Erin Patterson suppressed evidence appeal, Digi Mart USA News (Victoria, Australia): Victoria’s highest court has dismissed a bid by media outlets to lift a suppression order over secret evidence in the Erin Patterson case. The judges said that, if published, the material would leave an “indelible impression” on the minds of jurors if Patterson is granted a retrial on appeal.
Patterson is serving a life sentence without parole after she was convicted of murdering relatives Don Patterson, Gail Patterson and Heather Wilkinson, and attempting to murder Ian Wilkinson with a beef Wellington laced with death cap mushrooms. Last month, three judges of Victoria’s Court of Appeal threw out her appeal against her convictions and changed her jail term to a life sentence without parole.
The judges refused to lift the suppression order over a piece of evidence in case Patterson succeeds in a last-ditch appeal to the High Court and is granted a retrial. In a partially redacted judgment, the Court of Appeal said there was a danger Patterson would face “unfair prejudice” if potential jurors knew about the evidence.
Justices Stephen McLeish, Lesley Taylor and Peter Kidd wrote that the evidence “would be likely to attract very significant publicity with the potential to cause a real and substantial risk of prejudice to any future trial”.
For legal reasons, the ABC is unable to report details of what the evidence is. The judges said the case was “exceptional” and that their ruling did not mean “contentious” pieces of inadmissible evidence would be automatically suppressed in other cases.
The evidence was set to be included during Patterson’s 2025 trial but was ruled inadmissible midway through by Justice Christopher Beale, meaning the jury never heard it. Justice Beale suppressed the evidence after Patterson was found guilty, pending the appeal.
He had found that the evidence would “receive massive publicity” if published.
The appeal judges kept the suppression order in place but said it would lift if Patterson fails to apply for special leave to appeal to the High Court by November 27. Media barrister Marcus Hoyne had argued that any retrial would face extensive delay and that a judge could properly instruct a jury about the evidence. The judges ruled that publicity posed a risk to the proper administration of justice, saying it would be “highly undesirable, to say the least, for jurors to be aware of the evidence”.
All seven grounds of the appeal were dismissed last month, with the judges calling her crimes “extraordinarily cold and calculated”. In 2025, other suppression orders were lifted over material excluded from the trial, including unproven claims that Patterson tried to murder her estranged husband Simon, which she denied and which the prosecution dropped.
