Call for new inquest into Aboriginal death in custody

Kathy Newnam, Darwin

Letty Scott has called for the Northern Territory government to re-open the coronial inquest into the death of her husband, Douglas Scott, in Berrimah prison in July 1985. For more than 20 years she has fought to overturn the findings of the original inquest, which found that her husband had committed suicide.

Evidence that Douglas Scott was murdered by prison guards came to light in the recent civil case in the NT Supreme Court to re-open the coronial inquest into Scott's death. However, the court's finding against murder failed to give weight to the eyewitness accounts or the international forensic evidence that found that on the night he died Scott was subjected to a brutal beating. The judgment did, however, contradict the original inquest by not ruling Scott's death to be a suicide.

Letty Scott is also seeking compensation from the NT government for her husband's death.

From Green Left Weekly, August 31, 2005.

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From GLW issue 640