Erin Patterson - We the members of the MN jury find the defendant Guilty or Not Guilty?

[Dustyblue]

Well here we are, after 2 years of head-scratching speculation and many weeks of trial detail-thrashing. It looks like the Judge will give his directions to the jury on Tuesday, after which they'll be sequestered in a local motel (I do not envy them this) to reach a verdict.

Clearly we're not privy to every last piece of evidence shown at the trial, but those of us who've been following closely will surely have formed an opinion one war or the other.

So, I ask you- if you were on the jury- what would your verdict be?

Those poor children living with the knowledge their mother killed their grandparents. I never doubted her guilt but the children it’s just so sad

Is she actually sentenced to solitary? Is that not “cruel and unusual punishment”? No body can stay sane in long term isolation. Agree about the kids, what a bloody awful situation for them, bereaved in horrible circumstances and then it turns out your mother is a monster. I hope there are good people around those children.

I think she is in solitary because of her behaviour towards other inmates when she was in the general population. I'd say it is both for her protection and the protection of others, and keeping a lid on potential flashpoints in communal areas.

She is not in solitary due to the nature of her crimes, rather as a result of her behaviour within the prison so far.

That is a relief, so if she behaves herself she will have human contact but if she is a PITA to handle then isolation. She is going to be hard work, I expect, so maybe she won’t get much time put of isolation.

I was sitting on the fence before the trial because I couldn’t believe anyone would be that stupid to do what she did. Surely even a child would know they’d couldn’t get away with this.
I followed the trial via a podcast and was absolutely astonished at how arrogant she is, totally removed from reality

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare

Same. I was absolutely convinced that she was guilty, but there was a poster here who was sure that she was innocent, and defending EP so much that I was convinced she must have been a friend of hers.

I'd love for all the posters who couldn't even read that she was acting badly in that media interview that set all of the speculation off, and who claimed on thread after thread she was innocent, and who believed her wore white pants, drove for three hours, had zero LFT abnormalities, and totally was also poisoned story to come on here and admit they were wrong, as I had a lot of those jump down my neck repeatedly.

I was convinced of her guilt from the start. My only concern was if the criminal standards for murder would be met.

One poster here was a criminal defense lawyer herself and, I think, was just trying to get the rest of us to see that murder convictions aren't so straightforward.

The right result was reached in end. The pieces of the puzzle started adding up from the get-go. No idea how anyone could have believed it was accidental.

Her car is for sale. It’s believed that her power of attorney has done that. Not like Erin is going to be driving it again, or potentially any car ever again.

Innocent until proven guilty. Nothing wrong with that, that's what the trial was for.

I was open minded. Each piece of behaviour/evidence could have been explained away in isolation. Even the white trousers. But its the cumulation of each piece of evidence that proved her guilt.

Tbh, at the start I did err on the side of not guilty. Mostly because I didn't like how everyone jumped on her appearance and behaviour in the first interview. Many people have been wrongly vilified because their face didn't fit, and I gave her the benefit of the doubt at that point. Everything she did after that eroded any belief in her innocence, bit by bit.

To start with it's unimaginable that anyone could be that evil. It's the stuff of TV drama. And you dont want it to be true for the kids.

I often wondered if she is bad or mad.

I suppose a bit of both, since the motive is so opaque - to me anyway. You'd have to be off your rocker to kill people with such forward planning. It's the WHY that intrigues me.

Each piece of behaviour/evidence could have been explained away in isolation.

Actually, there really is no way to explain away the normal bloodwork if she had been exposed to even a fraction of a dose of death cap mushrooms. It would have to be a remarkable coincidence for her individual BW (and the serves she claimed to give her children the following evening while the lunch guests were seriously ill in hospital after eating them, with the mushrooms allegedly scraped off) to have had zero death caps in them. And there would have had to been zero traces for their to be no elevation in liver functions, for one.

Remarkable coincidence, yes.
If that had been the ONLY piece of evidence the prosecution had, would she have been found guilty?

It's not a coincidence. It is not physically possible.

I am just saying on the basis of logic, it was not possible for her to have eaten the same meal as her guests. The medical evidence was really clear.

Whether or not that would have been enough to convict her is not my area.

You said remarkable coincidence, I was just quoting you!

I don't disagree btw. I never would have shouted about her innocence, and the evidence is absolutely conclusive. I'm just saying it takes all the evidence to be sure, I wasn't 100% convinced of her guilt before the evidence was heard.

I didn't mean it would literally be a remarkable coincidence. I meant it would be completely impossible!

I spent half a thread here trying to explain that it was just not possible for her to have just happened to have only eaten a little bit of poison and only gotten a little bit sick, as quite a few people (including a doctor) believed.

Erin claimed to be suffering from diarrhea... whether or not she actually was is debatable, but her bloodwork was completely normal. If by some miracle she'd only encountered a small amount of poison, she may have been much less ill than the rest, but there would still be measurable effects on her LFTs etc.

From the Austin hospital, the main liver transplant hospital in Victoria, where the others were in ICU:

"If symptomatic, but LFTs / renal function normal at 48-hours post exposure, then this excludes amatoxin-related mushroom poisoning."

Amanita V552025.pdf

@velvetandsatin I don't know whether it's because of phones and CCTV everywhere but there are people who just won't believe anything unless there's video footage these days. All of a sudden they're questioning test results and saying "well that doesn't really prove anything" it's really frustrating! And refusing to look at the entirely of a case, that's a big problem. The rise in popularity of conspiracy theories doesn't help...

Just one person like that on the jury and she may have got off...

True-doesn't bear thinking about does it.

Totally agree and the prosecution brought in an expert to say that even if she had vomited after the meal the poison is so toxic it would have immediately gone into her blood stream so vomiting would have made no difference to the outcome.

Also everyone focuses on the meal itself but she prepared it so surely she tasted it before serving the meal and therefore should have been ill before her guests arrived if it was an innocent mistake. She said herself she added the dried mushrooms because it was too bland so obviously tasted it to know it was bland. She then added the dried (poisonous) mushrooms so surely would taste it again? Obviously she didn’t because she knew it was poisonous!

No, this is incorrect. The judge went out of his way to say she is not a threat to the other inmates, but they are a threat to her.

Therefore, instead of giving her a whole life tariff - which would have been well within the bounds of sentencing - he gave her a non-parole period precisely because the terms of her imprisonment, for the foreseeable future at least, are cruel and unusual.

Other inmates are a threat to her because of her behaviour towards them perhaps? I'm sure I read somewhere that her attitude in prison left a lot to be desired, but it probably reflects all aspects of her life anyway pre incarceration.

it is more about her notoriety making her a target for other inmates.

They are a threat to her because she's an extremely high profile prisoner and it would be quite a coup to be the person that beat up or knifed Erin Patterson. This is Victoria's maximum security women 's prison and houses the most serious offenders.

I believe it's quite a standard thing to need to protect prisoners like her by isolating them, and the prison officers know what they're doing here. She has her case reviewed once a month, but the prison governor couldn't say with any certainty that this isolation wouldn't go on possibly for decades. Obviously, the answer is to fund prison services properly and provide extra, properly trained staff. But that's not a huge vote winner in most countries, including Australia.

They did make it quite clear at the pre-sentencing hearing she is not a physical threat to the other prisoners in any way. I imagine that statement comes with the proviso she doesn't get another job in the prison kitchens!