Mushroom Lunch: Convicted murderer Erin Patterson’s appeal kicks off

On the first day of Erin Patterson's appeal her barrister argued there was a "catastrophic" arrangement during verdict deliberations, despite conceding there was no evidence jurors interacted with prosecutors and police while staying in the same hotel. Kristian Silva joins Stocky to talk through the grounds of appeal her defence are using to overturn her triple murder conviction — and how they have been countered by the prosecution so far. If you have any questions you'd like Kristian and Stocky to answer in future episodes, please email [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. The Case Of is the follow-up to the hit podcast Mushroom Case Daily, and all episodes of that show will remain available in the back catalogue of The Case Of.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This will had come about in the most suspicious circumstances you could possibly imagine.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Who gets what when someone dies and who decides?

• 0:07Speaker 00

  The difficulty with undue influence often is proving it.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Join me, Damien Carrick, for The Law Report's special series on wills, Over My Dead Body.

• 0:17Speaker 00

  The person felt like they had no option, but it's difficult to prove that.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  To hear, search for The Law Report and look out for Over My Dead Body. Find it on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:29Speaker 02

  ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more.

• 0:45Stephen Stockwell?

  The arguments over whether Erin Patterson's triple murder conviction should be overturned have begun, and the appeal judges have had a lot of questions. I'm Stephen Stockwell, welcome back to Mushroom Case Daily.

• 0:58Speaker 04

  Just a week after four people sat down for a family lunch in rural Victoria, three of them were dead.

• 1:04Stephen Stockwell?

  Homicide detectives are still piecing together what exactly happened at the lunch.

• 1:08Speaker 05

  It's certainly looking like the symptoms are consistent with death cap mushrooms.

• 1:13Speaker 06

  Erin Patterson said she bought the dried mushrooms at a supermarket and an Asian grocery store months earlier.

• 1:19Speaker 05

  I cannot think of another investigation that has generated this level of media and public interest.

• 1:28Stephen Stockwell?

  Erin Patterson wants her murder conviction overturned. The prosecution wants her in prison for even longer and we are in court as the arguments for these cases are made. And I say we because ABC Court reporter Christian Silver has been following this very, very closely. Appreciate having you back for all of this, Christian.

• 1:45Speaker 07

  Thank you, Stocky.

• 1:46Stephen Stockwell?

  It's nice to return to the Mushroom Case Daily name in spirit for the appeal of Erin Patterson. There is a lot to unpack in this episode and I know you love this. So before we dive into the ep, can you wrap up the day for us in 60 seconds or so?

• 2:00Speaker 07

  Stocky, we were in the Court of Appeal, which was actually sitting in the Supreme Court Building in Melbourne for the start of this double appeal because Erin Patterson wants her conviction overturned and prosecutors want her locked up for life with the key effectively thrown away. We started with Erin Patterson's appeal grounds and there are seven of them and all of them are tied around the same basic theme that things that happened in and around her murder trial were unfair and as a result, the jury verdicts were unsafe.

• 2:34Speaker 07

  Later in the day, the prosecution got to respond. So it took a few hours for us to get through all of that. Worth mentioning Erin Patterson was visible on the court link. Ian Wilkinson was also there and at the end of the day, the prosecution got a bit of time to have a response.

• 2:52Stephen Stockwell?

  Thank you, Christian. We have dueling appeals to hear. We have Erin Patterson on one side, we have the prosecution on the other. We have a lot of interest, a big crowd outside the courtroom. And even though this is an appeal, we actually ended up in the Supreme Court today, which was a little bit confusing.

• 3:08Speaker 07

  So it's technically being held in the Court of Appeal, which is sitting in the Supreme Court Building. The reason for that is this is a big case with a lot of interest. There's a lot of people in the room and the Court of Appeal courtrooms are not that big. So they've shifted this hearing into courtroom one of the Supreme Court, which is like the ceremonial court where they often have ceremonies for new judges coming in or jury impanelments for these big trials where they need to have like a panel of 100 people that they whittle down to the final 12 to 15. So it is a lovely room, like most of them in the Supreme Court. Old historic feel, a lot of wooden benches which look really nice, but are brutal on your back.

