The jury retires to consider its verdict

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It's all led up to this.

Deliberations have begun.

I'm ABC Investigative Reporter Rachel Brown.

And I'm Stephen Stockwell.

It is Monday, the 30th of June.

We've just finished day 39 for the final day of this trial.

Welcome to Mushroom Case Daily.

The small town mystery that's gripped the nation and made headlines around the world.

On the menu was Beef Wellington, a pastry filled with beef and a pate made of mushrooms.

At the heart of this case will be the jury's interpretation of Erin Patterson's intentions.

Erin Patterson has strongly maintained her innocence.

It's a tragedy what happened.

I love them.

Rach, this is a big day.

This is the day where the jury has stepped away from the courtroom to deliberate on its verdict to decide if Aaron Patterson is guilty or not guilty of three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.

And the reason we're here is because of a lunch that Aaron Patterson held in late July 2023 that resulted in the deaths of three people, Don Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson, and the near death of a fourth, Ian Wilkinson, who has been in court throughout this whole trial.

That's right, where in week 10 there's been 53 witnesses stocky, 125 exhibits, but today it's crunch time and the jury will be deciding did Erin Patterson deliberately poison with Death Cat mushrooms that Beef Wellington lunch and did she mean to kill her in-laws?

There's a lot to talk through for what has happened in the courtroom today, Rach.

But before we get there, can you give us a quick wrap of what we've seen and heard?

The day started with the jury keepers.

Now these are the people, the three people that mine the jurors while they're sequestered in a hotel.

Justice Beale finished his charge, all 365 pages of it, Stocky.

He finished covering off the issues that the jury has to decide and the evidence that relates to those issues and the prosecution and defence argument for those issues.

He's reminded jurors how to treat issues like onus of proof, circumstantial evidence, motive, and reminded them of the four elements of murder.

And finally, he explained the need for a unanimous verdict.

And then the jury was down by two.

Two jurors were balloted off.

Very abruptly, no goodbyes.

Thank you, Rach.

Yeah, the big day.

The jury is now out.

And I liked that today was kind of bookended by, you know, kind of just like...

not shenanigans, wrong word,

but you know, jury proceedings.

You know, we had a little bit of kind of procedural stuff and more of the judge's charge to get through.

But the first first thing we saw this morning, Rach, was the

not the election, that's the wrong word, maybe just the selection of the jury keepers.

The swearing in.

A far more graceful way of putting it.

Yeah, and it's more theatre around the jury, isn't it, and how it all works.

So jury keepers, and we talked about this last week.

Our producer, Yaz, said it all sounds very mystical, so we'll try to shed some light on the jury keepers for you.

They were sworn in.

So their job is basically minders of the 12 jurors while they're in deliberations,

while they're being sequestered at a hotel, which hotel we don't know, don't want to know.

And they basically have two roles.

They're a point person for the jurors' families.

So if there's an emergency or someone needs to get in touch with them about something, you call one of these three jury keepers and that message will be passed on to the juror.

Now, this is because, Stocky, the jurors aren't allowed to have any communication with the outside world.

Nothing, not directly or indirectly.

So everything has to go through these jury keepers.

And these jury keepers were also told when they were sworn in that they're not allowed to discuss evidence at the trial with the jury.

I appreciated when Justice Beale was kind of going through this process.

He said to the jury, look, we're going to elect the jury keepers, they're going to do an oath.

And it's going to become kind of clear why they're doing the oath.

And the oath is basically like, all right, you're good to make sure that these people don't talk to anyone outside of themselves for however long it takes from here.

And like I said, only phone communication through these three people.

One of them is Mr.

Stuart Hastings, who we see in the court telling people off about their phones when he has to, so he's had good practice.

But yeah, everything goes through him and two other women who were selected to be

two other jury keepers.

We'll come back to the details around the jury, how that's going to work, what the deliberations are going to involve later in the app.

But before we get to that, Rachel, I want to kind of run through a few more of the issues that the jury

kind of had to, what was directed on by Justice Beal.

