Murder of Mitchell Turner

Mitchell Turner (3 May 1951 - 5 June 1987) was a Skaolitunian businessman from New Victoria City, who was murdered in a petrol station robbery on 5 June 1987. After local black teenager Riley Marshall was arrested and ultimately convicted of the crime, the murder became a cause celebre for the local, and national, black community due to the circumstancial nature of the evidence against Marshall and the manner in which the investigation was conducted. Eventually, the murder would lead to police reforms and public inquiries into law enforcement. The case has become synonymous with police racism in Skaolitunia.

In 2000 and again in 2010, coroner's reports ruled that Marshall was likely not responsible for the murder and that he had been the target of racially-motivated police, jury and witness bias. In 2017, on the thirtieth-anniversary of Turner's murder, a third coroner's report exonerated Marshall based on DNA evidence. Marshall, who committed suicide in prison in 1995, was posthumously pardoned in 2020. The true identity of Turner's murderer has never been discovered.

Background

Turner was born in Elizabethtown, an affluent New Victoria suburb, on 3 May 1951, to Richard and April Turner. Richard had been a successful businessman, operating a chain of grocers, and served in World War II as a pilot. The family were well-off, and their wealth increased as Richard Turner's business grew throughout the 1950s. Educated at the University of Mainland, Mitchell Turner won a scholarship to the Harvard Business School in 1970, and upon his return to Georgeland in 1975, after a stint working for a New York investment firm, Turner took over management of his father's businesses, sold most of them, and embarked on a career as a successful investor, stockbroker and financial planner.

By 1987, Mitchell Turner was a multi-millionaire and well-known in the New Victoria business scene. He had served for one term on the New Victoria City Council from 1981 to 1985, and was expanding into development contracts and the construction industry, a move which saw him come into conflict with organised crime figures including mob boss Toby Williams. The two apparently came to an arrangement in mid-1986, with Williams and Turner agreeing to demarcate different areas of the city for contracts. Williams himself was murdered only six weeks before Turner, though in Williams's case the murderer was a member of a rival family. With Williams's death, Turner was poised to become a prominent development magnate. There has never been any indication Turner was involved in Nolan's death or had any involvement in organised crime, although those allegations were investigated thoroughly throughout the murder case.

In 1978, Turner married Madeline Eaton, a teacher. Their first child Martin Turner was born in 1982, their second, Jasmine, in 1984 , and their third, Richard, in 1986.

Murder

On the evening of 5 June 1987, Turner worked late into the evening at his office on Galloway Avenue, in the city centre, where he held a meeting with colleagues and made an appointment for a phone conference the next morning. He finished work at around 7:30 pm and telephoned his wife to inform her he would spend an hour at the gym on Carmine Road, the Carmine Fitness Centre, before returning home, expecting to be home around 9pm. This was not an atypical pattern of behavior, as he often worked long hours.

After leaving his office, Turner drove his 1983 Porche 928 to the gym, worked out, and showered. He then drove towards the C-1 freeway leading to Bonneville, where the Turners lived. At 8:37pm, Ackerman stopped at the Shell petrol station on the corner of Marks Avenue and Donaldson Boulevard.

Turner filled his car with petrol, then entered the shop to pay at 8:40pm. The only other customers, according to the night manager, David Barry, were two youths in hooded sweatshirts, which he identified as black males but could not identify further. As Turner walked to the counter, he stopped briefly to peruse a magazine rack, and then picked up a packet of crisps to purchase with his petrol.

At 8:42pm, according to the store's security footage, the two youths in hooded shirts went to the counter and pulled out knives, demanding money from Barry. Barry refused, but relented when one of the youths attempted to stab him. Turner then attempted to intervene by trying to grab the knife from one of the youths, who tripped over. The other youth then slashed Turner in the face, and stabbed him in the stomach. The youths then fled, leaving Barry to call an ambulance. Turner was unconcious and did not regain conciousness before his death.

The ambulance arrived at 8:58pm, too late to help Turner who was suffering from severe blood loss. The knife had ruptured vital organs. He was pronounced dead at New Victoria General Hospital at 9:48pm after attempts to resuscitate him failed.

Barry, the only witness to the attack, would testify in court several times that he had heard the black youths refer to each other by name as 'Riley' and 'Ty'.

Riley Marshall

Tobias Allan Ricks (18 June 1970 - 4 July 1995) was a teenager living in the Saint River neighbourhood on Cleveland Road, about 500m from the crime scene at the time. The son of a white father and Mauritian mother, Ricks was one of the new generation of black Georgelanders in the New Kikipolis area in the late 1960s and early 1970s as immigration restrictions were relaxed. Ricks' father had been quite well-off as an accountant and civil servant, but his death in a motor accident in 1974 left the family without much money and for his mother, Nancy (known as Nana) to raise him and his two sisters alone. As a black single mother living in a mainly white neighbourhood, at a time when racial demography was changing, Nana Ricks had been the victim of racial abuse, including from the police. In one incident in 1980, Nana Ricks was arrested and charged with prostitution, despite never having practiced as a prostitute, simply because she fitted the height and general description of a black woman seen by a squad car. In another, in 1982, a police officer repeatedly followed her down the street without speaking to her, and later she found knives left in her front door.

Toby Ricks was a gifted student who enjoyed art and music, and had a reputation at his school, Saint River Arts High School, for being popular and well-behaved. However, he had been involved in a number of incidents from 1985 through 1987 including fights and petty theft. Like his mother, Toby was also the victim of racial abuse, including from teachers from time to time. Ricks was one of only nine black students out of a school of almost seven hundred. There were no black faculty.

