An overcrowded hotel during a table tennis tournament may end up giving Australia’s “mushroom murderer” a second shot in court. Lawyers for Erin Patterson, convicted of killing three people and severely injuring a fourth with a 2023 mushroom lunch, argue her trial was compromised when sequestered jurors wound up staying in the same Morwell hotel as prosecutors, the lead detective, and journalists due to a regional accommodation crunch because of the tournament, reports the BBC.
The jury had its own floor and supervised meals, and officials insist there was no interaction. But Patterson’s barrister calls the overlap a “catastrophic” failure that could have exerted subtle influence, even without direct contact, and says there’s virtually no formal record of what happened during “the most critical week” of the trial. Prosecutors counter that the jury was constantly monitored and that past retrials involved proven contact, not just proximity. The appeals court is weighing that argument alongside six other grounds of appeal, with decisions to be handed down later. CNN notes the gamble by Patterson, who is serving three life sentences: At the same appeal hearing, prosecutors argued that the court should make her penalty tougher by removing the possibility of parole.