Brendan Kissane, the director of public prosecutions, rejected the submission that there was a “fundamental irregularity” in Patterson’s trial as the jury briefly stayed in the same hotel as some prosecutors and police, which the defence argued “fatally undermined the integrity of the verdicts”.
Kissane said the evidence showed there was “no social contact between any juror and any other person”.
He said he believed trial judge Christopher Beale would have stopped the jury staying at the same hotel as some prosecutors and police in the Latrobe Valley had he known about it earlier. But he argued it was unintentional due to limited accommodation options and did not cause any fundamental irregularity as there was no evidence any prosecution figures spoke to jurors.
The prosecution also argued the iNaturalist material was part of a collection of evidence that taken together demonstrated that the applicant had opportunity to deliberately source death cap mushrooms at a time close to the lunch, and on the prosecution case, did so.
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