Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Monday, July seventh, twenty twenty five. A thirty four
Speaker 1: year old New South Wales man is in custody in
Speaker 1: Victoria after allegedly torching a synagogue in Melbourne. Over the weekend,
Speaker 1: an Israeli restaurant in Melbourne was attacked by kefir clad protesters,
Speaker 1: prompting Jewish leaders and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin nettan Yahoo
Speaker 1: to demand Anthony Albanezi take national action on anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: That's as pro Palestinians say Australia has failed to condemn
Speaker 1: Israel strongly enough over the war in Gaza. Home Affairs
Speaker 1: Minister Tony Burke says the incidents were an attack on Australia.
Speaker 1: Hush COVID lockdowns were bad for kids. According to data
Speaker 1: from the benchmarking exam Naplan, New South Wales, Victoria and
Speaker 1: the Act have all fallen behind Western Australia, which had
Speaker 1: the lightest lockdowns, and the results are most pronounced for
Speaker 1: disadvantaged kids. Researchers say that could be because wealthy parents
Speaker 1: had more time to supervise homeschooling. That's an exclusive live
Speaker 1: right now at the Australian dot com dot au. It's
Speaker 1: the biggest trial of the year and now the most suspenseful,
Speaker 1: as the jury in Aaron Patterson's triple murder case enters
Speaker 1: its seventh day of deliberations. What's going on? Legal affairs
Speaker 1: correspondent Ellie Dudley joins us from Morewell in Victoria's Latrobe Valley.
Speaker 1: There's a ritual every morning in the Victorian time town
Speaker 1: of Morewell. As the morning fog clears and the temperature
Speaker 1: creeps up past zero and into low single figures, a
Speaker 1: crowd of people trapes us towards the courthouse. Lawyers, journalists, magistrates, registrars,
Speaker 1: cops and regular people accused of crimes.
Speaker 2: Everyone's very layered up, thermal layers, puffer jackets, beanies, scarves.
Speaker 1: Ellie Dudley's our legal affairs correspondent and along with one
Speaker 1: of our senior reporters, John Ferguson, she's been part of
Speaker 1: that crowd trapesing into the court every morning for the
Speaker 1: past ten weeks. It's the business of low level justice.
Speaker 1: People who've been charged with drink driving or offensive behavior
Speaker 1: fighting in the Street small time burglary this morning, Monday,
Speaker 1: seven July. The thirty or so accused on the list
Speaker 1: are overwhelmingly men, but the most recognizable accused before the
Speaker 1: Latrobe Valley Law Courts is a woman, Aaron Patterson, a
Speaker 1: fifty year old mum of two from the nearby town
Speaker 1: of lean Gath who's accused of a crime that's being
Speaker 1: followed around the world, allegedly poisoning her estranged husband's four
Speaker 1: elderly relatives with death cap mushrooms she allegedly foraged from
Speaker 1: the bases of oak trees around this very.
Speaker 2: Woodland outside the courthouse in Morewell, the Latrobe Valley Law Courts,
Speaker 2: there's a really large courtyard which I imagine usually is empty,
Speaker 2: but at the moment it's packed with journalists, television crews,
Speaker 2: people setting up camp waiting for this verdict to be
Speaker 2: handed down.
Speaker 1: Patterson has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder
Speaker 1: and one of attempted murder. The trial was initially set
Speaker 1: down for about six weeks, but these things never quite
Speaker 1: go to plan, and after two months of evidence and
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks of legal discussion, the judge and
Speaker 1: lawyers for both sides summing up, the jury was sent
Speaker 1: out to deliberate, Ellie, everyone I know is full of
Speaker 1: curiosity about the jury's deliberations. So today we're going to
Speaker 1: ask and answer some of the big questions. First, what
Speaker 1: happens when the jury reaches a verdict.
Speaker 2: So, even when the jury reaches a verdict, they've been
Speaker 2: told that there's a buzzer in the room that they're
Speaker 2: currently deliberating in, they press that buzzer and that sends
Speaker 2: a note to the staff of the judge to let
Speaker 2: the judge know that a verdict has been reached. It's
Speaker 2: the same process if the jury has a question that
Speaker 2: they want to ask of the judge based on any
Speaker 2: of the evidence that's been put before them throughout this trial.
Speaker 1: Okay, and if it's guilty, what will be the next step?
Speaker 2: The next step will be sentencing. We know that when
Speaker 2: it comes to sentencing hearings they're often quite drawn out.