So he was, you know, continuing to give his judges' charge.

If you want an insight into the judge's charge, jump into our Friday wrap episode from last week where we talked through in detail

what this is supposed to do

and also episodes from last week where we detailed his charge all through that.

But yeah, he's continued with that, kind of highlighted a few things that he wanted the jury to just kind of go back to and think about

while they're running through the deliberations.

This is things like whether or not Aaron Patterson foraged for mushrooms or not, the situation around the plates, a few other kind of like disputed statements.

Then he highlighted something the prosecution had said, which was that Aaron Patterson didn't have death count mushroom poisoning because a PCR test on a stool sample she gave at the hospital didn't show amatoxin.

Justice Beale kind of highlighted that, well, look, those tests wouldn't show that anyway, so you should disregard that argument.

This lines up with something he did last week as well, where he highlighted a prosecution argument and said, look, don't worry about that one.

There's no evidence you've heard to back that up.

And it brings me to something that we've actually had a few emails about, Rach, which is people saying that Justice Beale seems to be taking kind of Aaron Patterson or the defence's side when he's going through his charge.

And that's not what's happening, is it?

Definitely not.

Fairness is not bias.

And I'll come back to this, but this is really important.

But he's pointed out at numerous points during his charge.

examples like that, the ones that you've just given.

He mentioned that just because Erin Patterson lied doesn't mean she's guilty of the offences that she's been charged with.

That's one.

You remember last week we spoke about hindsight reasoning, you know, and it's the prosecution put to the jury, what would you have done?

And the judge said, well, that would be applying a moral judgment.

And she's not on trial here for being a liar.

You can't use what's in your heart.

It's

the brutal facts here.

And it's because of she's innocent until proven guilty.

The onus is on the prosecution.

So if the prosecution has overstepped or if it's presented evidence that would create an inference that the judge has assessed as being not legally fair, it's his job to point this out.

He's doing his job.

So fairness is not biased and lean in people, because I hear about this a lot out in society and I cannot make this clearer, fairness.

is not Justice Beal being biased.

It's him doing his job.

He's an independent adjudicator and jurors might remember the big ticket items, you know, like a search on Aaron's computer on iNaturalist, for example, or the dumping of the dehydrator.

But he also has to highlight all the little nuances as well.

He did this also today very starkly with motive.

And he said, absence of motive makes it more likely this is an accident.

The motive conversation has come up a lot through this.

And I, you know, the other thing as well, just, you know, hearing you talk through that, that whole innocent until proven guilty point as well.

Like, you know, Justice Peale has come back to that a few times throughout his judge's charge.

It's obviously something that, you know, is a core tenant of our legal system is that principle of innocent until proven guilty.

Yeah, because we're not in a court of public opinion here, we're in a court of law.

And sometimes those two things are very different.

And you know, as I've learned throughout this whole process, there's so many different rules and processes to kind of make sure that the justice process is upheld through all of that.

So

yeah, you know, there's a lot that I hadn't understood or recognized or you know the minutia of so much of this, I hadn't truly kind of wrapped my head around until going through this process.

And, you know, little things, you know, lots of little things that Justice Beale has done through his charge have underlined that.

I think the big thing that underlines that is just his reminding of the jury, you know, you are the judges of the facts.

It is up to you to make this decision, but also.

the accused is innocent until proven guilty and it's on the prosecution to prove that.

Rachel, talking about motive, which we were talking about as well.

I mean, the thing I keep thinking about with that is that, you know, the prosecution hasn't presented a motive in this case.

They don't need to.

It's not one of the four elements of murder.

But the defense has presented a kind of like anti-motive, like like a reason that Aaron Patterson wouldn't have murdered these people.

And Justice Beale reminded the jury of that today.

He did.

And you're right, there doesn't need to be a motive for some murders.

There aren't.

Some occur for no apparent reason.

And as the prosecution said, the motive may only be known to the offender.

