Oh, it's always a bit of a heightened emotional experience to be in the room after a very long trial and a few days wait as the jury deliberates, and that was certainly true of the room in more Well.
For the past ten weeks, Sarah Kreststein has been driving to Warwell in regional Victoria to sit in the courtroom as the triple murder trial of Aaron Patterson unfolded. Sarah's an award winning writer and a lawyer with a PhD insentency. She's spent hundreds of hours in courtrooms and so the very specific feeling of waiting for a verdict is something that she knows well. But despite all of that, she says, waiting for the Jewelry to head down their verdict yesterday was nerve wrecking.
My hands always shake, my heart races because you just don't know how it's going to go. But you know that whatever it is, it's going to both be, you know, not enough for the people on one side and too much for people on the other side. And it's just the laws kind of attempt to bring certainty and conclusion to emotional experience that really can't be tied up. That neatly for the people who are directly involved.
Aaron Patterson has been found guilty of murdering her ex husband's parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and his auntie Heather Wilkinson. She's also been found guilty of a teptic to murder Heather's husband Ian. I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM today doctor Sarah Christustine or the verdict, the sentence to come and the story that will forever shape the town of Morelwell, it's Tuesday, July eighth, So Sarah, you have just left the courtroom where the verdict was
headed down in Aaron Patterson's trial. What was it like in the room as that happened.
There was a long line of people waiting to get in in terms of the journals and the interested members of the public. People had been kind of perched outside of courtroom for the last seven days, well six days. The jury didn't sit on Sunday waiting for the email to go out that the jury had reached a verdict.
So when that happened, everyone that could fit into the room and take a seat did, and then the tips kind of made a general announcement to everybody that regardless of the nature of the decision, that everyone was to keep respectful of the court and stay silent, and so that kind of had a solemn effect because there's a slight buzz of people with a lot of excess emotion
whenever this happens. And then the jury came in and they were asked for their verdict, and yeah, we heard that she was guilty of all the charges against her.
For the attempted murder child for pastor In Wilkinson. Aaron Patterson is guilty for the charge of murder for Heather Wilkinson. Aaron Patterson is guilty for the alleged murder of Goal Patterson guilty. And finally, Brett, we're just waiting for that last charge to come through for the alleged murder of Donald Patterson. Aaron Patterson is guilty of murder.
What was Aaron Patterson's reaction as that verdict was read out.
I was sitting directly in front of her, so I did look over a couple of times, and her face was impassive. She just kind of said very still. She was between two large male custody officers who were kind of bookending her. She looked very serious, like she was concentrating, but the word that occurred to me was kind of unperturbed and obviously working quite hard to maintain a side of you know, kind of detachment. But there wasn't anything that it was possible to read in her expression.
And what about members of the Patterson family, So Erin's ex husband's family, they've been attending court for much of this trial, so were they there for the verdict?
So yeah, over the ten weeks the family has been quite steadfastly present and that's what made it quite notable that they weren't there for the verdict. They have a spokesperson who has been dealing with the media, you know, over the last few months, and she was in the room. But Ian R. Wilkinson, who had attended after giving his evidence, and you know, members of the Patterson family who had been there all this time, were noticeably absent.
And so directly after that verdict, the judge thanked the Jewry for the way that they have handled themselves throughout this trial. So tell me about what has been required of them.
Well, it's comprised of members from the surrounding community. We're in more w Well in regional Victoria, and so you know, These are people that were selected for the fact that they come from the community in which the offending occurred, and for their impartiality in relation to the facts of the case. And they were quite attentive over ten weeks. It's really technical evidence. You know, you hear it's a
triple murder trial and also an attempted murder trial. And you know, if you're not familiar with the nuts and bolts of how cases run forensically, that sounds like it would be quite an exciting, emotionally charged thing to be listening to. But the reality is a lot of the evidence is quite technical in nature. You know, there's a lot of stuff about how cell phone towers do and don't work, how internet search functions do and don't work,
for hours and hours and days and days. So to have a jury that's quite attentive through all of that is noteworthy. And despite COVID or you know, colds or you know whatever, over ten weeks they were there. So they have been sequestered in their deliberations, which is quite unusual. It means they're not allowed to go home. They've been in a hotel all of this time. They can't read the news, they don't have free access to their phones.
They have supervised calls to the people they need to ring so that they don't hear or say anything connected with the case. It's a big ask of people to take ten weeks out of their life to do this.
It's a public service.
And Justice Biel recognized that and also kind of the toll it's taken away from their daily life and all their other responsibilities by giving them a fifteen year dispensation from being called for jury service again. Now, if there's anyone there that really loves the experience, they can go and sit on another jury should they be called. But it kind of says you've done your duty and now you don't have to do this for another decade and a half.
So we know the verdict, but what we don't know is how the jury reached that verdict.
Yeah, that's right, and so it's quite frustrating for legal scholars. A lot of our jury research about how the process does and doesn't work. Any feedback about how it could be improved comes from, i think largely from America. In Australia, we're not allowed to know and these people can never talk about what happened behind closed doors, how they reached the decision, how many were for or against, all of that remains unknown to protect the integrity of the process.