• 3:53Speaker 07

  And what's grossly unfair, Stocky, is that the judges and the lawyers sit on these plush armchairs, which are probably quite ergonomically friendly and the rest of us doing the tough yards on the wooden benches.

• 4:08Stephen Stockwell?

  Yep. I am returning to the Supreme Court in Victoria in Melbourne. I've been getting flashbacks to my first visit today as the automatic doors would open occasionally and I was reminded of my gaff in our first visit there where I sat too close to the doors and they opened and closed throughout the directions hearing, a pre-trial hearing for Erin Patterson. But yeah, the grandeur of that room, Christian, is really something, a real ceremony for the arrival of the appeal judges as well, you know, long pause as they come in, a deep bow as everyone bows to them. I feel like that's not something I've seen in some other trials I've been in recently. And we were straight into the first round with the defence stepping up and making this argument that the sequestration of the jury in the same hotel as the prosecution and the informant was an issue.

• 4:52Stephen Stockwell?

  We wondered, Christian, in our episode talking through the appeal grounds, whether or not there would be evidence of conversational collusion between jurors and any of those prostitution or police people, or if it would be philosophical. And we have our answer.

• 5:06Speaker 07

  It's philosophical, but according to Erin Patterson's lawyers, it's catastrophic.

• 5:13Speaker 07

  And it means that the verdict is unsafe, according to them. So the background to this is the jury had been coming and going to court throughout this trial, which was like 10 or 11 weeks. But when it came time for them to deliberate, Justice Beale made them bunker in together and they were sequestered to a hotel in Taralgan, which is the town next door to Moorwell, where the trial was being held. The problem is, is that in that local area, there's not that much accommodation. And I think there was a big table tennis tournament or something in town. And in the end, I remember that various people ended up being kicked out of their hotels

• 5:55Speaker 07

  and people ended up kind of in the same place. And that's what happened here, where the jury was staying in the same hotel as the lead police officer in the case, Stephen Eppenstall, and a couple of the prosecution staff. Now, it was made clear that these people weren't mingling. Some measures were taken to keep them distanced and the jury were even being supervised by court staff known as jury keepers. But as Erin Patterson's new barrister, Richard Edney, made clear, it was the perception that they were in the same place. It didn't look good and it's the old notion of justice must not only be done, but be seen to be done.

• 6:41Speaker 07

  And he said that in this case, that that certainly did not happen. He said this was perhaps one of the most high-profile criminal trials this state has ever had, which is true. And he would say that we would describe the sequestration that occurred during it as catastrophic. So he came under questioning by these three judges who asked him whether there was any clear evidence that some sort of improper interaction had happened, a conversation or some form of influencing. And he admitted he didn't have any evidence to suggest that.

• 7:20Speaker 07

  Mr. Edney said that there are many ways people can communicate and communication could have been non-verbal. And the jurors may have seen Stephen Eppenstall, the homicide detective, through the windows of the hotel, which I suppose raises questions of whether he expected the jury to be held in rooms without windows. Not sure what kind of hotel that would be. It sounds like a jail.

• 7:51Stephen Stockwell?

  It does sound like a jail.

• 7:52Speaker 07

  But he also confirmed that there was no CCTV either, which may have shown something improper happening. Now, the prosecution later in the day got up and basically said this was a rubbish argument. The director of public prosecutions, the man at the top of the tree in this organisation, Brendan Cassane, said that it was telling that the jury keepers did not report any improper interactions. These are people who are sworn to supervise the jury and have an oath that they need to undertake. And he said, in our submission, that should be the end of the conversation. The jury keepers were looking over this. They didn't note anything dodgy.

• 8:36Speaker 07

  The police and the prosecution also say nothing untoward happened. End of story.

• 8:41Stephen Stockwell?

