Erin Patterson’s defence barrister Colin Mandy, SC has resumed his closing address following a break for lunch.
This is, he tells the jury, his last chance to speak on the accused mushroom cook’s behalf.
While some of the arguments he plans to tell them might be “simple and obvious”, or perhaps something jurors might have already thought of, they are necessary, too.
Colin Mandy SC.Credit: Jason South
This was the time, said Mandy, for the jurors to be like judges – to use their heads, not their hearts. “It’s the law that the jury, when they are considering facts, they have to put aside their sympathies and prejudices and approach things rationally and intellectually.”
He tells the jury that the three who died after the beef Wellington lunch – Don and Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson – were good people. So is survivor Ian Wilkinson.
It is a desperately sad story, he says. But, he adds, this is a trial about facts.
Don Patterson, Gail Patterson, Heather Wilkinson and Ian Wilkinson.
In this case, three people died, one person very nearly did. This was a terrible tragedy for those people and their families.
There’s two reasons why it’s important to acknowledge that. The first is that as human beings, specially as members of this wider community, you would have felt empathy for those witnesses and for the families and for their loss.
A deep empathy because it’s desperately sad.
Mandy acknowledged that the jurors, as human beings, might have an instinctive reaction to say those responsible for the lunch guests’ deaths should be held to account.
“We know that the actions of Erin Patterson caused the deaths of those three people and their serious illness,” Mandy said. But he added that the jury needed to put aside that natural reaction in their decision-making.
“This case is not about who is responsible in some general way. This case is about a criminal offence with elements that the prosecution has to prove beyond reasonable doubt,” he continued.
Mandy said it could be confronting to put that reaction to one side, but as a judge, what’s in one’s heart has no relevance when considering the facts.
The goodness of the lunch guests is important, he tells the jury, because “why on Earth would anyone want to kill those people?”
Don and Gail Patterson had never been anything but kind to Erin Patterson. They were also her children’s only grandparents, he said.
Why would Erin Patterson want to kill them or cause them serious harm? “Because of a brief period of tension in December of 2022? Which had absolutely nothing to do with Ian and Heather?”
He finished his focus on this point by referring to a statement that prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC, got right in his opinion:
“And as Dr Rogers predicted correctly, I will be making a submission to you that there’s an absence of a motive.”
Motive, he added, was significant when considering intention.
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