And so those people who are on the jeury, presumably they now go back to their homes, go back to their lives. But this case, it will continue to define more well define the area for a long time. And in a small place like this, I think we can assume that there will be talk quite bit about the jewelry, about the case and about how people's minds were made up.
Yeah, it's tricky, particularly in smaller communities to maintain anonivity, but there's a lot of safeguards around the process that kind of prevent them from speaking openly about it. So one hopes they would be observed. But I think it, you know, it does kind of now become part of the lore of the region, which is I guess inevitable when a whole town has been taken over by journals and lawyers for ten weeks and people coming in from kind of further afield to watch. It's not the end.
I mean, today feels like a conclusion of sorts, but everyone will be back in a few weeks to diorize what needs to happen. For sentencing to occur, and then of course she has the ability to appeal either the verdict or the sentence, or both, depending on how her lawyers, you know, come down on that.
After the break, When will Aaron Patterson be sentenced?
Sarah?
This trial it went on for much longer than most people would have anticipated, and right up until the very end, it wasn't really clear what witnesses the defense were going to bring forward, if any, and it certainly wasn't clear whether Aaron Pattison would give evidence. So when she did, how did that change the trial?
Well, yeah, there's a lot of speculation. The defense, as you say, is not required to lay out their strategy or their plan before it's time. They're not obligated to put their own case. They don't have to call any witnesses at all, they don't have to do anything. They're under no obligation to prove innocence. The Crown is required to prove her guilty beyond reasonable doubt, and it's not a positive obligation for the defense to do anything at all.
But obviously, to Colin Mandy, her counsel, it made more sense to call Aaron to speak in her own defense than to not, and she was on the stand for a long time. It was tricky and confusing, which is perhaps its own wisdom, because on the one hand, she's both very articulately and she was calm for a lot of her evidence, and on the other hand, it was inevitable that we just heard again and again and again how many lies she had told about how many things.
And there was a quite subtle and at times not so subtle reactivity to nanat Rogers, who was the Crown prosecutor, either aaron not understanding things or purporting not to understand things, or having issues with the way certain questions were phrased. It was hard to listen to that evidence being given by erin learning just how many lies she had told and come away thinking that her side of the story made sense. And then there were just gaps in the
logic which also didn't make sense. But again, how a jury is going to understand someone and how they're going to understand that person's reliability or their veracity or credibility is a tricky thing to try to mind read. But they're really looking at someone's character in a lot of ways. And yeah, that obviously didn't go in her favor.
And throughout the trial, Aaron Patterson has been held in more well at the courthouse. What will happen to her now?
So, yeah, she will be taken back in a prison van to I believe the women's prison in Melbourne. She will wait there until the sentencing hearings begin. Sentencing won't happen immediately. Both sides need time to get a lot of different reports, like psychological reports and other forms of information. And once that's all collected and the sentencing hearing will be schedules and then both parties have the chance to
make submissions. They have different rules of evidence that apply to sentencing hearings, so things don't have to be proven beyond reasonable doubt. Obviously, they want to make sure that everything is as solid as possible. So they'll go off and do that over the next weeks or months, and she will be sentenced, I'm shore before the end of the year.
And so when it comes to the sentencing, what kind of range should we be expecting because a triple murder as well as attempted murder, that kind of verdict is pretty rare.
Yeah, so you're looking at life as the maximum. But again, a whole number of considerations go into that. They'll be looking at things like levels of remorse or assistance to the authority, the fact that the victims here were vulnerable in that they were elderly, and also that trust was breached. They'll be looking at whether she had a prior history of criminality, So they'll be weighing up all of the factors and aggravation, and then in mitigation, they'll be looking
at examples of similar instances of offending. And I don't think they have anything of this nature, which is part of what makes a case so compelling is it's uniqueness in a lot of ways. But they'll be looking at other examples of murder to try to find out what the range is for a case like this.
Sarah, thank you so much for your time.
Now look, thank you for having me.
Also in the news today, the Northern Territory Coroner Elizabeth Armitage has delivered her findings in a long running inquest into the fatal shooting of nineteen year old Kumnji Walker during an arrest in Yundamu in twenty nineteen. Judge Armitage found former Constable Zachary Rolf, who fired the fatal shots, was racist and that she could not exclude the possibility that those attitudes were a contributing cause of Kumanjai's death.
Her report contains thirty two recommendations, including that anti police engaged directly with the Yundubu leadership groups to develop mutual respect agreements, including when it would be appropriate for police not to carry firearms in the community. I'll have a
full interview on that story tomorrow. On seventeen and nine, newspapers have reported that New South Wales police will drop some of the charges laid against former Green's candidate had A Thomas, after a review found officers incorrectly sought to use extraordinary emergency powers introduced to quell major riots. Thomas, who suffered a serious eye injury after police broke up an anti Israel protest, will face a more standard charge of failing to comply with a move on direction, along
with the existing charge of hindering police. I'm Ruby Jones, See you tomorrow.