A terminally ill Indigenous man jailed for driving offences in Queensland has been released on parole after pressure from the federal government.
Marshall Wallace received a 15-month jail term earlier this month after being arrested several times for driving unlicensed.
He was arrested in Mount Isa, where he moved from Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory with his wife, Maxine, to get treatment for liver cancer, and was to be held in the prison ward of the Princess Alexandra Hospital, 1,800km away in Brisbane.
He had not yet been transferred and spent 10 days in custody under guard at the Mount Isa hospital after falling ill in the police cells a day after being sentenced.
On Wednesday, the Queensland government confirmed Wallace had been granted exceptional circumstances parole so that he can remain near his family for treatment.
It follows a request by the federal minister for Indigenous affairs, Nigel Scullion, who wrote to the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, on Friday requesting she read up on Wallace’s case and “consider any opportunities to support his parole application”.
Wallace would have been eligible for parole after he had served five months of his sentence but Maxine Wallace said she was concerned he would not live that long and become another Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander death in custody.
She told the ABC on Wednesday that she was relieved her husband had been released but still angry he had been jailed in the first place.
“I can hardly talk because I’m just so excited that he’s going to come back,” she said. “I’m so happy.”
Under the Queensland Corrective Services Act 2006, any prisoner may apply for exceptional circumstances parole on compassionate grounds at any time.
Wallace will still need to comply with the ordinary conditions imposed on parolees, including reporting regularly to the police or a justice worker and remaining within a set area.
Maxine Wallace said the conditions were unfair.
“I feel angry that he has to report to the police station and then go back and forth to the hospital,” she said. “All this pressure is being put on him. He should be free to come out and do what he wants to, hunting and fishing. He’s a hunter.”
More than 340 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have died in custody since the royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody handed down its final report in 1991.
