Australia mushroom trial live: defence set to conclude closing address in murder trial of Erin Patterson
Accused, 50, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder over a beef wellington lunch she served to in-laws
The jurors have entered the court room in Morwell.
Justice Christopher Beale tells the jury he will begin instructing them on Tuesday, before they begin their deliberations. He says his instructions, called the judge’s charge, will take two days.
Patterson’s defence lawyer, Colin Mandy SC, said his client was “not on trial for being a liar”. He told jurors the court was not one of “moral judgment”.
The prosecution’s case that Patterson wanted her estranged husband, Simon, to attend the lunch so she could kill him was “absurd”, Mandy said.
The defence said the jury should reject the evidence from the sole surviving lunch guest, Ian Wilkinson, that Patterson served her guests on four large grey plates while eating from an orangey-tan coloured plate. Mandy said Ian was “honestly mistaken”.
Mandy said the December 2022 Facebook group chat messages, where Patterson said her in-laws were a “lost cause”, were being used by the prosecution as a distraction from the evidence in the case. He said the messages, which related to a disagreement over child support with Simon, stood out because they were about the only disagreement between Patterson and her in-laws.
Mandy says online searches about death cap mushrooms – discovered on a computer police seized from Patterson’s house – showed his client’s “idle curiosity” and was not a person “carefully studying this information”.
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© Composite: Guardian Design/AAP