  Yeah, I mean, Christian, when I was thinking about the interactions of the jurors with people, I mean, I remember moments in Moore where I had to stop a conversation that I was having with another journalist because there was a juror walking down the road to us. We were in such a small space and these people were interacting with the prosecution, the defence, you know, walking past these people, not interacting, but walking past those people all the time.

• 9:04Speaker 07

  One of the things that jurors are told at the start of any trial is that you've got to stay clear of the prosecution, the defence, journalists, and you've got to sort of protect the integrity of the trial. But it's with a bit of a common sense approach. You know that you're occasionally going to pass somebody in a hallway or in the case of this particular trial, perhaps walk into the same cafe or pass them on the street. And this happens in every trial all the time. There are these little incidental fleeting moments, but an issue is not made of it. And one of the judges was questioning, you know, what's the difference between a juror

• 9:45Speaker 07

  possibly seeing a police officer in the same accommodation as opposed to seeing that same person out on the street?

• 9:53Stephen Stockwell?

  Yeah, which would happen, I imagine, if there was a trial in Melbourne as opposed to a trial in Moorwell. Christian, the next round we got to was around iNaturalist and cell tower evidence. Now, iNaturalist is the citizen science website that the prosecution says Erin Patterson looked at some death cap mushroom results from and then went to those locations to gather death cap mushrooms. And then the cell tower evidence is what they relied on to show that she travelled to those areas. What's the issue with this ground?

• 10:24Speaker 07

  So with the iNaturalist post, this piece of evidence became quite important in the trial because some citizen scientists had posted about death cap mushrooms being located in Lock and Outram, which are some towns quite close to Erin Patterson's home in Lee and Gaffer. And the allegation was...

• 10:48Speaker 07

  In a broad way that Patterson must have seen these posts about death caps growing. We don't have the concrete proof that she did this, but you can put two and two together. And it looks like she's gone there to those areas, picked the death cap mushrooms, which she's later put into the beef Wellington. That was the prosecution case in a nutshell. Now, the new defence barrister Veronica Drago, who was alongside Mr. Edney, said that there was no evidence that Erin Patterson had actually seen these posts on iNaturalist. We knew that she had visited the website before, but she said there's no evidence, no records,

• 11:33Speaker 07

  that she had visited those particular pages in the lead up to the lunch. Now, when I heard this, I thought there's some context missing here. We know that from the trial, there was a lot of evidence about Erin Patterson deleting things from electronic devices or things kind of not being there. So when I heard that, I took that as an observer with a bit of a grain of salt. Maybe the prosecution will get into that tomorrow, I'm not sure. But anyway, that was her point. She was critical of this phone tower evidence. Now, what this was, to remind people, was the evidence of Matthew Sorrell,

• 12:17Speaker 07

  the tech guru called by Victoria Police and the prosecution. And what Sorrell's tower evidence was, was they were the sort of approximate phone locations, if I could put it that way.

• 12:33Stephen Stockwell?

  Yep.

• 12:34Speaker 07

  And the tower evidence didn't pinpoint down to the meter where Erin Patterson's phone was, but it gave a radius. And what the prosecution asked the jury to do in the trial was to say, look at all these pings on the phone tower, you can approximate where Erin Patterson was. And the way that they sold the story was that it was plausible that on these dates, shortly after the iNaturalist posts were made, that Erin Patterson travelled to the areas where the death cap mushrooms were said to be growing. Now, the defence today said that this was an example of the prosecution turning

• 13:18Speaker 07

  nothing into something, because they said it wasn't concrete evidence. The prosecution response was that this was explained during the trial at length. And you and I remember this too. The expert Matthew Sorrell repeatedly told the jury that there is a limit to what this evidence can show. And what the prosecution said today through another prosecution barrister, Jeremy McWilliams, was that the phone tower data provided context. And he said this evidence was part of a collection of evidence.

• 14:00Speaker 07

  And when taken together with all of those other things, it demonstrated that Patterson had the opportunity to source death cap mushrooms at a time close to the lunch.

