Australian court begins appeals hearing for mushroom murderer Erin Patterson

Australian toxic mushroom killer Erin Patterson began an appeal on Wednesday against her conviction in a triple-murder case that made headlines worldwide.

The 51-year-old was found guilty last year of murdering her husband’s parents and an elderly aunt in 2023 by serving them a beef Wellington lunch laced with lethal death cap mushrooms.

Patterson was also convicted of the attempted murder of her husband’s uncle, a small-town local pastor who survived the beef-and-pastry dish after weeks in hospital.

A judge sentenced her to life imprisonment, eligible for parole after 33 years.

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Three judges at the Court of Appeal in Melbourne are hearing two appeals — Patterson’s attempt to overturn her conviction and the prosecution’s demand for a stiffer sentence — over two days starting on Wednesday.

Proceedings kicked off at 10:15 a.m. local time on Wednesday at Melbourne’s Supreme Court.

Patterson appeared via live video link from her jail, the maximum-security Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Melbourne’s western suburbs, wearing a blue prison jumper, national broadcaster ABC said.

Patterson claims she suffered several counts of “substantial miscarriage of justice” because the trial judge erred in deciding what evidence could be presented.

Some evidence accepted by the judge — relating to Facebook messages, cell towers and posts of death cap mushroom sightings — was not relevant or was unfairly prejudicial to her case, her lawyer said.

Other evidence about mushroom images on a memory card in Patterson’s home was wrongly excluded, the lawyer said in an appeal submission in November last year.

A “fundamental irregularity” also took place while the jury was sequestered that “fatally undermined the integrity of the verdicts,” he argued, without giving further details.