Latest / The Morning Edition / Mushroom murder appeal: The jury issue that could decide Erin Patterson's fate

Transcript

Mushroom murder appeal: The jury issue that could decide Erin Patterson's fate · The Morning Edition

0:07
S1: In terms of criminal jury trials. What unfolded in the
0:10
S1: infamous Death Cap mushroom case was unique because when the
0:14
S1: jury was locked away from the outside world to consider
0:17
S1: a verdict, its members were staying in the same hotel,
0:20
S1: in the same country town as the police who investigated
0:23
S1: the case. The lawyers who prosecuted and the media reporting
0:27
S1: on it. This strange arrangement has opened the case to
0:31
S1: suggestions that the jury was tainted, and has become the
0:34
S1: central tenet of Aaron Patterson's appeal against her conviction. Patterson
0:40
S1: was sentenced to life imprisonment last year with a non-parole
0:43
S1: period of 33 years for serving a poisoned beef Wellington
0:47
S1: lunch to her in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, Gail's sister,
0:51
S1: Heather Wilkinson, and her Baptist pastor husband, Ian Wilkinson. I'm
0:57
S1: Samantha Selinger Morris and you're listening to The Morning Edition
1:00
S1: from The age and The Sydney Morning Herald today, crime
1:04
S1: and justice reporter Aaron Pearson and senior reporter Chris Vedelago
1:08
S1: on the curious case of the mushroom murder jury. Welcome,
1:20
S1: Chris and Aaron to the podcast.
1:22
S2: Good morning. Good morning.
1:23
S1: Chris. I'm going to start with you because rewinding a
1:25
S1: little bit, you broke this story a year ago that
1:28
S1: there were potential questions about jury contamination in the mushroom
1:32
S1: murder case. So can you just take us through what
1:34
S1: you found out back then and some of the hijinks,
1:37
S1: I guess, that you heard about.
1:39
S3: When I first started this, I actually was treating it
1:42
S3: as a joke. I thought it was really funny. I'd
1:44
S3: heard about this incident at the hotel where the the
1:46
S3: jury on a Friday night, on their fifth day of deliberations,
1:49
S3: had run into a bunch of journalists and prosecutors in
1:51
S3: the same hotel lobby. And there was this kind of
1:54
S3: almost Benny Hill aspect to it of pushing the jury
1:57
S3: into a room to get them away from everybody. I
1:59
S3: thought it was really amusing. And then I started asking
2:01
S3: more questions of it. And through the traps I got
2:04
S3: a lot of pushback from the prosecution and the police
2:07
S3: and the court end about the questions I was asking
2:10
S3: about this kind of weird circumstance where the jury is
2:12
S3: in a hotel with the police, the prosecutors and the media,
2:16
S3: and that's where that's where it came from.
2:19
S1: Okay. So I guess just walk us through very briefly.
2:22
S1: Why was this happening? Why were they all in in
2:25
S1: the same small space?
2:28
S4: I think it was a number of different reasons. And
2:30
S4: it's one of those things where you kind of go
2:33
S4: back and think, yeah, of course, that was always going
2:35
S4: to happen. We had, you know, hundreds of people traveling
2:40
S4: to the region to not only like watch the trial
2:43
S4: report on the trial, live in the community. And that's
2:45
S4: from police prosecution, defense members of the public, members of
2:48
S4: the press, the circus that we brought to town with us.
2:51
S4: But you're bringing one of the biggest trials that the
2:54
S4: country has ever seen to a tiny, tiny regional area.
2:58
S5: The world's eyes are about to turn to the Latrobe
3:01
S5: Valley town of Morwell as accused mushroom killer Erin Patterson's
3:05
S5: murder trial begins.
3:06
S6: Circus the Mushroom Circus has come to town.
3:08
S7: A tiny town known for power plants and rose gardens,
3:12
S7: suddenly the epicentre of a media circus.
3:16
S5: In one of the biggest cases, Victoria and perhaps Australia
3:20
S5: has seen, at least in recent times.
