Max Stuart

His conviction was subject to several appeals to higher courts,[2][3] the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and a Royal Commission,[4] all of which upheld the verdict.

Stuart was born at Jay Creek in the MacDonnell Ranges, 45 kilometres west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, probably in 1932.

His father, Paddy Stuart, was also fully initiated, but as he had assumed an English surname and worked on cattle stations had not had all the secret traditions passed on to him.

In that case, he had covered his victim's mouth to prevent her screaming when she awoke; he confessed to police that he "knew this was wrong" but he did not "know any big women", and that when he had liquor he could not control himself.

[12] On Saturday 20 December 1958, Mary Olive Hattam, a nine-year-old girl, disappeared near the South Australian town of Ceduna (pop: 1,200), 768 km (477 mi) from Adelaide.

Both trackers claimed that the footprints had been made by a member of a Northern Australian tribe who had spent some time living with white people.

[17] The 27-year-old Rupert Max Stuart, an Arrernte man, and teenager Alan Moir had been in Ceduna on 20 December, running the darts stall for the funfair operated by Mr and Mrs Norman Gieseman.

News of the murder had not reached the funfair, which packed up on Sunday morning and moved on to Whyalla where police interviewed the workers that night.

The Law Society had few resources and was unable to pay for many of the out of pocket expenses required for the defence case, such as checking Stuart's alibi, conducting forensic tests and consulting expert witnesses.

As Stuart's defence was that police had beaten him then fabricated his confession, to state this under oath would allow the prosecution to present his prior criminal history, including the Cloncurry assault, to the jury.

Dixon was suspicious about the sophisticated upper class English used in the alleged confession, for example: "The show was situated at the Ceduna Oval."

Stuart's native language was Arrernte, he was uneducated, could not read and only spoke a slightly advanced pidgin Arrernte-English known as Northern Territory English.

Stuart claimed that he had taken Blackburn's taxi to the Thevenard hotel where he had paid an Aboriginal woman £4 for sex and had remained there until arrested that night.

Ken Inglis, then a lecturer at the University of Adelaide, wrote in July 1959 of the doubts of Father Dixon and Ted Strehlow in the Nation, a fortnightly magazine.

Fellow police officers denied Turner's claims, and insisted that the confession was verbatim, "Yes, we altered it a bit....but the substance is Stuart's."

This led to a petition demanding that the death sentence be carried out but the controversy forced Premier Thomas Playford IV to call a Royal Commission.

[15] On 22 June 1959, Father Dixon contacted Charles Duguid, who ran the Aborigines' Advancement League, to discuss Stuart's situation.

Printed alongside Evatt's statement on the front page was one by the South Australian Police Association intended, it said, to inform the public "of the real facts".

The Law Society expressed outrage and stated that the Police Association statement bordered on contempt of court and would prejudice any jury hearing a future appeal.

As a result, the Sunday Mail (then a joint enterprise of The News and The Advertiser) printed prominently on its front page O'Sullivan's "suspicion" that the government was determined to hang Stuart and was supporting the Police Association in order to do so.

[23] Two of the Commissioners appointed by Premier Playford, Chief Justice Mellis Napier and Justice Geoffrey Reed, had been involved in the case, Napier as presiding judge in the Full Court appeal and Reed as the trial judge, leading to considerable worldwide controversy, with claims of bias from sources such as the President of the Indian Bar Council, the Leader of the United Kingdom Liberal Party, Jo Grimond, and former British Prime Minister Clement Attlee.

Labor Party MP Don Dunstan asked questions in Parliament and played a major role in Premier Playford's decision to commute Stuart's sentence to life imprisonment.

[25] It has been suggested that in Black and White, a 2002 film of the case, the role of Murdoch was magnified, and the part of his editor, Rivett, was minimised.

[29] During his time at Yatala Prison, Stuart learned proper English, became literate, began painting in watercolours and acquired other work skills.

In between being returned to prison a number of times for breaches of his parole between 1974 and 1984, he married and settled at Santa Teresa, a Catholic mission south-east of Alice Springs.

[30] Stuart subsequently became an active figure in Central Australian Aboriginal affairs, in particular with the Lhere Artepe native title organisation.

The first chapter of the 1993 four part Blood Brothers documentary series, Broken English – The Conviction of Max Stuart was directed by Ned Lander.

[37] The 2002 feature film Black and White, directed by Craig Lahiff, was made about his case, and featured David Ngoombujarra as Max Stuart; Robert Carlyle as Stuart's lawyer David O'Sullivan; Charles Dance as the Crown Prosecutor Roderic Chamberlain; Kerry Fox as O'Sullivan's business partner Helen Devaney; Colin Friels as Father Tom Dixon; Bille Brown as South Australian Premier Sir Thomas Playford; Ben Mendelsohn as newspaper publisher Rupert Murdoch; and John Gregg as Rohan Rivett.

"[21] A 2006 documentary Sunset to Sunrise (ingwartentyele – arrerlkeme) featured Max Stuart at his Lila Creek (Arrernte: Ananta) campsite (his ancestral home).

Filmed from sunset to sunrise, Arrernte Mat-utjarra and Mu-tujulu elder Stuart discusses the significance of Indigenous culture and the Dreaming.