Patterson won’t be attending the appeal in person. She’s chosen to appear via video link from Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, the maximum security prison on the outskirts of Melbourne where she’s serving her sentence.
Last November, her legal team filed a three-page document outlining the arguments they plan to make in an effort to overturn her conviction.
There are seven grounds for this appeal, which will be heard by three judges.
Firstly, there are bits of evidence Patterson’s lawyers say the jurors should never have seen: for example, mobile phone tracking data that indicated she’d travelled to places where death cap mushrooms were recently spotted.
Her lawyers also argue that evidence from “Facebook friends” should not have been allowed. That included online messages in which she ranted about her in-laws as well as her estranged husband Simon Patterson, at one point calling him a “deadbeat”.
All that evidence, Patterson’s team says, was not relevant and prejudicial, causing a substantial miscarriage of justice.