3:25
S4: There is a lack of accommodation. It was always going
3:29
S4: to be a lack of accommodation, but then all of
3:31
S4: a sudden the trial went much longer than anticipated. They
3:34
S4: were expecting 4 to 6 weeks potentially. All of a
3:37
S4: sudden we're at three months and it intersected with school
3:41
S4: holidays and also the 2025 National Ping Pong Championships, which
3:46
S4: brought a lot of people to town, and they had
3:49
S4: pre-booked out most of the accommodation, particularly in Traralgon, which
3:53
S4: is where a lot of people were staying. And so
3:56
S4: all of us that had been in the same accommodation
3:58
S4: for months essentially were kicked out and had bags in
4:02
S4: hand on, um, you know, the pavement looking for somewhere
4:06
S4: to stay, ringing around, begging hotels, motels and service departments
4:10
S4: to please give us some accommodation. The jury are deliberating,
4:14
S4: you know, we need to be boots on the ground. And, um. Yeah,
4:17
S4: the ping pong championship saw us all kicked out, and
4:20
S4: all of a sudden, a lot of us ended up
4:21
S4: in the same hotel.
4:22
S1: And, Aaron, you have covered this case pretty much from
4:25
S1: start to finish. So I guess just explain this a
4:27
S1: little bit for us, why everyone staying at the same
4:29
S1: place could be an issue with this particular trial.
4:33
S4: It's all about optics. I think that's really what it
4:36
S4: comes down to. You have a lot of legal terminology
4:40
S4: and a lot of case law that everybody's trying to
4:43
S4: look at to figure out if there is actually an
4:45
S4: issue here. But the defense essentially say that this was
4:48
S4: a fundamental irregularity, and that means that it shouldn't have happened. Um,
4:52
S4: it doesn't look bad. And it also just leaves open
4:55
S4: a risk that something could go wrong. So we do
4:57
S4: know there's no evidence that anything went wrong. There's no
5:00
S4: evidence and there's no accusations that that anybody interfered with
5:04
S4: the jury, that there was anything untoward going on. But
5:07
S4: it's more that there was a risk left open for that.
5:10
S4: We know that there was CCTV from the venue. There
5:13
S4: is no longer CCTV from the venue. So questions are
5:17
S4: then raised. Well, you know why and how did somebody
5:20
S4: potentially knock on someone's door in the middle of the
5:23
S4: night and try and twist their arm one way or another?
5:26
S4: It's really leaving open that risk. And, um, yeah, as
5:30
S4: I said, no evidence. Um, and no accusations, but yeah,
5:33
S4: optics and proper process.
5:35
S1: Okay. And so now we have learned that the hotel
5:38
S1: saga is one of the key reasons for Aaron Patterson's appeal.
5:41
S1: So Chris, have you found out whether any jurors were
5:44
S1: actually influenced or perhaps spoke to anyone that they shouldn't
5:47
S1: have during this, you know, situation in this small town hotel?
5:51
S3: Nobody knows and nobody's talking. People aren't allowed to speak
5:55
S3: to jurors, former jurors under the law. You're just not
5:57
S3: allowed to do it. It's not like in America where
5:59
S3: they appear on Oprah Winfrey and tell you why they
6:01
S3: let you know. O.J. Simpson go. Um, it just doesn't happen.
6:07
S3: So what we've got is this what I guess the
6:09
S3: defense called an evidentiary vacuum. You've got six days in
6:12
S3: a hotel with basically blanket CCTV coverage, people coming in,
6:16
S3: coming out, doing whatever it is they're doing. Right. But
6:18
S3: we don't have any of that CCTV footage, so we
6:20
S3: don't really know what happened. What we do know is
6:24
S3: there was a lot of people in the same physical
6:26
S3: space who shouldn't have been sharing the same physical space,
6:29
S3: and if the system had worked as well as it
6:31
S3: should have, they never would have occupied the same physical space.
6:34
S3: And when I was doing this story, the thing that
6:36
S3: I kept thinking was, well, put it on the other side, right?
6:39
S3: Let's just say it was the other way around. And
6:40
S3: the defense had moved into the hotel, and then the
6:43
S3: jury had voted to acquit. The DPP would be screaming
6:46
S3: bloody murder. That it doesn't look right. It's not right.
6:50
S3: It just sequestering juries is so unusual. Right? And sequestering
6:55
S3: them in a tiny town is virtually unheard of. But
6:59
S3: somewhere along the way, the process for doing this fell down.
