Prosecutors have dismissed Erin Patterson's arguments that her murder convictions should be overturned due to alleged irregularities in jury sequestration, asserting the claims have "no substance."
Patterson, who was sentenced to life in prison with a non-parole period of 33 years on September 8, appeared in the Supreme Court of Appeal via video link to challenge her conviction. Her legal team argued that housing the jury in the same hotel as police and prosecutors during deliberations constituted a "catastrophic failure" that undermined the integrity of the verdicts.
Richard Edney, Patterson's barrister, contended that the jury's placement in the same hotel as journalists, police, and prosecutors was unfair and fundamentally flawed. "We would describe the sequestration and what occurred during it as catastrophic, and in our submission, what has occurred here is that there has been a fundamental failure to comply with the dictum already referred to," Edney stated.
However, Director of Public Prosecutions Brendan Kissane KC rejected this argument, stating there was no evidence to support the claim of a catastrophic failure. "Far from being some sort of catastrophic failure, to use the words that Mr Edney used, there’s no evidence in our submission to support this ground," Kissane told the court.
The jury in the high-profile death cap mushroom trial was sequestered at a hotel in the Morwell area while deliberating. While members of the prosecution team, reporters, and a key police witness were also staying at the hotel for a period, prosecutors argued that the system worked as intended.
Kissane presented evidence indicating that jury keepers had been sworn in open court and reported no interaction between jurors and any other individuals. "The issue is whether there was communication between this jury and any other person. The evidence as it stands points towards there being no communication, and once the court accepts that, then there’s no irregularity in this situation, let alone a fundamental irregularity that goes to the root of the trial," he said.
Prosecutors argued that the mere possibility of jurors seeing individuals passing by or sharing a hotel entrance did not constitute improper contact. The jurors were housed on their own floor and dined in a separate conference room, with keepers on duty throughout the sequestration period.
While acknowledging that the arrangement was "obviously undesirable" and likely would have been disallowed by the trial judge if requested in advance, Kissane emphasized that it occurred "accidentally" due to limited local accommodation. He stressed that there was no evidence suggesting any communication occurred between jurors and anyone outside their group or the jury keepers.
Prosecutors maintained that a fair-minded observer, aware of the safeguards in place, would not conclude that any impropriety had occurred. The appeal hearing was scheduled to continue, with prosecutors also expected to argue that Patterson's sentence was "manifestly inadequate."