Yeah I felt the same way. We obviously only get a sanitised view of proceedings, but it seemed like a lot of circunstancial evidences and a lot of lying on her behalf, but I’m not sure the prosecution case scaled reasonable doubt for me. Of course, what the jury actually saw in court will be different to what we have had reported by the media.
Comment on Erin Patterson found guilty of three counts of murder
dockedatthewrongworf@aussie.zone 6 days agoSame, there seemed to be a constellation of evidence but nothing that definitively showed she was going to murder her guests. It will be interesting as I read somewhere that she can still appeal this decision, I assume to the high court if they’ll accept it.
truxnell@aussie.zone 6 days ago
naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
My wife followed it closely and is a bit of a lawy person from a family of lawyers.
From what she relayed it seems difficult to explain why she took all the actions she did, except if she did a murder, but given that murder has the bar of intent as well I’m not really sure the prosecution established that she did murder.
But like she obviously collected, preserved, and then fed people poisonous mushrooms just like did she intend to kill people beyond reasonable doubt? Idk
Zagorath@aussie.zone 6 days ago
She can appeal, it’s important to remember that appeals can only be on the basis of a mistake of law. So for example, if the judge of the case permitted the prosecution to present evidence that he shouldn’t have allowed, or if it’s determined that his jury instructions were heavily biased, that might get up on appeal.
An appeal can usually* not decide that the jury was just wrong in terms of which evidence they decided was more persuasive than others. Based on the information that’s public so far, there’s almost zero chance of a successful appeal. Just because you or I, or even a High Court judge would have (based on media reporting of the evidence) decided it didn’t meet the burden of “beyond reasonable doubt”, isn’t sufficient for an overturning of the jury’s decision.
The media hasn’t been allowed to report on decisions made by the judge while the jury wasn’t in the room (which may have included discussions about whether particular evidence is admissible) while the trial was still ongoing to prevent potentially tainting the jury. Now that it’s over we might begin to learn that sort of thing. That’s where appealable factors might be hiding.
* Pell seems to put doubt into this, and frankly created an enormous amount of distrust in the legal system’s ability to hold power to account. There’s some very shaky legal argumentation behind it (basically: the defence presented evidence that, if accepted, would necessarily result in a finding of not guilty, and the prosecution did not specifically do anything to try to refute that evidence)