7:02
S4: Yeah, many, many years ago, it was a really commonplace
7:05
S4: thing to happen that you would have a jury sometimes
7:08
S4: even during the trial, but largely during deliberations, all locked
7:12
S4: up in one particular hotel to avoid the risk of any,
7:15
S4: you know, transference between the outside world. And in more
7:19
S4: recent times, it just doesn't happen anymore for a variety
7:22
S4: of different reasons. I mean, the world evolves and we
7:25
S4: do put a lot of faith in our, you know,
7:27
S4: jurors and that system. But yeah, we just don't see
7:30
S4: it anymore. So when it was announced that that was
7:32
S4: going to happen, it was a surprise to all of
7:34
S4: us in the first place. And then we were all questioning, well,
7:37
S4: where are they going to put them? And how is
7:39
S4: this going to work? And how are the logistics of
7:40
S4: this work? It did raise a lot of questions at
7:43
S4: the time, but what Chris is has really sort of
7:46
S4: unearthed following all of this is what's particularly interesting, I think,
7:49
S4: now and is what's really opened up this major appeal
7:52
S4: ground for Aaron Patterson's defense team.
7:54
S1: And I want to get to the appeal ground in
7:56
S1: just a minute. But, Chris, can you just tell us,
7:58
S1: you know, you said that there's no CCTV from within
8:00
S1: this hotel, which could clear up whether or not perhaps,
8:03
S1: you know, jurors were unduly influenced by somebody. But wouldn't
8:06
S1: there have been cameras around that hotel that could possibly
8:09
S1: show what went down?
8:11
S3: Look, it's it's a fairly new hotel, and I've been
8:13
S3: down there. I stayed there myself when I was doing
8:15
S3: this story. And there are cameras all over the place,
8:18
S3: but we just don't know what happened to the footage.
8:20
S3: When I was there a few days after I published
8:22
S3: the first story, I asked the people that ran the hotel,
8:26
S3: is there CCTV footage? They said yes. I said, oh,
8:29
S3: you might want to hold on to that because someone's
8:31
S3: going to come down with a subpoena eventually, I suspect.
8:34
S3: And I said, you know, how long does it last?
8:36
S3: And they basically said, oh, weeks, months, they're welcome to it.
8:39
S3: And then two days later, someone from the courts calls
8:42
S3: down and says, you know, preserve the footage. Um, somebody
8:46
S3: might be coming for it. And they're told, well, it's
8:49
S3: not there. It's gone. It's gone right up to the
8:52
S3: day that the jury left the hotel. Nothing exists.
8:55
S1: Now, that sounds from, you know, from a layperson's perspective,
8:57
S1: that sounds possibly untoward. I'm not suggesting it is because
9:00
S1: I have no idea. But what do you mean it's
9:02
S1: just gone?
9:04
S3: I mean, CCTV drives overwrite themselves, right? There's this finite
9:07
S3: amount of memory inside a CCD drive, and sometimes they
9:10
S3: last 30 days. Sometimes they last 90 days, sometimes they
9:13
S3: last months. And it also depends on what kind of
9:15
S3: business you're running. Right. Some businesses have CCTV that lasts forever,
9:18
S3: like because you're a bank, right? You need to know
9:20
S3: whether or not the guy that came in the bank
9:22
S3: 90 days ago was casing you out for a commercial
9:25
S3: premises like this. Who knows what the what the finite
9:28
S3: size of the drive was. But the question was asked,
9:31
S3: where is the footage? Or can you preserve the footage?
9:33
S3: And it turns out that it's gone. So we just
9:36
S3: there's this kind of cone of silence around the hotel
9:38
S3: from that period because we just don't know what was
9:40
S3: going on.
9:42
S1: Okay. But Erin, this gets to the crux of what
9:44
S1: we need to talk about, which is do Erin Patterson's
9:47
S1: lawyers actually need to prove that undue influence occurred or
9:50
S1: that any of the jurors interacted with police or prosecutors
9:53
S1: for this appeal to be successful and for this conviction
9:56
S1: essentially to be overturned?
