The Age
Expert witness in Freeman case should be sacked: MP
Thu May 12, 2011 12:19am
A PROFESSOR of psychiatry who appeared in court as an expert defence witness for the man who threw his daughter to her death off the West Gate Bridge should be sacked from his job at the University of Melbourne, according to a federal Liberal MP.
Senator Julian McGauran has accused Professor Graham Burrows of giving concocted evidence at the trial of Arthur Freeman, the man serving a life sentence for the murder of his daughter Darcey.
Professor Burrows, a psychiatrist with 40 years' experience, was the the sole defence witness in Freeman's trial. He told the jury that Freeman was mentally ill and did not know what he was doing when he threw his daughter off the bridge.
Professor Burrows was the only one of six experts to find Freeman had a mental illness.
It can also now be revealed that when the jury left the courtroom, Professor Burrows came under fire from Supreme Court Justice Paul Coghlan.
The judge, a former director of public prosecutions, told Freeman's lawyer in Professor Burrows's presence he was ''not fond of the last witness'' but that ''I took great care not to let such matters interfere with the way things went in front of the jury''.
Professor Burrows told the jury Freeman had suffered a ''major depressive disorder'' and was in a ''severe dissociative state'', like a sleepwalker or someone under hypnosis. ''In fact, he [Freeman] didn't really know what was going on,'' he testified.
Professor Burrows told the jury he had tested Freeman's hypnotisability according to the Stanford hypnotic clinical scale and Freeman had scored in the