But Justice Beale said today,

this whole idea of an absence of a motive, the absence doesn't make it irrelevant.

He said, you must take into account this absence of motive in the accused favour.

He said, Stocky, if you find Erin had good reasons not to kill her guests, so a motive not to kill, that is significant consideration to which you must have regard when deciding whether the prosecution has satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that she committed the offences.

So again, we've just spoken about bias.

You might hear this and draw certain inferences from this about certain sides being leaned on, but it is simply Justice Beale doing his job.

He's covering off his checklist, what the jurors can and can't legally do with all the evidence that they've heard.

Yeah, and as he was reaching the end of his charge, you know, we've spoken before on the pod about the four elements of murder.

I don't have all four of them in my mind right now, but Justice Beale kind of made the point today that really the jury's only looking at two of these.

I mean, if you could, can you help me out on all four and then just highlight the two that he's told them to keep an eye on?

Yeah, that's right.

So the first one is that the death was caused by serving a poisoned meal.

And Justice Beale said, well, you'll have no difficulty finding this because that's not in dispute.

The meal was poisoned, three people died, and one nearly died.

So that's element one.

Element two is that it was conscious, voluntary, and deliberate conduct.

This is a really important one.

Were the death cat mushrooms put in that beef Wellington deliberately?

You know, so we talk about conscious.

Justice Beale made the point, you know, it's amazing what sleepwalkers can do, which I thought was quite interesting.

You got to laugh.

Yeah,

but it has to be conscious.

It has to be willed conduct.

So this excludes accidents.

So the defence is obviously arguing this tragic accident.

Prosecution's like, no, she did it deliberately.

So element two is going to be really important, whether she deliberately or accidentally served up death cat mushrooms.

Element three, that at the time that this meal was served, she intended to kill or cause really serious injury.

Now, this this goes to the accused state of mind at the time of the offence.

The prosecution has argued you can infer a state of mind.

Justice Bill told the jury a person's intention may be inferred from what Erin said and did and what she failed to say and do and that you should look at her proven actions before the lunch, at the time of the lunch and after and that will help you work out what her intention was.

He left them on this note.

You need to find that she intended to kill Heather, Gail and Don or cause them really serious injury.

That's the only inference open to you.

He said, if there's any evidence that causes you to have reservations, then the benefit of your doubts should go to the accused.

And the final point of murder is that

there was no defence for the committing of these acts.

And Justice Beale kind of quite quickly pointed out, look, the defence hasn't presented one.

So again, that's not one you need to worry about.

It's those, it's elements two and three that are really kind of the ones that they're thinking about right now.

That's right.

Number four is killing without lawful justification or excuse.

So that's when certain defense, self-defense issues can come into play, which don't apply in this case.

Yeah.

Rach, once we went through all of that, the jury started kind of getting their, you know, this whole thing's been judges' directions, but like, you know, really clear directions on what happens from here.

They were reminded that their verdict needs to be unanimous.

So the 12 jurors who are the final jurors to make this decision, they all need to have the same decision.

They don't need to come to it in the same way though.

Justice Beal's been kind of clear on this.

Like, you know, you can follow different paths to the same result and that is totally fine.

And then they were told what the process will be for actually delivering their verdict.

So once they've reached a unanimous verdict, they push a buzzer in the jury room and

that tells the TIP staff we're ready to go.

We're ready to return to court.

They take their place back in the jury box.

They are asked two questions.

Have you agreed on a verdict?

They say yes.

And then they're asked, what is that verdict?

And the four person will read it out, and then that verdict will be read back to them to confirm if it's correct.

Yeah.

The four person in this case is the kind of leader of the jury.

And we had an interesting moment today.

We've been working with 14 jurors throughout this entire case.

We started with 15.

One was removed for potentially discussing the case with friends, and that's not allowed.

So a juror was removed.

There are another two jurors there as spares just in case someone got sick, things like that.

No one has got sick.

We still had 14 today.

And so we had the number of jurors pulled down to 12.

Two were balloted off.

