Vic: High Court refuses appeal bids by wife, hitman

AAP General News (Australia)
02-16-2001
Vic: High Court refuses appeal bids by wife, hitman

MELBOURNE, Feb 16 AAP - A mother of three and the hitman she hired to kill her husband
today failed in their bids to launch High Court appeals against their convictions.

In separate trials, Susan Elizabeth Freeman, 45, and Emmanuel Chatzidimitriou, 51,
were found guilty of the murder of 54-year-old Ian Freeman.

Mr Freeman's body was recovered from the Cairn Curran Reservoir, near Maldon, on Melbourne's
outskirts, on November 29, 1996.

His car had been driven into the shallow waters of the reservoir.

Freeman, of Norelle Crescent, Kangaroo Flat, near Bendigo, and Chatzidimitriou, of
Castlemaine, had both pleaded not guilty to murder.

The pair lost Supreme Court appeals against the verdicts last year after Freeman had
been sentenced to a maximum of 22 years and Chatzidimitriou, a motor repairman, received
a similar sentence.

Today their lawyers sought special leave to appeal in the High Court against guilty
verdicts because, they argued, the original trial judges had erred in law.

Paul Holdenson, QC, counsel for Chatzidimitriou, said the original jury had asked the
judge to define "beyond reasonable doubt" for them.

The trial judge did so but later when they asked for a dictionary they were given a
two-volume 1959 copy of the shorter Oxford English Dictionary without any further direction
from him.

"His Honour has provided the jury with the very means to do that which he could not
do for them," Mr Holdenson said.

"This jury was in real difficulty with the application of the standard of proof," he said.

By looking up individual words in the dictionary the jury might have applied "a different
or lesser standard of proof", he said.

In a separate application Felicity Hampel, QC, argued that the judge should not have
allowed the jury to consider the murder charge against Freeman because suicide or accident
could not be ruled out as the cause of death of Freeman's husband.

Chief Justice Murray Gleeson, with Justice Kenneth Hayne, refused to give leave for
both appeals because they were not persuaded there had been a miscarriage of justice and
the appeals had little prospect of success.

AAP nl/imc/cjh/br

KEYWORD: FREEMAN (CARRIED EARLIER)

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