Speaker 2: The judge, I imagine, will want to hear victim impact
Speaker 2: statements and then Judge Christopher Biale will come to a
Speaker 2: decision on how she should be sentenced and how long
Speaker 2: she'll spend in prison.
Speaker 1: What about if it's not guilty, she walks free.
Speaker 2: So I imagine that it would be quite a frenzy
Speaker 2: if she walks straight out the front of the courthouse
Speaker 2: on the day. If she is found not guilty, she'll
Speaker 2: be able to go ho We've seen photos already of
Speaker 2: her house in Leengatha that's been wrapped up in a
Speaker 2: thick black tarpauliny sort of material. It seems like it's
Speaker 2: been wrapped, possibly multiple times to prevent anyone taking any photos.
Speaker 2: Perhaps if that was the intention of her, if she
Speaker 2: were to be found not guilty, and if she were
Speaker 2: to return home.
Speaker 1: So what do we know about what's been happening in
Speaker 1: that jury room?
Speaker 2: Oh, Claire, it's the million dollar question. As a journalist
Speaker 2: who's been down there for a long time, everyone's asking,
Speaker 2: you know, when are they going to come back? What
Speaker 2: do you think they're thinking? But obviously we don't know.
Speaker 2: So they're being sequested, they have no contact with the
Speaker 2: outside world. They're in a complete total media blackout. They
Speaker 2: get transported from their accommodation where they're all staying together
Speaker 2: at a hotel, to court from Mondays to Saturdays, where
Speaker 2: they sit and deliberate from ten thirty to four fifteen,
Speaker 2: with an hour and fifteen minute lunch break in the
Speaker 2: middle of the day where they can't return a verdict,
Speaker 2: and then they get transported back at night. And so
Speaker 2: they're not deliberating on Sundays, but they are deliberating Monday
Speaker 2: to Saturdays, meaning that we could get a verdict at
Speaker 2: any time on Monday through Saturday.
Speaker 1: The judge, Christopher Biale sent the jury out on Monday.
Speaker 1: Here's a voice actor reading what he told the jury.
Speaker 3: Ben you should only discuss the case with each other,
Speaker 3: and you should only do that when you are all
Speaker 3: together in the privacy of the jury room here in court.
Speaker 3: Don't discuss when you're at the hotel. Don't get into
Speaker 3: little groups and have discussions about the case.
Speaker 1: On Monday morning, the jury begins its seventh day of deliberations.
Speaker 2: Is that unusual, No, it's not unusual, particularly in a
Speaker 2: case like this when they have seen so much evidence.
Speaker 2: This was a trial that was supposed to last for
Speaker 2: four to six weeks and I think we got almost
Speaker 2: up to ten weeks of evidence for them to look at.
Speaker 2: So no, it's not unusual. And we can also see
Speaker 2: that in past cases that had been decided. So Kelly Lane,
Speaker 2: who was accused of murdering her baby. The jury took
Speaker 2: six days to convict her. George Pell who was accused
Speaker 2: of child sex abuse, the jury deliberated for more than
Speaker 2: four days before he was convicted, a conviction that, as
Speaker 2: we know, was later overturned. For Northern Territory police officer
Speaker 2: Zachary Rolfe, it took just seven hours for him to
Speaker 2: be acquitted of murdering Kumen Jay Walker.
Speaker 1: In another high profile matter, where Bruce Lehman was accused
Speaker 1: of sexually assaulting Brittany Higgins, he pleaded not guilty. The
Speaker 1: jury had been deliberating for five days when one of
Speaker 1: them was caught with unauthorized materials in the jury room.
Speaker 1: The judge told the court in that matter, an official
Speaker 1: was in the room after a day's deliberations and knocked
Speaker 1: a folder to the floor, and while picking up the
Speaker 1: materials that fell down, found a research report which hadn't
Speaker 1: been part of the evidence, something the juries weren't allowed
Speaker 1: to have in there. The jury was discharged and prosecutors
Speaker 1: declined to have another trial. So even now, I guess, ellie,
Speaker 1: we can assume the juries under close scrutiny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there are jury keepers in this case. So
Speaker 2: Their job is just as it sounds. It's to keep
Speaker 2: the jury and to ensure that they help them facilitate
Speaker 2: reaching a decision without any external influences on that decision
Speaker 2: except for the evidence that is in front of them.
Speaker 2: The judge also did give a warning to the jury
Speaker 2: not to reveal how their numbers were falling.
