Australia mushroom trial LIVE: defence set to conclude closing address in murder trial of Erin Patterson

Key events

Judge outlines trial timeline

The jurors have entered the court room in Morwell.

Justice Christopher Beale tells the jury he will begin instructing them on Tuesday, before they begin their deliberations. He says his instructions, called the judge’s charge, will take two days.

“I’m working hard to try and compress it,” he says.

Beale says Patterson’s defence lawyer, Colin Mandy SC, will conclude his closing address today.

What the jury heard on Wednesday

Here’s what the jury heard yesterday:

Patterson’s defence lawyer, Colin Mandy SC, said his client was “not on trial for being a liar”. He told jurors the court was not one of “moral judgment”.
The prosecution’s case that Patterson wanted her estranged husband, Simon, to attend the lunch so she could kill him was “absurd”, Mandy said.
The defence said the jury should reject the evidence from the sole surviving lunch guest, Ian Wilkinson, that Patterson served her guests on four large grey plates while eating from an orangey-tan coloured plate. Mandy said Ian was “honestly mistaken”.
Mandy said the December 2022 Facebook group chat messages, where Patterson said her in-laws were a “lost cause”, were being used by the prosecution as a distraction from the evidence in the case. He said the messages, which related to a disagreement over child support with Simon, stood out because they were about the only disagreement between Patterson and her in-laws.
Mandy says online searches about death cap mushrooms – discovered on a computer police seized from Patterson’s house – showed his client’s “idle curiosity” and was not a person “carefully studying this information”.

Welcome to day 35 of Erin Patterson’s triple murder trial.

Patterson’s defence lawyer, Colin Mandy SC, will continue delivering his closing address to the jury when the trial resumes from 10.30am.

Justice Christopher Beale has told the jury he will begin instructing them on Monday, before their deliberations. He said this “could spill” into next Wednesday. Once this is concluded, the jury will retire to consider its verdict.

Patterson, 50, faces three charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder relating to a beef wellington lunch she served at her house in Leongatha, in regional Victoria, on 29 July 2023.

She is accused of murdering her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, and her estranged husband’s aunt, Heather Wilkinson. The attempted murder charge relates to Heather’s husband, Ian.

She has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The prosecution alleges Patterson deliberately poisoned her lunch guests with “murderous intent”, but her lawyers say the poisoning was a tragic accident.

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