• 14:12Stephen Stockwell?

  Hmm. Also relying on, you know, Jeremy McWilliams in that point, also relying on the the fact that there's other evidence as well of Erin Patterson's movement around that time, that, you know, after the time that the phone towers show her in lock, that she goes and buys a dehydrator. And then there's photos found on another device that show what were identified as death cap mushrooms on her counter around that time as well. And plenty of discussion around the phone tower evidence, even today in the Appeal Court, Christian. Peter Kidd, one of the Appeal Judges, asking, this was discussed at length in the trial, wasn't it, to Jeremy Williams? And he said, yes, at length, and it's a chuckle amongst the journalists.

• 14:50Speaker 07

  Well, that's right. I mean, they've just read the transcripts. We have to sit through it.

• 14:53Stephen Stockwell?

  Exactly. Ground three for this, Christian, this is an S D card that had some photos of mushrooms on it. This was used by the prosecution to demonstrate that Erin Patterson had an interest in mushrooms. The defence is saying this shouldn't have been allowed.

• 15:09Speaker 07

  Yeah, this is a complex one to explain and I'll try my best to do it. So I think people will just have to bear with me. So this piece of evidence was initially excluded from being used by the prosecution. And what it was, was it was some pictures found on an S D card at Patterson's home of a bunch of wild mushrooms. They were taken in the year 2020, so this is like three years before the fatal lunch.

• 15:35Stephen Stockwell?

  Yep.

• 15:35Speaker 07

  And it was ruled inadmissible by the Judge Christopher Beale. Now, later on, during the trial, it was introduced by Erin Patterson's legal team into the trial. And these pictures were shown to the jury. And what the defence was trying to say was, this is proof that Erin Patterson has a longstanding history of foraging mushrooms. Because remember, their argument all along was that this was a tragic accident. Erin Patterson never intended to serve these people death cap mushrooms that she picked from the wild.

• 16:18Speaker 07

  Now, what the defence is saying is problematic about this is they wanted the prosecution to put this evidence forward.

• 16:31Speaker 07

  And the reason for that is, they say today that if the prosecution put that evidence forward,

• 16:38Speaker 07

  they would have had to have found a witness to do it through. And then Colin Mandy, the barrister at the time, could have cross-examined the prosecution about the merits of this evidence. But because the prosecution couldn't do it, the defence needed to put up a witness to introduce this material. And that witness ended up being Erin Patterson herself. So they're saying it's part of the reason that she was, in their words, compelled to take the stand. And obviously, when she did take the stand, or step into the witness box, as our listeners will remind us, is the correct terminology.

• 17:16Speaker 07

  When she did step into the witness box, she was cross-examined at length and was put under real pressure.

• 17:24Stephen Stockwell?

  And so is the point here from the defence that this kind of takes away Erin Patterson's right to silence?

• 17:31Speaker 07

  That's pretty much it. Veronica Drago said it compromised her right to silence. And this got the attention of the judges. Lesley Taylor, one of the other ones, was pressing Drago on this and saying, so are you saying that because of this situation, this is the reason why Patterson had to step into the witness box? And Drago had to walk it back a little bit and say, look, it was, she was compelled to talk about this topic. But to say that it was solely the reason why she had to step into the witness box is a step too far. And anyone who remembers the trial will recall how complex the timelines were,

• 18:15Speaker 07

  how many different topics were explored around this lunch, you know, what people were doing and afterwards. So I think, you know, it's pretty obvious that Erin Patterson explained her side of things on lots of topics. And this idea of her having an interest in foraging was only just one of those many topics that she ended up addressing in the witness box.

• 18:40Stephen Stockwell?

  Yeah, and ground five kind of flows on from Erin Patterson giving evidence. This is around the cross-examination of her. She was questioned, as we've talked about, Christian, for a very long time. And we weren't really sure what the issue with the cross-examination was until today, when we've kind of heard these arguments made. And it sounded to me like it was lots of small parts, you know, various different bits of the cross-examination, referencing of various paragraph numbers from the transcript. What was the concern?

