fish wrote:Psychiatrist's evidence questioned in Senator shoplifting trialProsecutors say a psychiatrist was biased in his evidence Senator Mary Jo Fisher was suffering from a panic attack when she allegedly stole groceries from a supermarket.
The South Australian Liberal Senator did not attend an unscheduled hearing called in Adelaide Magistrates Court on Monday.
Prosecutors sought to reopen their case to call rebuttal evidence.
Senator Fisher is on trial for allegedly stealing $92 of groceries from a Foodland store in Adelaide last December and pushing a store security officer who approached her in the car park.
The court was due to hear final submissions next week, but prosecutors asked to call evidence from psychiatrist Dr Ken O'Brien, saying he believed the evidence defence psychiatrist Dr Brian McKenny gave at trial about Fisher's panic attacks "lacked objectivity and showed an element of bias".
Well, the Prosecutors
would say that. That sort of assertion tends to happen all the time in such cases - a bit of shopping around for opinions with the bias you want occurs in such cases.
Mostly the lawyers don't get the bias they would like, but Adelaide did once have a Neurosurgeon who, by repute, could never find any illness in anyone who made a WorkCover claim..
I don't know the other guy, but I've known Ken O'Brien for years, and I would expect he would
not intentionally offer a biased opinion.
However, his clinical views are fairly conservative and his politics are definitely Left.
Doctors in any field who would deliberately take sides are rare, but differences of perspective are common..
In my days of doing a lot of WorkCover work some lawyers tried to suggest I was biased in favour or the workers' and unions' views because some unions referred to me..
(That was despite my open Liberal Party affiliation, and I like to think that was because I was fair..)