Eastman: innocence lost…but was justice
itself also victim of the judicial process?

When a policeman is murdered, there’s a rush to capture the culprit. That’s what happened when the Assistant Commissioner of the AFP, Colin Winchester, was shot in the head in his own suburban street in Canberra 23 years ago. But was there too much rush, is the wrong man in jail? asks CLA member Howard Carew.

Eastman: innocence lost…but was justice itself also victim of the judicial process?

This is a potted history of what I think has been the worst conviction in Australia since Lindy Chamberlain…that of David Harold Eastman, for the shooting murder of a policeman, 55-year-old Colin Winchester, on 10 January 1989 in the national capital, Canberra.

After an 85-day trial, a jury found Eastman guilty of the murder on 3 November 1995. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, and has been in jail in both NSW and, recently, the ACT since, more than 16 years so far. (He cannot ever be released without a “political” decision of the ACT Attorney-General: all his options for appeal are exhausted).

I have written many letters to The Canberra Times over more than a decade, and have received many phone calls from people who share my concerns.

With the murder of Winchester, Canberra lost a fine man…and its innocence. The idea that someone could kill an Assistant Police Commissioner – with two shots from a rifle into his head as he pulled up in a driveway in his own suburban street in Canberra – still dismays us.

Nonetheless, to my mind Eastman was a most unlikely suspect. His father had three children. The youngest daughter was put in care when she was three. The other two have had respected professional careers. David was dux of the private, prestige school, Canberra Grammar (another dux of the school was former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam). After university, he spent two years as a volunteer teacher overseas. He also served in an honorary capacity on community and charitable bodies in Canberra.

Eastman had never, up to his conviction for murder, had a criminal conviction. He was invalided out of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Before and after leaving there, he undertook long-term psychiatric treatment for schizophrenia. He also gained wide notoriety for his irrational behaviour.

At trial, he was unwise enough to present a character witness on his own behalf which left the door open for the prosecution to introduce 140 rebuttal witnesses. At the same time the prosecution informed anyone who would listen that he was a master criminal trying to lay grounds for an appeal by his irrational behaviour during the trial. His behaviour was not a ruse – it was genuine Eastman at his irrational worst.

His motive for the murder, according to the police, was the refusal of Winchester to dismiss a counter claim for assault by an Eastman neighbour. When you think of the 140 people who came forward to relate quite serious disagreements they had with Eastman, one would wonder – if he was a ruthless killer – why some of them were still alive.

It came out – after Eastman’s conviction – that Winchester had been scheduled to be the key witness in a trial at the Queanbeyan Court, just over the ACT border in the State of NSW. The trial was a serious one and involved the cropping of a marijuana plantation under police surveillance in a “controlled” operation targeting criminals about 25km from Canberra. With Winchester’s death the drug trial was aborted as the key witness had been lost. That to my mind was the real motive behind Winchester’s death.

Eastman’s trial lacked integrity for the following reasons:

(1) The judge was not informed by the prosecution of his mental instability, of which they were well aware.

(2) The prosecution used an archaic law inherited from England to gain the last address to the jury. The provision they used had been removed in England in 1964 on the grounds that it was unfair to defendants. The provision was supposedly only to be used where their were multiple defendants and only then with the judge’s approval. Justice Carruthers should have known that and should have refused the application.

(3) The prosecution used a forensic expert who was anything but. Robert Barnes was equipped with a Bachelor of Metallurgy degree and had been criticised by his peers for his methodology previously. His services were no longer used by the Victoria Police.

(4) Gunpowder residue purportedly found in Eastman’s car boot was found to be of the same type as an unfound murder weapon would have used. A leading international forensic scientist has found Barnes’ conclusions on this flawed. New evidence has been presented which also makes a mockery of Barnes’ analysis.

Under ACT legislation introduced in the 1990s a second judicial review of a murder conviction cannot be held. This is a breach of Eastman’s civil liberties. If similar legislation has applied in Lindy Chamberlain’s case the finding of the matinee jacket would not have freed her.

There is little credit for anyone arising from the the killing of Colin Winchester and the subsequent trial. Mr Winchester is dead, we have a unstable man in prison for his murder.

In the view of many, including me, the killer will never be found. The man convicted and now detained in the ACT’s jail was not the killer, I believe.

• Howard Carew, CLA member, Canberra