Mushroom killer Erin Patterson’s lawyers say ‘catastrophic’ hotel mix-up undermined trial

Lawyers for Erin Patterson, the Australian mushroom killer appealing her conviction, argued on Wednesday that putting her jurors up in the same hotel as police and prosecution officials was a “catastrophic” failure of the justice system. Patterson, 51, serving a life sentence for murdering three members of her estranged husband’s family by feeding them food laced with death-cap mushrooms, appeared by video link as her barristers Richard Edney and Veronika Drago presented seven grounds of appeal to the Victorian Court of Appeal. The most significant challenge centred on the accommodation arrangement for the jurors in Morwell, where they were briefly housed in the same hotel as some people connected to the prosecution.Mr Edney described the arrangement as “catastrophic”, arguing that it coul