A Northern Territory police officer charged with murdering Indigenous man Kumanjayi Walker has no case to answer because he was reasonably acting in self-defence, his lawyer has argued.
Constable Zachary Rolfe's lawyer David Edwardson QC told Alice Springs Local Court on Friday his client was involved in a "dangerous, adrenalin-driven, high stress encounter" where he had to make "split-second decisions".
Rolfe shot Mr Walker, 19, three times, while he and a fellow officer were trying to detain him in Yuendumu, 300km northwest of Alice Springs in November last year.
Rolfe used his gun after Mr Walker stabbed him once with a pair of scissors.
In his submissions for why Rolfe has no case to answer and that the case should not go to trial, Mr Edwardson was critical of evidence from a US criminologist that the first shot was justified but that the second and third were "excessive".
"To break down the actions of Constable Rolfe by a frame-by-frame fraction of a second, by fraction of a second, distorts, in our submission, the reality of the situation," he said.
"He had been stabbed. His partner was locked in combat with an armed assailant with a predisposition to violence.
"He could not press the pause button."
Police officers' body-worn camera footage of the incident has been submitted to the court as evidence, however the content is barred from the public.
Mr Edwardson mentioned earlier evidence about police training in the NT, which teaches officers to shoot if threatened with scissors or a knife.
An NT detective testified that police are trained to fire "as many shots as are necessary to stop the threat".
The court heard Rolfe knew of Mr Walker's violent tendencies given that he had rushed at officers with an axe three days earlier.
After this event, an urgent police response was called from Alice Springs to make the arrest.
It was considered Mr Walker posed a significant danger to police and had the capacity for extreme violence.
Mr Edwardson submitted that the case should not go to trial because a jury would be unable to decide, beyond reasonable doubt, that he was guilty.
Rolfe has not entered a plea to the murder charge.
The committal hearing will determine if the matter proceeds to the Supreme Court for trial.
Rolfe was not required to attend the hearing in person but appeared by video link from Canberra.