The fourth person has the Supreme Court equivalent of a survivor immunity idol.

So that person couldn't be balloted off.

Two others, Rach, not so lucky.

Their numbers were pulled out of what I can only assume is a hat and

they had to leave.

How did they take it?

I didn't see Stocky.

I was benched.

So there's a thin bench, not very comfortable, that runs alongside the room and you can't see the jury from there.

So I did ask one of my colleagues how they looked and they said that they were pretty

neutral, like they didn't give anything away.

So I'm not saying impassive, but they did a good job of not giving anything away because they were warned quite sternly before all this happened about the process.

And Justice Spiel said to them, you know, everything from bringing your luggage, everyone bring your luggage to this certain room just in case it's you who's balloted off so you can make a quick exit.

I don't want you saying anything.

I don't want you talking to anyone.

No comments.

So he basically said in the five-minute break before the ballot, say your goodbyes now because you cannot do or say anything.

You're gone, you know?

It was, I felt quite sad when he was doing that.

And sort of like, oh, you know, you've spent 10 weeks with these people.

You've got five minutes.

Two of you are gone.

You don't know who it is yet.

Better say goodbye to everyone.

It is like survivor.

And they're not allowed to talk to them during deliberations either, which obviously makes sense.

But if you've made close friends with someone, that would feel weird.

But until the deliberations are finished, they're not allowed to have any contact with the jury.

And nor can they talk to anyone, still can't talk to friends and family or anyone in the outside world about this trial.

So it's like

they've still got a heavy responsibility, even though they're not going to be part of the decision.

Who was taken off the jury?

Two men.

That's all I'll say.

I won't give any details.

So that brings

the jury down to seven men and five women.

So narrowing that gender gap slightly.

They left, those two men left, collected their luggage.

won't be able to talk to their friends if they made friends for until this is all done.

They were thanked beforehand.

Like I said, Justice Speal said, I give you a warm thank you to those two people.

He said, I don't know whether you're going to be relieved or frustrated, but you've made an important contribution to the administration of justice by your presence.

He also added, Stocky, that not just for them, but the whole jury, they get a special dispensation of 15 years grace from jury duty if they want it.

You know, it's interesting.

They all had to bring in, when they came back in for the kind of like the removal of the two jurors, they had to bring in their little chronologies and their iPads because whoever was going had to hand that over and that was, you know, the chronology will be destroyed if they've been taken off the jury and the iPads wiped.

So

we're left with 12 at this point.

I wanted a copy, one of the spare copies of the chronology, but no luck.

And yeah, their iPads will be wiped.

So any notes that they made on there will be gone.

Yeah.

The jury's out right now.

I know I feel a bit nervous sitting here

talking to you right now.

Quite nervous recording the podcast while we I mean unlikely we'll get a verdict today, but yeah, still a little nerve-wracking while they're out.

Rach, can you tell us a little bit about the kind of process of these deliberations?

What, you know, how they're, how long they're working for, what happens if they've got questions, all that kind of stuff.

Sure.

Justice Beals said they'll be deliberating in

regular hours.

So starting at 10.30.

breaking for lunch at 1, resuming at 2.15 and sitting until 4.15.

Those deliberations have to happen in the jury room.

They're not to happen in the hotel where they're sequestered.

So they sit in the jury room.

They will be deliberating on Saturday if they need to, if it gets to that point.

Not on Sunday, but they'll still be sequestered.

But they've been told, don't talk about this in the hotel, only talk about it in the jury room.

Now, if there's any questions, we will hear about that, Stocky, so we'll be able to let you know.

But if questions are raised, the question gets sent to the judge and he raises it with the counsel about how to answer it.

So like the defense and the prosecution teams.

That's right.

And he said, in your question,

I haven't heard this before.

He said, in your question, don't give me any numbers.

Numbers can't appear.

So I don't want to know that, you know, seven of you are leaning one way and five another way.

Don't want to know, don't want to hear about it.