9:57
S4: Not at all. It's all about raising risk and concern
10:02
S4: and the possibility. It is really moving in this gray
10:06
S4: space where things could have gone wrong. And how do
10:10
S4: you protect the integrity of a jury verdict? If there
10:14
S4: are black holes that have popped up here, there and everywhere?
10:17
S4: You don't need to prove there was a compromise, just
10:21
S4: that there is a risk of the compromise. And to
10:24
S4: quote my favorite Aussie movie of all time, The Castle.
10:28
S4: Dennis said it's all about the vibe. What is the vibe?
10:32
S4: And the vibe is that potentially something has gone wrong. It.
10:36
S4: It stinks and you don't have to find the source
10:39
S4: of the stench, but if you know the stench is there,
10:43
S4: potentially that is a reason why we should go back
10:46
S4: to the drawing board with Aaron Patterson.
10:48
S1: And say, wait a minute. So we joke about the castle.
10:50
S1: We all love that quote, the vibe. It's mambo, it's
10:52
S1: the vibe. But, um, are you saying this appeal could
10:55
S1: be overturned on a vibe?
10:57
S4: I guess that's the million dollar question at this point,
11:00
S4: Aaron Patterson's legal team potentially say yes. Out of all
11:04
S4: the grounds of appeal that they have listed, that they
11:06
S4: want the three Court of Appeal justices to examine, it's
11:09
S4: number one. That's what they've put on the top of
11:11
S4: their list. And while you know they're not going to
11:14
S4: come out and say, this is our key number one ground,
11:17
S4: you can read into that a little bit. If you
11:19
S4: put something first, it's usually it's, you know, when you're
11:21
S4: a journalist as well, it's your most important point. And
11:24
S4: it's certainly what they spent the most amount of time
11:26
S4: during her appeal hearing, speaking about some of the other grounds,
11:31
S4: they went through quite quickly, but that seemed to be
11:33
S4: one that everybody spent a lot of time on. And
11:35
S4: it was a real point where even the Court of
11:39
S4: Appeal justices were asking questions, um, back and forth. You know,
11:43
S4: the appeal Appeal Court is very different than a trial
11:45
S4: court in the sense that it's more conversational. You've got
11:48
S4: the three justices on the bench that are interrupting and asking,
11:51
S4: hang on a sec. Well, what does this mean? And
11:52
S4: should we be concerned about this? But have you thought
11:54
S4: about that? And so, you know, we're frantically writing notes
11:58
S4: at that point, trying to understand these points of contention.
12:02
S4: But potentially the vibe can be the reason why somebody
12:06
S4: gets an appeal.
12:07
S8: Yeah. The the quote that keeps being.
12:09
S3: Used over and over again, I mean, I think the
12:11
S3: defense used it in their written in their written application
12:13
S3: for the appeal. I've had an Ex-judge say it to me.
12:16
S3: I've had ex lawyers or lawyers say it to me.
12:18
S3: Justice must not only be done, it must be seen
12:20
S3: to be done. Yeah. I mean, that gets recycled over
12:22
S3: and over again. That quote. And that's basically what this
12:26
S3: this the cornerstone of that first point is in their
12:29
S3: appeal that it doesn't look like it doesn't look right.
12:32
S3: It doesn't look right. And if it doesn't look right,
12:33
S3: is that substantial enough to restart the trial process because
12:38
S3: of the appearance?
12:41
S1: After the break.
12:43
S3: It hasn't worked the way it was supposed to. Maybe
12:45
S3: nothing's gone wrong. Maybe there's been no contamination, but it
12:50
S3: doesn't look right and it's going to need to be fixed.
13:03
S1: But let's turn to the prosecution, though. What do prosecutors
13:06
S1: say happened?
13:07
S4: Nothing to see here. Nothing to worry about. Uh, yes.
13:11
S4: This might sound like it was non-conventional, and it was
13:15
S4: really something that potentially shouldn't have happened. They've acknowledged that
13:19
S4: the trial judge had said at the time, it's not
13:22
S4: really the best thing that could have happened. But they
13:25
S4: say there's nothing to see here. There is no evidence
13:28
S4: of any interactions. There's no allegations of any undue interactions.