• 19:10Speaker 07

  Broadly, it was that Nanette Rogers, the prosecutor at the time, asked repetitive questions.

• 19:18Speaker 07

  And the point Richard Edney was trying to make was that it was over the top. And there was a real risk that sort of the jury would have a bad perception of Patterson. She was on the stand for a number of days. This ground was also challenged by one of the judges who said, well, isn't it the prosecution who bears the onus of proof? They're the ones who've got to prove the case against Patterson, so they've got to ask those questions. So we'll see what the judges have to make of that argument.

• 19:50Stephen Stockwell?

  Yeah, we kind of work our way sort of through the trial with these grounds, actually. They're kind of almost chronological through the trial because the next ground, ground six, was around the closing address. And I think there were 36 issues highlighted with the closing address by Richard Edney in his submissions to the court. But one Appeal Judge, Peter Kidd, basically, you know, had some thoughts, more or less, kind of asking, well, hang on a second, if you had all these issues with the closing address from the prosecution, why wasn't that brought up during the trial?

• 20:20Speaker 07

  Yeah, so the main complaint here was that the prosecution, quote unquote, cherry picked and misquoted parts of the evidence to paint Erin Patterson in a bad light. And this was partially around.

• 20:36Speaker 07

  Erin Patterson apparently not falling sick after eating the beef Wellington lunch, when everyone else was suffering from toxic mushroom poisoning, the prosecution said Erin Patterson was faking these symptoms.

• 20:50Stephen Stockwell?

  Hmm.

• 20:51Speaker 07

  And yes, this judge did ask why, if it was such a problem, they didn't call for a mistrial. The defence said a forensic decision was made, forensic legal decision was made at the time by the legal team to persist. But it should be worth noting that sometimes this sort of situation does pop up where the defence could apply for a mistrial and they don't, and then they use it as an appeal ground and are successful. It's happened in the Greg Lynn trial.

• 21:22Stephen Stockwell?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:23Speaker 07

  So it's not something that is unheard of.

• 21:26Stephen Stockwell?

  Right. And also worth noting at this point that we are working with a very different cast of characters at this point. We have no Colin Mandy, we have no Sophie Stafford from the defence who acted for Erin Patterson during the trial, we have no Nett Rogers who acted for the prosecution during the trial, an entirely different legal team. I mean, does that help when the legal team is being questioned around, why didn't you make this decision during the trial?

• 21:48Speaker 07

  In some cases it does, because the new barristers can say, well, we don't know what the old barristers were thinking.

• 21:56Stephen Stockwell?

  Yeah, and I will say, Christian, that these legal teams are making so many decisions throughout a trial, you know, both the prosecution and defence have so much to work with, so many decisions to make. I can see how these, either side would, after a year from a trial, they have a look back and they find these things that they want to raise. So I can see how we get into these positions.

• 22:15Speaker 07

  And also, just from a sort of a human perspective, and I think people at home will know this, that when things are put on paper, when there's a transcript, you sort of look at it in a different light, and it's very different to in the moment. So I always wonder whether there's an element of that too.

• 22:31Stephen Stockwell?

  Hmm, yeah, thinking back and, oh, actually, was that reasonable, was that fair? And this is what this process is for.

• 22:37Speaker 07

  And also, sometimes when you're in the room with someone, you can get a certain meaning out of an interaction that happens that doesn't translate to something that's written.

• 22:48Stephen Stockwell?

  Yep.

• 22:48Speaker 07

  So, anyway, that's just my human observation.

• 22:51Stephen Stockwell?

  Hmm, yeah. Christian, the final grounds of today's discussion from the defence, they put grounds four and seven together. This comes to an argument about motive, the defence saying that the prosecution said they wouldn't rely on a motive, and then they get to the end of the trial and they're kind of pointing to, according to the defence, these Facebook messages that say Erin Patterson had a reason to want to inflict this harm on these people.

