Erin Patterson appeal LIVE: Mushroom killer seeks to challenge guilty verdict
Welcome to our live coverage as Erin Patterson appeals her convictions for three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder following a high-profile trial in Morwell last year.
I’m Lachlan Abbott, and I’ll be blogging the livestreamed Court of Appeal hearing while my colleague Erin Pearson reports from the courtroom.
Prosecutors will also today appeal Patterson’s sentence to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 33 years for using death cap mushrooms to poison in-laws Don and Gail Patterson, Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, and Heather’s husband Ian Wilkinson at a lunch in August 2023.
Stay tuned for live updates once the stream starts at 10.15am.
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Erin Patterson’s legal team have just arrived at the Supreme Court of Victoria on the corner of William and Lonsdale streets in Melbourne’s CBD.
They are led by barrister Richard Edney and are instructed by Doogue and George lawyers Bill Doogue and Ophelia Hollway.
OPP director Brendan Kissane, KC, is expected to lead the prosecution alongside junior barrister Jeremy McWilliams.
It’s a whole new team compared to the trial.
The Court of Appeal has moved today’s hearing from its own building to the larger main Supreme Court building next door.
More than 50 members of the press are lined up outside the courtroom waiting to be let in. Dozens of members of the public are also queuing up the spiral staircase to the public gallery.
The Director of Public Prosecutions launched an appeal against Patterson’s sentence in October.
Now-retired Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale sentenced Patterson to life in prison, with a non-parole period of 33 years, on September 8 last year.
Beale found the offending fell into the worst category of murder, though Patterson maintains her innocence.
At the time, Beale resisted calls from the prosecution to jail Patterson for life with no prospect of parole, telling the court her case was so infamous she was likely to remain in restricted conditions in custody.
Erin Patterson’s legal team filed an application to appeal her conviction and sentence in November.
They submitted seven reasons the mushroom murderer wants her convictions quashed:
- The jury was potentially contaminated by staying in the same hotel as prosecutors and police.
- Patterson was grilled unfairly by prosecutors during eight days in the witness box.
- The prosecution told the jury it did not have to prove a motive for the murders but then spent substantial time implying she was angry at the Patterson family over a child support dispute.
- Large tranches of evidence were wrongly shown to the jury, including cell tower links to two areas in rural Gippsland where deadly mushrooms grew.
- Photos and videos found on Patterson’s devices that could have backed her claims of being a mushroom forager were not shown to the jury.
- Evidence from Facebook ‘friends’ and Facebook messages were not relevant, or their probative value was outweighed by unfair prejudice.
- Prosecutors used family text messages to imply a motive for Patterson arranging the lethal lunch when there was no motive established.
These reasons, the defence say, caused a substantial miscarriage of justice.
Good morning.
Welcome to our live coverage as Erin Patterson appeals her convictions for three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder following a high-profile trial in Morwell last year.
I’m Lachlan Abbott, and I’ll be blogging the livestreamed Court of Appeal hearing while my colleague Erin Pearson reports from the courtroom.
Prosecutors will also today appeal Patterson’s sentence to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 33 years for using death cap mushrooms to poison in-laws Don and Gail Patterson, Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, and Heather’s husband Ian Wilkinson at a lunch in August 2023.
Stay tuned for live updates once the stream starts at 10.15am.
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