In terms of criminal jury trials, what unfolded in the infamous death cap mushroom case was unique.
Because when the jury was locked away from the outside world to consider a verdict, they were staying in the same hotel, in the same country town, as the police who investigated the case, the lawyers who prosecuted, and the media reporting on it.

This strange arrangement has opened the case to suggestions that the jury was tainted – a central tenet of Erin Patterson’s appeal against her conviction.

Patterson was sentenced to life imprisonment last year, with a non-parole period of 33 years, for serving a poisoned beef Wellington lunch to her in-laws Don and Gail Patterson, Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson and her Baptist pastor husband Ian Wilkinson.

Today, crime and justice reporter Erin Pearson and senior reporter Chris Vedelago on the curious case of the mushroom murder jury.

Background reading:

• Erin Patterson, the jury hotel and the curious case of the missing CCTV

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