• 23:15Speaker 07

  This is an interesting ground. The prosecution throughout the whole trial said, we are not alleging that there is a motive to commit murder. And people will remember that motive is not one of the four elements of the crime of murder. And they said it at the start, no motive, they said it at the end, there's no motive. But what the defence is saying that the prosecution did do is imply there was a motive. And this was by the way that they introduced and argued these Facebook messages that Erin Patterson had sent her friends in the lead up to the lunch.

• 23:55Speaker 07

  And this was a series of messages where Patterson had been disparaging about her estranged husband, Simon, who didn't come to the lunch but was invited, as well as Simon's parents, Don and Gail, who ended up dead.

• 24:11Stephen Stockwell?

  Hmm.

• 24:11Speaker 07

  And what the defence was saying was that prosecution arguments at the start of the trial and at the end were very different, even though they denied that they were.

• 24:23Stephen Stockwell?

  Yeah. I found an interesting moment throughout this argument from the defence, with one of the appeal judges, and I found the appeal judges' questions throughout this quite cutting, really getting to the meat of the argument. And there was a point in this discussion, as Veronica Drago was making this argument, that one of the judges, Lesley Taylor, piped up and said, hang on a second, so you've got two grounds, you've got grounds four, you've got ground seven, you know, if ground four falls over around the admissibility of these Facebook messages, then ground seven falls over as well, doesn't it? And Veronica Drago kind of forced to admit in that moment that, well, yes, yes, it does.

• 25:00Speaker 07

  And what Peter Kidd, another judge, said was, at the time of the trial, no one raised this as a problem, but you're raising it now.

• 25:10Stephen Stockwell?

  Yep. Again, potentially the benefit of a different legal team, and that, those eyes looking over that process.

• 25:16Speaker 07

  But the defence was quick to say, no criticism of Colin Mandy and the way he handled the trial, or the way he went to work.

• 25:24Stephen Stockwell?

  No, he was always, he was going to work all the time. So Colin Mandy, nice to hear his name again mentioned in a Victorian courtroom, it's been a little while. Christian, throughout the hearing today, we had Erin Patterson not in the room with us but appearing via a video link. Did you notice much of a response from her?

• 25:41Speaker 07

  Erin Patterson was pretty emotionless. She was stoic, she sort of sat there. She had the proceedings on a laptop in front of her, so she would, she would look at that, and it was sort of the classic Erin Patterson body language, the rapid blinking sometimes, tensing up the face. I mean, it's probably a bit unfair to be staring and analysing someone's face for six hours a day, but that's what, that's what we did. She chose not to come to court today, she had the opportunity to. Her defence lawyers have complained in the past that she spends a lot of time in a prison isolation cell and doesn't get to mix with anybody.

• 26:23Speaker 07

  This could have been an opportunity to get out and see some sunlight, but she's chosen to stay in the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre and look on.

• 26:31Stephen Stockwell?

  In, you know, rebuttal to your sunlight argument, it was a very grey day in Melbourne today, so even if Erin Patterson had come to court, she might not have gotten much sun anyway. As well as Erin attending the proceedings via video link, we did have, I mean, a very full court in the public gallery, but also in the, in the floor where we were at, we were on the bottom floor of Court One, kind of in the public gallery there, with the, kind of the two rows behind the bar table reserved for family of the Patterson clan. Ian Wilkinson coming to court as well.

• 26:58Speaker 07

  Nice to see him.

• 26:59Stephen Stockwell?

  Yeah, yeah, good to see him again. And yeah, really, a decent showing from the family coming to this proceeding.

• 27:04Speaker 07

  One notable absentee, Simon Patterson, the estranged husband, he didn't show. But if I remember correctly, he wasn't at the sentencing hearing either. Also there, supporting the family, were some homicide detectives as well, Stephen Eppensall, the main police investigator on the case, as well as some other Victoria Police colleagues and members of the extended Wilkinson family as well.

• 27:29Stephen Stockwell?