Which is interesting in that he just wants a really blind, he wants to be able to answer the question blindly,

you know, unaware of how they're tracking.

And how long have they got?

As long as they need, Stocky.

Cool.

Did you bring your toothbrush?

I I did bring my toothbrush.

Have my toothbrush for 10 weeks.

Thank you very much.

Rachel, I love to get to some questions now.

Mushroomcasedaily at abc.net.au is our email address.

We're going to do a whole bunch of questions throughout the week as well.

So if you've got questions you want answered, particularly about the jury,

do let us know.

mushroomcased daily at abc.net.au.

We've got a heap coming in though, and Rachel want to start with one, Christy in Melbourne.

Christy says, hello to Rach, Stocky, and team.

My statement is: as the deliberations are private, the jury could ignore the charge and make up their mind in a different way, and we would never know.

Any thoughts?

We would never know, Christy.

You're right.

And that's the whole point.

We can't know how they got there, what evidence they used or didn't use.

The judge even said in his charge, look, just because I'm selecting certain things to remind you doesn't mean they're any more or less important than anything else.

You were the keeper of the facts.

You make the decision.

You make the call.

I'm just here to guide you on law and how to apply that law.

But you decide the facts.

So how they get there, how they get to their verdict is up to them.

And as Stocky, you pointed out before, they can reach it in different ways, but they have to still answer those four elements of murder that we talked about before, but hitting those two and three, the most important elements in this case, they still need to honour those.

Yep.

Thank you, Rach.

Thank you, Christy.

Wonderful question.

Another one here, Rach, from Matthea and Kieran.

They're from Wellington, Altero.

Keora, Rachel, and Stocky.

Like many others, we have found your podcast fascinating.

We've just finished walking the Larapinta Trail in the Northern Territory outback over 22 days and downloaded episodes on the days we had access to the internet and then mulled over the information as we traveled west along the track.

We're now back home and keen to hear the jury's verdict.

We also want to better understand the concept of beyond reasonable doubt.

Can you help us out?

Yeah, it's so interesting too how many people on pilgrimages are listening to this podcast.

There's people on the Camino listening as well.

I can answer that.

So beyond reasonable doubt is the highest standard of proof that we have in our legal system.

So it's not probably guilty or very likely to be guilty.

It's beyond reasonable doubt.

Now that doesn't mean absolute certainty because in most cases that's impossible.

These jurors weren't there when this happened.

But the evidence presented must be so strong that it leaves no reasonable doubt in the mind of the fact finder about the accused's guilt.

And with Beyond Reasonable Doubt, the jurors don't have to prove every fact at this standard, but the elements of the charge that we spoke about.

So for element two, for example, conscious, voluntary and deliberate conduct, the jury has to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that these death cat mushrooms were deliberately put in the Beef Wellingtons.

Yeah.

It's interesting, you know, the idea of reasonable doubt and, you know, the different bits and pieces of this case, as has been presented to the jury.

We've heard the analogy of a jigsaw used a couple of times.

You know, the prosecution in their closing used, you know, the idea of a jigsaw is like the evidence of the bits of the individual pieces and the whole picture is what you need to be, you know, satisfied of beyond reasonable doubt.

And then the defense kind of challenged that, saying, well, look, you know, jigsaw, you're working from a picture on the box.

They're saying the prosecution's working backwards.

Justice Beale today went back to the jigsaw analogy saying that often one piece by itself maybe not that helpful, but the whole picture might give you an idea of where you need to go.

So

interesting to hear that that used in a number of different ways

throughout the trial.

Thank you, Rach, for answering the question.

Matthea and Kieran, thank you for getting in touch.

Final question, Rach, from Anusha.

What does everyone in the court do while the jury is deliberating?

We bite our nails, Anusha, which is what I'm doing right now, and kind of jump at every email notification that comes through just in case it's the warning that we have five minutes to get back into court.

So most of us are staying quite close to the courtroom just in case we don't get a a lot of warning.

