As Colin Mandy delivers his closing statement, he points to his client.
Erin Patterson, on trail for murder, is seated behind him in the dock, a pen in her right hand. Her eyes have remained fixed on her barrister as he takes the jury through a second day of his closing submissions.
Mandy uses his fingers as inverted commas when describing his client’s Facebook “friends”.
“I should always put inverted commas around that,” he says.
Colin Mandy, SC.Credit: Jason South
Mandy told the jury that the conversation between Patterson and her estranged husband, Simon, over Simon’s tax return change had been resolved amicably.
“Erin was entitled to a benefit that she wasn’t entitled to before. It wasn’t a negative change for her, as she made clear,” Mandy said.
Mandy added that later on, the messages showed that Patterson had requested some help from Simon to pay for their son’s anesthetist bill, and Simon had told the mother of two that paying the bill and school fees were out of the question.
“Anyone would be hurt about that. She did not think that what he was saying was right,” Mandy said.
Mandy said Patterson was frustrated and struggling to communicate, and was hoping that Don and Gail would help mediate the issue as they had previously done.
He said Erin and Simon were struggling to communicate about their son’s difficulties at school and the financial arrangements for the children.
He said the Pattersons were “eternally polite to each other”, so this kind of messaging would “jump out”. He said the tension was not significant or “very much at all”.
Mandy told the jury the tone of their messages showed the Pattersons were always polite in their exchanges, and that when Patterson was being honest in her responses, it might have been confronting for them.
“Prosecution argued to you yesterday that this is somehow an example of the accused leading a duplicitous life when it comes to the Pattersons,” Mandy said.
Prosecutor Nanette Rogers, SC.Credit: Jason South
Mandy said that the messages were evidence that when Patterson got upset about something, she raised it.
He said there was no evidence, other than those messages in December 2022, about anything like that. “This was an aberration in her dealings with the Pattersons and there is nothing to say otherwise,” Mandy said.
At the same time Patterson was communicating with Don and Gail about this issue, she was messaging her Facebook friends.
“We know that between December 5 and 20, we know that there were 600 pages of messages over that time,” Mandy said, before naming the participants in that group chat.
He said Patterson rarely spoke to these people over the phone or in person, so anything she said to them about being an atheist would have been in writing, “but it’s not produced” by the prosecution.
Mandy said the prosecution’s messages were selective and did not provide context around Patterson’s messages. “And context is important,” Mandy said.
He said that between the first message the prosecution extracted and the last were 186 pages of messages.
“You would have your own experiences in the way that you present yourself to the world. Always polite to your grandmother and swearing like a trooper when you are with your mates. And maybe the other way around if you have a really cool grandma and nerdy friends,” Mandy said.
Mandy said people showed a different side of themselves depending on who they spoke to.
Patterson did not mean those things, and she regretted her language. “She is ashamed of what she’d written,” Mandy said.
He said the prosecution hadn’t said that Patterson had a motive to kill or seriously injure her lunch guests.
“Why is so much time then dedicated to those messages during the trial?” Mandy said.
“Because it was such a polite, kind and good relationship that these messages stand out. But they are not consistent with the whole of the relationship.”
Mandy said this was an attempt by the prosecution to “undermine the overwhelming evidence” that Patterson had a loving and respectful relationship with Don and Gail.
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