13:33
S4: So really that the bench should not spend much time
13:37
S4: looking at that ground at all. Nothing to see here.
13:39
S4: And Paterson shouldn't have her appeal granted based on the
13:42
S4: hotel saga.
13:43
S1: Well, that brings me to my next question. I'll direct
13:45
S1: this to you. Erin, aren't these incidental interactions perhaps par
13:49
S1: for the course in the country? You know, where people,
13:52
S1: you know, they can't help but bump into lawyers or
13:54
S1: judges at lunch break simply because, you know, there just
13:57
S1: aren't that many places to go.
13:59
S4: But it even happens in Melbourne. You know, we leave
14:02
S4: the Supreme Court in the in the lunch breaks or
14:05
S4: before and after a trial is running. And you do
14:08
S4: see jurors in the street. Uh, and you look down
14:11
S4: at your feet straight away and you make sure that
14:13
S4: you're not having any interactions with them. But I think
14:15
S4: that is then magnified when you're in a small town,
14:17
S4: and there's only so many other places that you can
14:19
S4: look when they're walking towards you in the street. You know,
14:22
S4: there was only really two cafes that we went to every, uh,
14:26
S4: every day. And there was one in particular that we saw.
14:29
S4: One juror in particular was there every day. He would,
14:32
S4: he would go in there and he would have his
14:34
S4: coffee or his breakfast before he would walk down the
14:36
S4: road into the courthouse. And, you know, people are creatures
14:39
S4: of habit. They are still going to want to do
14:42
S4: their normal morning routines. And that's really understandable potentially as
14:45
S4: well when you're in a pressure cooker environment. So we
14:48
S4: did see a lot of them out on the street,
14:49
S4: but I think there was also a lot done to
14:51
S4: try and segregate them. From the press pack that was
14:54
S4: outside the court. There was special exits and entrances that
14:58
S4: the jurors were brought in and out of. To keep
15:00
S4: them away from members of the public and the press
15:03
S4: as well. So it certainly isn't just them walking out
15:06
S4: the front door. And then, you know, they're confronted by
15:09
S4: mass media and people potentially walking up to them and
15:12
S4: asking questions.
15:13
S3: It's worth mentioning too, like we were down there. That
15:15
S3: whole trial was down there because Aaron Patterson wanted it
15:18
S3: to be down there. That's true. She believed that her
15:21
S3: best chance at justice was to be judged by a
15:24
S3: jury of her peers from her local community. Now Leongatha
15:28
S3: is too small to have a courthouse. That's Morwell. But
15:30
S3: she she brought everyone down there because she wanted to
15:33
S3: be in that community. And it's a small community.
15:36
S1: And Chris, I wanted to ask you a larger question,
15:39
S1: I guess, about what this discussion about jurors and the
15:41
S1: trust that we have or don't have in them sort
15:43
S1: of raises, because if we don't trust jurors, you know,
15:47
S1: then perhaps how can we trust the system that we've
15:49
S1: got at all? Because jurors are, after all, they're trusted
15:52
S1: when they go home, if they're not going to talk
15:53
S1: about the case to their families, they're not going to
15:55
S1: Google the accused or something about the case. So in
15:58
S1: this case, if the jurors do say that they didn't
16:01
S1: speak to anyone at this hotel and they weren't influenced
16:03
S1: by someone else, then shouldn't we believe them?
16:06
S3: That's see, it's not it's not really in their hands
16:08
S3: because no one can ask them what this is, is,
16:11
S3: is a breakdown in process, right. They, they, they are
16:14
S3: supposed to be wrapped around and protected by the system to,
16:17
S3: you know, move them to court, move them from court,
16:19
S3: give them fed, give them a place to sleep. Somewhere
16:22
S3: along the way, somebody hasn't done what they, they should
16:25
S3: do or they haven't said when they, when they knew
16:27
S3: something that shouldn't be happening is going on. I think
16:30
S3: this the fallout from this, regardless of whatever happens with
16:33
S3: Aaron Patterson's appeal, is it's going to change the way
16:36
S3: that juries are sequestered in the future, especially in a
16:40
S3: small town. Yeah. Um, like there's going to have to
16:42
S3: build a whole bunch of guardrails around this because it, it,
16:46
S3: it hasn't worked the way it was supposed to. Maybe
16:48
S3: nothing's gone wrong. Maybe there's been no contamination, but it
16:52
S3: doesn't look right and it's going to need to be fixed.