  Yeah. Christian, the inbox, the case of at abc.net.au is never quiet, and the listeners know that we will answer questions that are sent in to us, including Jessica, who was following on the live stream today from the Supreme Court of Victoria, actually feeling slightly guilty that she was betraying us somewhat as her eyes and ears inside the courtroom. But something that she wondered as she was hearing the argument specifically around the first ground was that, if this was such a big issue, why didn't the jurykeepers raise this at the time and go and tell Justice Beale?

• 27:58Speaker 07

  Well, the jurykeepers did tell Justice Beale what happened. There's some emails, which we've now seen as part of the case, where the jurykeepers say, nothing happened. And Justice Beale did believe that this situation where the jury was kind of in the same space as prosecutors and police was not ideal. I think everyone agrees that that is not an optimal position, but the key question is, were the jury improperly influenced or communicated with? And that's what these judges have to grapple with.

• 28:31Stephen Stockwell?

  Hmm. Christian, another question here from Heather on the appeal, she's asking that, given Erin Patterson wanted to have this trial in Morewell, can that be used as a counter to the appeal on jurors ending up in the same hotel as prosecutors?

• 28:45Speaker 07

  Well, I think Erin Patterson wanting the trial in Morewell probably would have been on the reasonable expectation that if jurors were sequestered, that they wouldn't be put in the same building as the prosecution and the police. And just knowing what we do about how this little local community works and how things played out, it certainly wasn't ideal. But for a bit of broader context, the jury was kept in a town called Taralgan, which is next door to Morewell, where the trial was being held. And there's not a huge amount of accommodation in this local area.

• 29:24Stephen Stockwell?

  Hmm.

• 29:24Speaker 07

  Now, questions might be asked about why the jury was put so close to the trial location. My personal question is, why wasn't this jury kept an hour away so that there could be no risk of contamination? I don't know the answer to that. Maybe in future, if there are other trials where the jury's sequestered, they won't make the same mistakes. But yeah, obviously, it was not an ideal situation and something that if people had their time over, would have been done differently.

• 29:55Stephen Stockwell?

  Exactly, yeah. We'll be back in your feed tomorrow, so if you have any questions, please get in touch. The case of at abc.net.au. Save a bit of time at the end of tomorrow's episode to get into some of them. Christian, we will be back in feeds tomorrow. Where are we going? How's this gonna, how's this gonna work?

• 30:10Speaker 07

  Well, I mentioned this was a double appeal, and so far, all we've heard is Erin Patterson's conviction appeal and the prosecution responding to that. So tomorrow, the prosecution will finish their argument, and then they'll get to go first for appeal number two, which is their bid to get rid of Erin Patterson's non-parole period. She was sentenced to life in prison, but Judge Christopher Beale did give her the opportunity of walking free after 33 years in jail. The prosecution says, given it was a triple murder and an attempted murder, the notion of any chance of walking free means the sentence is manifestly inadequate, and they will be

• 30:52Speaker 07

  arguing that she should be locked up for the rest of her life. The defence will obviously be arguing that she should have a chance to one day walk free.

• 31:00Stephen Stockwell?

  Yeah, so I guess we'll have the prosecution responding to the other grounds that we didn't get to in this episode, I think from three onwards, around about there, and then I guess the defence goes again and challenges the prosecution appeal on the sentence, I imagine.

• 31:13Speaker 07

  That's what I reckon will happen.

• 31:14Stephen Stockwell?

  Right, okay, we'll be back in your feed tomorrow. Make sure you get around ABC Listen so you don't miss that episode. And if you've got any friends and family that have followed this case, any dormant group chats that have been gathering dust over the last year or so, feel free to swing this episode around to restart those convos. We'll be back with you soon.

• 31:37Stephen Stockwell?

  Mushroom Case Daily is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News. This episode was reported by Christian Silver, presented by me, Stephen Stockwell. Our supervising producer is Greg Muller, and our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson. This episode was produced on the land of the Lurundjeri people.