On 11 June 1987 Ricks was caught with a knife on school property, for which he was suspended. Ricks later told police that the knife had been purchased because another boy had been making death threats against him along with racial slurs. When police investigating the Ackerman murder interviewed local vendors, they learned one store owner, Neil Parnell, had sold a knife to a young black male matching Ricks' description. With the public told to look out for the murderers and given a description superficially similar to Ricks', school vice principal Belinda Riley alerted police to Ricks' suspension.

Police interviewed Ricks on 14 June and again on the 17th. He admitted purchasing the knife, which was not an offence at that time, but denied any knowledge of the murder, though he had known about it from press reports.

Ricks was arrested on 19 June and charged with armed robbery and murder. He was identified in a line-up by Barry, who repeated his surety that Toby Ricks was one of the attackers.

During his multiple interrogation sessions in police custody, Ricks was tortured. He was handcuffed to a toilet and forced to strip naked while an officer urinated. He was also deprived of sleep and food for more than 72 hours, and kept in an illuminated cell. Ricks reported that officers would regularly beat him while demanding he confess to the crime. He never did, despite telling his mother later that he was about to do so when he went to trial so as to avoid further torture, but he believed confessing would only make it worse for himself.

Police made no effort to locate the second robber once Ricks had been arrested. During his interrogation he was repeatedly asked to name his accomplice, but no arrests were made.

First trial and mistrial ruling

Ricks' first trial began on 18 February 1988. A visibly emaciated Ricks attended court with his mother, whom he had not been permitted to see since his arrest. The presiding judge was Justice Donald Connolly and the state prosecutor was Stephen Kenney. Ricks was defended by Michael Staten, whose name became synonymous with the case.

During jury selection, Kenney and the state repeatedly rejected African, Asian or Maori jurors in favour of white jurors. The eventual jury consisted of seven white men, three white women, a man of Turkish heritage and a woman of mixed Chinese-Caucasian ancestry.

The state alleged Ricks and an accomplice had robbed the store and panicked once they realised Turner was a potential witness. The state's primary evidence was the testimony of Barry and the fact he had picked Ricks out of a lineup. Ricks had no real alibi for the evening - he often spent time with friends at night, and had not been home, instead playing basketball in a court between his home and the petrol station. The prosecution alleged Ricks and one of the other youths in his circle, using knives purchased several weeks before, had entered the store intending to rob it and killed Turner in the confusion.

No DNA or forensic evidence was entered, and the state's case was almost entirely based on Barry's testimony, the lack of an alibi, and the purchase of a knife. Several witnesses were called to corroborate Ricks' story that he had been playing basketball; however, Kenney told the jury they were likely "gang members" who had been coached in what to tell the court. Throughout the proceedings, Ricks was consistently referred to as having been in a gang, something that had never been the case.

During cross-examination, it was shown that Barry had a long history of racism, having been a member of the Friends of Heritage group in the 1950s, a white-supremacist movement opposed to African immigration. Staten alleged that Barry was either lying about his identification of Ricks as the killer, or that he had convinced himself it was true.

After one juror, after investigation by the defence team, was shown to have also been a member of the Friends of Heritage, Staten moved for a mistrial, based on the bias of a jury member and the unreliable nature of testimony. Justice Connolly ruled in favour of a mistrial on 24 February and ordered a new trial to take place. Connolly was highly critical of Kenney's conduct, and said he was 'appalled' by the idea that an open racist would be considered a proper juror for such a case.

Racial violence

The murder of a wealthy, white business leader by black youths prompted a speight of racially-motivated violence and hate crimes, both in New Victoria and across the country. In 1987 New Victoria particularly was still very much adapting to the influx of migrants and people of colour, and 'retaliation' attacks against the black community were widely reported. A black church was torched, and a predominantly black school in Waterfield was severely damaged by a mob of up to a hundred people. The rise in hate crimes was stirred up by far-right groups, most notably the Sons of the Homeland, a Neo-Nazi group that was ultimately banned and broken up in the mid-1990s. Far-right leaders such as Eric Walters and Matthew Dunn blamed the rise in violent crime on immigration, and called for a complete halt to immigration from African and Asian nations.

Allegations of police misconduct

After the first trial, Nana Ricks began a campaign to demonstrate the police misconduct and the racial bias in the treatment of her son. She contacted several journalists, but the only one willing to investigate was Rae Chance of the Leader-Herald, a tabloid newspaper based in Waterfield. Chance and her colleague Sandy Colm began a year-long examination of the evidence presented at trial and the possibility police mishandled the case. The first reports into the allegations were published on 7 June 1988. Immediately, public reaction was polarised, with some media outlets who picked up the story openly taking the side of police, and attacking the character of not only Ricks but the entire African community. As the investigation continued and more reports were published, information about the trial, the conduct of jury members and legal officials, and even of civil servants, was made apparent. Some of these reports concerned a deliberate effort to convict Ricks by police and state officials, up to and including a memo produced by the NVPD's police chief, Commissioner Douglas Rogers, stating that Ricks' conviction was a matter of personal pride for his officers. The reports, each increasingly graphic, about Ricks' treatment in prison and the systematic bias of both officers and officials, eventually prompted the provincial government to take action. The state Chief Minister, Matthew Buckley, announced an inquiry into the conduct on 18 July, but initially stated it would take place after a second trial. On 24 July, the only Afro-Skaolitunian member of the state legislature, Neil Jones, publicly criticised Buckley, his own leader, for his insistence a new trial take place. Jones told the legislature no trial could proceed until the justice system had been 'purged of these racist elements'. He said Ricks' trial was an 'insult to the black community', and while he stopped short of calling for Ricks to be released, he insisted an inquiry must take place before Ricks could recieve a fair trial.