1.28pm
‘Many logical implausibilities’ in prosecution’s case
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After dissecting the details of the lunch conversation and timing, defence lawyer Colin Mandy, SC, has turned to the topic of the mushrooms Erin Patterson had purchased from the Asian store. Mandy said the packaging Patterson had described was consistent with what a Monash City Council worker had found during an investigation after the lunch.
The defence barrister then turned to evidence about the dehydrator and said there was no need to buy one for a one-off meal, since one could dehydrate things in the oven at a low temperature, and the purchase spoke instead to a longer-term hobby.
“Why would you need to hide mushrooms in a mushroom paste?” Mandy said. “Why would you need that?”
Mandy said it was one of “many logical implausibilities” in the prosecution’s case.
The court has now paused for lunch, and will return at 2.15pm.
2.43pm
Uncertainty over travel to Loch, and type of mushrooms found at Patterson’s house
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Good afternoon and welcome back to our live coverage of the murder trial of accused mushroom killer Erin Patterson at the Latrobe Valley law courts in Morwell after a lunch break.
This morning, defence barrister Colin Mandy, SC, continued his closing address after court was adjourned early last night when his voice started to fail. And his closing address will go into a third day, with Mandy telling the jury he had more material to get through.
“I should be finishing sometime tomorrow morning,” Mandy said, before turning the jury to the prosecution’s case that Patterson could have visited Loch on April 28, 2023. Earlier, the jury had heard evidence from Christine McKenzie, a retired pharmacist who worked for the Victorian Poisons Information Centre for 17 years, who said she had spotted the mushrooms at Loch on April 18, 2023.
Mandy said there was no evidence Patterson had seen an online post by McKenzie about the mushrooms, and told the jury evidence by phone tower expert Dr Matthew Sorell “does not say that her phone travelled to Loch”, and instead spoke of a possible visit.
Mandy said that McKenzie had told the court she had picked all the mushrooms she could when she saw them, and there was no evidence death cap mushrooms had grown back.
He said McKenzie’s evidence was that she was not aware of whether it was early or late in the season but there was a possibility they would come up over the next days or weeks. He said those questions from the prosecution should have been directed to Dr Tom May, a mycologist and witness earlier in the trial.
Mandy told the jury that the images of mushrooms on a tray obtained from Patterson’s house did not show all the features of the mushrooms needed to positively identify them as death caps and recalled that May had said they were “highly consistent” with death cap mushrooms, but the prosecution had not asked May what other species of mushrooms they could possibly be.
Even if they were death cap mushrooms, Mandy said, that was no evidence that they had been picked deliberately and pointed to evidence by May about the difficulty in accurately identifying mushrooms.
Patterson’s barrister will continue his closing address in Morwell’s courtroom four on Thursday, after the judge warned jurors to expect a long direction from the bench next week.
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