16:55
S1: But just one follow up on that. I mean, can't
16:56
S1: the lawyers or even the judges asked them what happened,
16:59
S1: or perhaps in a judicial commission. Like they couldn't look
17:03
S1: at this, never know what is just against the law.
17:07
S2: Yeah.
17:08
S4: There are so many rules and regulations as there should
17:11
S4: be around jurors, their conduct. Um, it is a criminal
17:14
S4: offense for us to name or identify them. We can't
17:17
S4: even describe really what they're wearing or what they look
17:20
S4: like or their ages or anything like that. Um, in
17:24
S4: order to protect them for a variety of different reasons.
17:27
S4: But that also then transcends in you can't ask them
17:29
S4: not only the members of the press, but the system,
17:32
S4: the judicial system itself, how it all works. They are
17:35
S4: really protected. They can't be identified. They can't be questioned.
17:38
S4: And we do get a false sense of how it
17:40
S4: works when we look at, you know, the US media. Yeah.
17:44
S4: As Chris mentioned earlier, when we see jurors in America
17:47
S4: come out after trials and be interviewed and say, oh
17:49
S4: my God, this is the point that we were stuck
17:51
S4: on and, and things like that. It is integral to
17:54
S4: our system here that those things don't take place. And we,
17:58
S4: we hear it a lot when people launch appeals, uh,
18:02
S4: that we, you know, they try and understand how a
18:05
S4: jury could have got to a particular decision. And we
18:08
S4: see a lot of defense teams launch appeals saying, you know,
18:10
S4: that was an unsafe jury verdict. There's absolutely no way
18:13
S4: they could have come to that decision through the evidence
18:16
S4: and submissions that they heard in a trial. But then
18:19
S4: we hear a lot of Court of Appeal justices reject
18:21
S4: that as a reason to grant somebody's appeal. And they
18:24
S4: really do focus on case law and looking at the
18:27
S4: fact that other judges that have gone before them have said, no,
18:30
S4: we have to respect our jury system. This is the
18:33
S4: way it works. We have to hold them in a
18:35
S4: high regard. We have to trust them. And, um, yeah,
18:38
S4: trust than we do.
18:39
S3: I mean, I've seen, I've seen juries scratched because a
18:43
S3: juror thought they saw a family member of the accused
18:46
S3: in their neighborhood at a cafe, and them raising that concern,
18:51
S3: I think I saw the defendants, whatever he is, uncle
18:54
S3: at my local cafe, it's like, all right, this the
18:57
S3: jury is contaminated. We don't know if you've conveyed your
19:00
S3: concerns to another jury member. We can't ask. Throw the
19:03
S3: whole thing out and start again like that. And people
19:05
S3: take it really seriously. Like there was a there was
19:07
S3: a reporter I worked with. They sat on a jury
19:09
S3: and I used to bug them all the time. Tell
19:10
S3: me what happened, tell me what happened. I'm like, no,
19:12
S3: I'm not telling you what happened against the law.
19:14
S1: I mean, was this raised at all during the trial?
19:17
S1: It seems extraordinary that a judge couldn't even perhaps ask
19:20
S1: them a question about this.
19:21
S3: This is where the timing gets really interesting, because the
19:24
S3: jury moves into the hotel on the 30th of June,
19:27
S3: the incident where they all kind of the jury and
19:30
S3: the media and the OP end up in the same
19:32
S3: hallway and is on the 4th of July. Five days later,
19:35
S3: the following morning, the people responsible for guarding the jury
19:39
S3: finally decide to tell the judge, hey, the jury's in
19:43
S3: in a hotel with the lead homicide informant in the case.
