Following the rejection of her bid for an acquittal or retrial, convicted murderer Erin Patterson faces a narrow window to take her case to Australia’s highest court, though legal experts suggest her prospects for success are exceedingly slim.
Patterson is currently incarcerated at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in Victoria. On Friday, the Victorian Court of Appeal dismissed her challenge against her murder and attempted murder convictions. In addition to rejecting her appeal, the court granted a prosecution appeal, increasing her sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Appellate judges characterized her crimes as extraordinarily cold and calculated.
The case stems from a July 2023 lunch at Patterson's home in Leongatha, regional Victoria, where she deliberately served death cap mushroom-laced beef wellingtons. The meal resulted in the deaths of her former in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, and Gail's sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66. A fourth guest, Ian Wilkinson, survived a severe illness.
With her state-level appeal dismissed, Patterson now has a 28-day window to lodge an application for special leave to appeal to the High Court of Australia. However, RMIT criminology and justice expert Brianna Chesser noted that approximately 90% of special leave applications fail at the initial hurdle. Because the High Court typically only hears matters that shape national law or involve severe procedural irregularities and human rights violations, legal analysts believe Patterson's case falls outside the court's usual scope, despite its high profile.
Despite the long odds, experts anticipate Patterson will likely exhaust her remaining legal avenues. The sentence places her as only the second woman in Australia to be jailed for life without parole, following Katherine Knight in 2001.
