00:00The Court has concluded that it was not reasonably open to fix a non-parole
00:03period of 33 years because it did not reflect the calculated criminality of
00:08the case on the facts identified by the sentencing judge.
00:13On those facts the applicant's intent to murder all four victims was sustained
00:18for nearly three weeks, from when she invited them to lunch through to
00:23preparing and serving the poisonous meal and then throughout the protracted
00:27suffering and ultimate deaths that resulted.
00:31The applicant's conduct was characterised by an elaborate series of deceptions
00:36including the false cancer claims deployed to explain the absence of the
00:40children, the false denials of having foraged for mushrooms, the repeated
00:45false assertions as to the source of the mushrooms and the destruction of
00:49evidence.
00:50The offending was carefully planned and deliberate.
00:52It represented a cruel breach of trust to members of the applicant's extended
00:57family.
00:59On that basis the appeal against sentence succeeds and the non-parole period fixed
01:03by the judge will be set aside.
01:07The mushroom murderer Erin Patterson has lost her appeal and was
01:11re-sentenced to life behind bars without parole.
01:16Patterson had been seeking to overturn her convictions arguing she suffered a
01:21substantial miscarriage of justice, however the panel of three Victorian
01:26court appeal judges dismissed her appeal and instead granted the
01:30prosecution's appeal against her minimum 33-year sentence.
01:37In re-sentencing it is necessary that the sentence indicates unequivocally the
01:43primary value that our society places on each individual human life.
01:47As already noted the applicant's murderous intent dated back to the invitations to
01:53lunch.
01:54It persisted through the lunch when the poison was administered and for nearly a week after
01:58that during which time the applicant repeatedly tried to hide the truth about the source of the
02:03mushrooms even as the victims continued to suffer.
02:07This offending was extraordinarily cold and calculated and stands to be denounced in the
02:12strongest terms.
02:15In all the circumstances after anxious consideration we have concluded that the
02:19case involved such shocking criminality that it is inappropriate to fix a non-parole period.
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