Court last year found an error of of law in the reasoning in Magistrate Dakin’s original legal judgment.
The Supreme Court said Magistrate Dakin needed to consider what a ‘reasonable person’ would objectively consider a reasonable or excessive use of force.
Challenged magistrate declines to recuse himself
Magistrate Dakin could have recused himself from the re-hearing but told Lismore Local Court on Tuesday he had reviewed the evidence and still found the force police used in the final six baton blows was reasonable.
Magistrate Dakin, a former police officer, said for a person assessing the use of force to be considered reasonable, they needed to objectively understand the police experience ‘in the agony of the moment’ rather than with ‘hindsight’.
It was the final six blows that counted and Magistrate Dakin maintained the measured pace of their delivery: three, two, one, meant the accused was under control and thereby exercising reasonable force as opposed to losing his cool under a so-called ‘red mist’.
The step-father of the former youth, who is now a young man, cried out ‘is this what you call justice? He was just a kid,’ upon recognising the verdict.
Outside the courthouse, the distraught parent told media the family would pursue whatever legal avenue was open to them.
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