Court in the Middle by Andrew Fraser

Author:Andrew Fraser
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO020000
ISBN: 9781742731728
Publisher: Hardie Grant Books
Published: 2007-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

Keep Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowances for their doubting too;

IF, RUDYARD KIPLING

Tim Watson-Munro and I had been very close mates for many years, having first met when he came to Melbourne from Sydney. Watson-Munro was a practising clinical forensic psychologist and I came across him regularly in the course of my work. These days it is almost inevitable that you send a person accused of serious offences to a forensic psychologist for assessment before his court case. A defence lawyer needs to ascertain a client’s IQ, his ability to distinguish right from wrong, his mental state, whether there are indications of any mental disease. In the case of the latter, the client is referred to a forensic psychiatrist. The long and short of it is that expert witnesses such as Watson-Munro are now an integral cog in the sentencing process in any criminal court in this country.

After I got to know Watson-Munro professionally we socialised on the odd occasion, having lunch or a coffee. I invited him on one occasion to a luncheon get-together I used to have with other people – not only lawyers but people from all walks of life, including judges, politicians, doctors and anyone else considered to be interesting. It was an eclectic group and we had a good time. I was still only using cocaine very occasionally but I had in secret used it at these lunches on more than one occasion, without others being aware of it. One day Watson-Munro approached me and started talking about the use of cocaine. He told me he had been using for years and had an inkling that I might be having a bit of a go at it myself. Watson-Munro offered me some cocaine that he had with him. I partook of what he had offered and that was the beginning of a very close cocaine-related relationship between us that lasted until the time of my arrest. Watson-Munro received all of the psychologists’ work from my firms and he would be called to give expert evidence in court. He was a very good witness in those days, so he was always in court.

Lunches became more frequent. We would often meet for a drink after work and the whole system surrounding the use of drugs and the movement of drugs between us was on a mates basis – that is, if he had some, he would share it with me; if I had some, I would share it with him.

Any “trafficking” between Watson-Munro and me was on this basis and happened occasionally, not regularly. In my case I would have sold him only a few grams over a few years and he would have sold me about the same amount.

Our mutual usage continued and Watson-Munro and I saw each other on an almost daily basis. Our friendship was

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