Everyone, I think, will be trying to leg it to try to get a seat in that courtroom when we hear.

So we wait for that notification unless it's a notification about a jury question, which are also very interesting.

Which of course we will also be rushing back for, just with, you know, slightly less anxiety than we would be for the verdict email.

Yep, I've already started biting my nails, so we're at that point.

And yeah, Nusha, we basically just hang out.

sit around.

We'll be working on a few other episodes for you throughout this process.

We will be dropping in your feed when the jury has a question as well.

So we'll do short little episodes just covering off what the question was and what the answer was as we go there.

We'll have a few other episodes we'll prepare over this period as well.

But mostly, it's as we are now, just nervously sitting around trying not to jump at every email notification that comes through.

Thank you so much for listening to Mushroomcase Daily.

If you have a question as well, please get in touch.

Mushroomcase Daily at abc.net.au.

We will be back in your feed as soon as we've got something for you.

We'll have an episode on Wednesday answering some of your questions, so please get in touch.

Again, we'll be back if the jury's got a question or a verdict.

And so just follow us on listen or ever get your podcast.

Turn on your notifications so you don't miss it.

And while you're waiting, Rachel, I thought we'd take the opportunity to shout out a few of our favourite podcasts that you can find on the ABC Listen app.

A couple of mine, The Weather That Changed Us, actually worked on that podcast at the end of last year, hosted by the wonderful Tyne Logan and produced by the climate team.

And also Saving the Franklin, hosted by Joe Lauder, an old friend of mine and a colleague of mine.

So that is a wonderful series also produced by Claire Rawlinson, who is our executive producer.

So keeping it within the family.

Rach, you've got something very big that, well, we actually can't talk about yet because the joys of the secrets of the courts.

But surely you've got another recommendation for us.

Yeah, huge.

And I know I'm annoying not being able to talk about it.

But when it comes out, I've just, everyone listen, please, because I'm so proud of this one.

The ABC has worked for a couple of years on it.

I'm proud of everyone who has bravely given me their stories for this podcast.

So as soon as I can let you know about that one, I will.

And Stocky, here's where I can be biased.

Another suggestion would be Trace, which was my baby back in 2017.

So the first season is on the cold case of Maria James.

The second season is on Lawyer X, Nicola Gobbo.

So check that out at the ABC Listen app.

And then Conversations is always a firm firm favourite of mine.

Oh, Sarah and Richard are lovely.

That's very kind of you.

Need all the help they can get, the up and coming Conversations podcast.

For Rachel's upcoming series, you'll be able to check that out on Unravel.

So if you're not already following Unravel on the ABC Listen app or wherever else you are listening to podcasts, get yourself around that because it'll be the first drop there.

I'm sure we'll find a way to mention it in this podcast feed as well.

If you don't manage to follow it, we'll give it a big wrap because I've heard a lot about it and Logid's going to be absolutely fantastic.

Rach, what happens now?

Well, apart from jumping at email notifications, we just have to hurry up and wait, stocky, and wait as long as it takes.

My fingernails are trembling with what comes for them next.

Depending on how long this extends for, we will keep bringing you updates when we've got them.

But in the meantime, make sure you've got Mushroom Case Daily followed in the ABC Listener.

Mushroom Case Daily is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News.

It's presented by me, Rachel Brown, and producer Stephen Stockwell.

Our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson, and our supervising producer is Yasmin Parry on Mondays.

And a huge thanks to our commissioning executive producer, Tim Roxborough, who keeps helping us out.

This episode was produced on the lands of the Gunai Kernai people.

Someone handed me a secret recording.

We've got to get rid of all those loose ends, okay?

For years now, I've been investigating this guy.

What, you stabbed him in the neck with a knife?

He's known as Mr.

Big.

His tentacles spread to the very heart of the justice system.

I don't just need it under the carpet, I need it to be fixed.

I'm Alicia Bridges.

I find out who he really is in Mr.

Big, a new true crime podcast from Unravel.

Search for Unravel now on the ABC Listen app.