19:47
S3: There's media there. And oh, by the way, they ran
19:49
S3: into these people, you know, the night before. The judge
19:52
S3: then takes the decision not to tell the defense for
19:56
S3: another two days. So Saturday passes, the Sunday passes. It's
20:00
S3: Monday morning, the seventh day of deliberations. The judge has
20:04
S3: their associate send an email to the party saying, look,
20:07
S3: there's been some issues around the jury staying at the
20:10
S3: same place as other parties in the trial. They've been moved,
20:13
S3: but we needed to inform you. And then the prosecution
20:16
S3: responds and presents their side. The defence says nothing like
20:20
S3: doesn't respond. And what? Six hours after that first email,
20:23
S3: the jury comes back with a conviction.
20:26
S1: Okay. And so finally, Erin, in terms of the appeal,
20:30
S1: what happens now?
20:31
S4: We are all waiting with bated breath to see on
20:34
S4: the court list that there will be a judgment handed
20:37
S4: down the next day. Court of appeal and how it
20:40
S4: works is probably the number one question I get in
20:43
S4: my role as a court reporter. How does it work?
20:45
S4: How long does it take? When is this going to happen?
20:47
S4: It is the million dollar question. They certainly don't rush.
20:50
S4: They take their time. It's a very forensic process when they,
20:54
S4: you know, going through other cases and how it should work.
20:57
S4: And they're reading transcripts from the trial, and reading all
21:01
S4: sorts of different bits and pieces. It takes time, you know,
21:04
S4: sometimes it can take three months, four months, five months,
21:07
S4: six months even to get a decision. So in a
21:10
S4: case like this, which is so high profile, I would
21:13
S4: expect it to take months before we hear anything potentially
21:16
S4: before Christmas. We would know a little bit more. But
21:19
S4: I certainly don't think it's one that they're going to
21:21
S4: rush on. So we will wait, as I said, and
21:24
S4: inform everybody as soon as we know that a judgement
21:26
S4: is going to be handed down.
21:28
S1: Wow. And but there is a number of judgments. Isn't
21:31
S1: that right? That that they could decide like they could
21:33
S1: decide what a retrial or a reduced sentence or throw
21:36
S1: the case altogether. Is that right?
21:38
S2: Yeah, it's really.
21:39
S4: Confusing sometimes, but the Court of Appeal will often hear
21:43
S4: a person's appeal and then later come in and say, actually,
21:47
S4: you didn't have enough grounds for appeal. And so we
21:50
S4: throw out your appeal. Essentially, it's as if that, you know,
21:53
S4: two days never happened. Sometimes they can come back and say,
21:56
S4: all right, we grant your appeal. You can have a retrial.
22:00
S4: We grant your appeal. You can never actually have a
22:03
S4: fair trial again. So we, you know, really sort of
22:05
S4: throw the whole thing out. Or we could have them
22:08
S4: grant the prosecution's appeal. We have to remember that the
22:11
S4: prosecution are asking for a tougher sentence for Aaron Patterson.
22:14
S4: She got life, but with a non-parole of 33 years.
22:17
S4: And they say she should in fact, never, ever be
22:19
S4: able to walk out of prison alive. And we've got
22:23
S4: those two separate appeals running concurrently at the same time.
22:27
S4: So we are waiting to hear which way it could swing.
22:31
S1: Well, thank you so much, Chris and Aaron for your time.
22:34
S2: Thank you. Thank you.
22:41
S1: In other news today, manosphere content is driving teen boys
22:45
S1: sexual abuse of other children and is a growing threat
22:48
S1: to national security, says consent advocate Chanel Contos, as she
22:53
S1: urges the federal government to give Australians the option of
22:56
S1: algorithm free social media. The world has now lost any
23:00
S1: chance of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees, as agreed
23:04
S1: to in the Paris Treaty, with temperatures predicted to reach
23:07
S1: 2.6 degrees by the end of the century if governments
23:10
S1: continue with their current policies. And a landmark study could
23:15
S1: change how we halt the spread of buruli ulcer outbreaks
23:17
S1: in Australia. After backyard mozzie traps in Melbourne were found
23:21
S1: to curb the spread of the flesh eating disease. You
23:25
S1: can read more at the age.com.au or smh.com.au. Today's episode
23:33
S1: was produced by Kai Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills,
23:37
S1: and our podcasts are overseen by Lisa Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick.
23:41
S1: If you like our show, follow The Morning Edition and
23:44
S1: leave a review for us on Apple or Spotify. Thanks
23:47
S1: for listening.