Erin Patterson has lost her bid to overturn her convictions, with the Victorian Court of Appeal sentencing her to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The decision was handed down on Friday, after Justice Lesley Taylor and Justices Stephen McLeish and Peter Kidd heard arguments from her legal team and the prosecution in August.
Patterson, who is 52 years old, was not present in person at the 15-minute hearing, but followed the proceedings via video link from Dame Phyllis Frost Women's Prison. On the recording, she showed no emotion as McLeish explained why her appeal had failed. When the judges left the courtroom, Patterson also stood up, picked up a book that had been beside her and walked out of frame. In the courtroom, family members embraced and were emotional, while detectives involved in the case appeared satisfied. Outside the court, no one commented on the decision.
The court allowed the appeal on the first two grounds but still dismissed it, while the remaining five grounds raised by her lawyers were rejected. Her legal team argued, among other things, that the fact that the jurors during the deliberations on the triple murder verdict stayed in the same hotel as the police and the prosecution represented a catastrophic failure of the justice system. Richard Edney, Patterson's representative, said that the failure to properly isolate the jury during deliberations was a fundamental irregularity that had denied her a fair trial. The lawyers also argued that the trial judge, Christopher Beale, had erred in concluding that photographs and video recordings related to mushrooms, found on an SD card in Patterson's home, were inadmissible evidence.
The prosecution succeeded in its request for a longer sentence. Patterson was sentenced last year to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 33 years. During the hearings, Brendan Kissane, the Solicitor-General, said that her sentence was still too lenient, even if Patterson will be in her eighties when she becomes eligible for parole. "It has its sharp edge, of course, we accept that. But in our view, it does not outweigh the seriousness of the offence," Kissane said. McLeish, however, stated that Patterson had harboured the intent to kill all four people for three weeks, from the invitation to lunch, during the meal and during the prolonged suffering and final deaths. He said the act was carefully planned and deliberate, and involved a series of elaborate deceptions, such as claims that she had cancer, denials that she had picked the mushrooms herself, and lies about the origin of the mushrooms. "This was an exceptionally cold and calculated act and deserves condemnation in the strongest possible terms," McLeish said. He added that the murderous intent began with the invitations to lunch and continued through the meal in which the poison was administered, concluding that it was such calculated criminality that it was not appropriate to set a non-parole period.
Patterson was convicted of the murders of her estranged husband's parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and his aunt Heather Wilkinson, after hosting them for lunch. She was also convicted of the attempted murder of Heather's husband, Ian Wilkinson, who survived after eating beef wellington containing deadly cap mushrooms, spending weeks in hospital. Ian Wilkinson, the only survivor of that lunch, was not in court. Among those waiting for the appeal decision were detectives from the homicide unit, including Stephen Eppingstall, the investigator in this case. The appeal decisions were handed down in the Bench Court, the ceremonial courtroom of the Supreme Court, and the court was expected to deliver its decision at 10 o'clock. Patterson was not expected to be present in person for the appeal decision.
Patterson is now one of the few convicts in Victoria sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, and one of the few women in Australian history to be given such a sentence. If she wishes to continue fighting her conviction or new sentence, she must apply to the High Court for leave to appeal.