Speaker 1: He's a voice actor reading the judge's words.
Speaker 3: There's one thing that must not appear in any question
Speaker 3: that you ask, and that's the numbers. I don't want
Speaker 3: to know about it. I don't want to hear about it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes a jury returns to court and tells the judge
Speaker 1: they just can't get to a unanimous verdict. Now in Victoria,
Speaker 1: on some offenses, a judge can accept a majority verdict,
Speaker 1: but not murder. It has to be unanimous. If a
Speaker 1: jury is deadlocked, the judge can come in with something
Speaker 1: called a black direction that's named after a High Court
Speaker 1: disease vision that said judges can tell a deadlock jury
Speaker 1: to go back into the jury room and keep going.
Speaker 1: The High Court said a jura who holds out and
Speaker 1: goes with his or her conscience is not breaching his
Speaker 1: or her oath. That's a legitimate way of serving justice.
Speaker 1: So if Justice Beale gives a black direction, he'll be
Speaker 1: careful not to put pressure on any dura to crumble
Speaker 1: and go with the majority. After the break the big
Speaker 1: question of motive the jury must decide. On the surface,
Speaker 1: this seems like a relatively straightforward matter. The Kelly Laine case,
Speaker 1: which we discussed earlier, that was a six month trial.
Speaker 1: This one was relatively short and the charges are all
Speaker 1: the same because they all relate to the same meal
Speaker 1: beef Wellington served in July twenty twenty three at a
Speaker 1: family lunch in which Erin Patterson had also invited her husband, Simon,
Speaker 1: he declined to attend. There are three counts of murder
Speaker 1: relating to Simon's parents Don and Gail, and his auntie
Speaker 1: Heather Wilkinson, she was Gail's sister.
Speaker 3: To prove that the accused is guilty of murder, the
Speaker 3: prosecution must prove the following four elements beyond reasonable doubt.
Speaker 3: One the accused caused the death of the deceased by
Speaker 3: serving the deceased a poisoned meal.
Speaker 1: The judge that it wasn't disputed that Patterson served beef
Speaker 1: Wellington's that she had made that were poisoned with deathcat mushrooms,
Speaker 1: or that this caused their deaths.
Speaker 3: Two, the accused alleged conduct was conscious, voluntary, and deliberate.
Speaker 3: Three at the time of the alleged conduct, the accused
Speaker 3: intended to kill or cause really serious injury to the deceased.
Speaker 3: Four the accused killed the deceased without lawful justification or excuse.
Speaker 1: Deliberate is the most important word there, because that's what's
Speaker 1: in dispute here. The defense says Patterson accidentally included death
Speaker 1: cap mushrooms in the meal eaten by everyone, and that
Speaker 1: she vomited after the meal and didn't become seriously unwell.
Speaker 1: The Crown says Patterson made a death cap free version
Speaker 1: of the meal for herself and poisoned the four plates
Speaker 1: intended for her guests. The big missing element is a motive.
Speaker 1: The Crown has not presented the jury with an alleged motive,
Speaker 1: but says Aaron Patterson was hostile to Simon and his
Speaker 1: parents after a dispute about the separation. The defense says,
Speaker 1: in fact, Aaron Patterson had a motive not to murder.
Speaker 1: The Patterson's and Wilkinsons were part of her very small
Speaker 1: support network in this country town. The judge summed it
Speaker 1: up like this.
Speaker 3: For some murders there may be evidence of motive, but
Speaker 3: some murders occur for no apparent reason. The motives of
Speaker 3: such murders might only ever be known to the accused.
Speaker 2: The jury have heard a lot of evidence and a
Speaker 2: lot of summing up of that evidence from the defense,
Speaker 2: from the prosecution, and then the judges charge alone that
Speaker 2: was more than three hundred pages. So they understand that
Speaker 2: the information that they're processing and the evidence that they're
Speaker 2: assessing isn't to be taken lightly. And I think that
Speaker 2: it's clear from the time that they're taking that they
Speaker 2: want to make sure that the verdict they reach is
Speaker 2: the right one.
Speaker 1: Ellie Dudley is The Australian's Legal affairs correspondent and she's
Speaker 1: ready and waiting at the Latrobe Valley Law Courts along
Speaker 1: with our team. The Australian subscribers will get an alert
Speaker 1: on their phones as soon as the jury reaches a verdict,
Speaker 1: and you can be the first to read all the
Speaker 1: news and our analysis by joining us at the Australian
Speaker 1: dot com AU