{"id":860603,"date":"2026-08-19T08:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T08:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/860603\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T08:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T08:30:10","slug":"erin-patterson-catastrophic-hotel-blunder-caused-unfair-trial-mushroom-murderers-lawyers-tell-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/860603\/","title":{"rendered":"Erin Patterson: ‘Catastrophic’ hotel blunder caused unfair trial, mushroom murderer’s lawyers tell court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jury mishap in part due to ‘the nature of Morwell’published at 07:01 BST<\/p>\n

07:01 BST<\/p>\n

\"\"Simon Atkinson
Australia producer<\/p>\n

The jury ending up in a hotel with other members of the case certainly is unusual – and in the words of the defence, a “catastrophic” accident. <\/p>\n

But the public prosecutor has explained it away as \u201cone of those things that happened because of the nature of Morwell\u201d. <\/p>\n

Having spent weeks there during the trial I can see what he means. <\/p>\n

Each week the small town in Victoria, a couple of hours south west of Melbourne, was inundated with lawyers, police and especially media. <\/p>\n

Finding places to stay was hard, especially as the trial dragged on and stays became longer than anyone anticipated. <\/p>\n

And it was not helped by a big table tennis tournament taking place nearby – meaning most accommodation was chock-a-block, even in nearby locations.<\/p>\n

My small team had to move from hotel to motel, and occasionally to a completely different town. <\/p>\n

So finding somewhere for a jury of 12, plus their jury keepers, to stay on a moving timetable was very likely a logistical nightmare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jury mishap in part due to ‘the nature of Morwell’published at 07:01 BST 07:01 BST Simon AtkinsonAustralia producer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":860604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-860603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}