Erin Patterson complained she was denied a doona and pillow while being held in her prison cell, as well as access to her own laptop and charger.
A day before the jury in her murder and attempted murder trial were empanelled, Patterson was held in the cells at Morwell Police Station, 150km east of Melbourne.
The following day, her defence barrister Colin Mandy SC flagged Patterson was unhappy with the conditions to the Victorian Supreme Court trial judge Justice Christopher Beale.
“She had an agreement with Corrections about the things that she would be permitted to take into her cell and last night, for whatever reason, that wasn’t the case,“ Mandy said.
“She’d agreed with Corrections that she could have a doona and a pillow and she wasn’t given those things.
“At some stage she was given a blanket, but she spent the night cold and awake, because she was cold, and she can’t operate like that.”
Mandy said she complained to custody officials but was told something along the lines of “we’re busy” and “she wasn’t going to get special treatment”.
Mandy also complained Patterson was denied access to her own laptop and charger, which he argued she needed to help get through the “massive” police brief.
“This brief is massive and she has a good understanding of it but she needs to have access to it because she’s providing us with instructions about various things as we go,” Mandy told the court.
“She didn’t have access to her brief, she didn’t have access to writing materials.”
He said staff in the custody centre had raised concerns Patterson could be a danger to herself if allowed the items in her cell.
Mandy argued his client “should be afforded some accommodation” during the lengthy trial to be able to properly instruct her legal team.
“It won’t be fair to her if that situation continues,” he said.
“She requires special treatment so that we can do our job properly, so that she can provide us with proper instructions so that she’s not uncomfortable.”
He suggested Patterson should be allowed to have legal notes she had made, writing implements and her laptop and charger in her cell overnight.
Three days later, after a series of emails were sent back and forth with Victoria Police, Mandy told Beale “nothing has been achieved”.
“We’re back to square one, Your Honour. Nothing has been achieved, nothing has changed, apart from the fact that Ms Patterson can have her legal papers,” he said.
“But this is a brief that is 50,000 pages long and those aren’t the legal papers that she’s allowed to have.”
Mandy told the court Patterson has been allowed to have her own laptop and charger while on remand at Dame Phyllis Frost Centre to prepare for the trial.
This was confirmed by Dame Phyllis Frost Centre senior operations manager Candice Vella, who said Patterson had been granted those privileges for at least 12 months without any concerns being raised by staff.
“She’s been approved to have that laptop computer in her cell, so it remains with her at all times, so she can access that at any time,” Vella said.
Since her arrest in November 2023, Patterson has spent the bulk of her time in protective custody at the maximum security women’s prison.
But as the trial proceeded, five nights a week she swapped the prison’s facilities for a plastic bed in the Morwell Police Station’s watch house – located next to the court.
Under the control of custody officers, she was brought each day through a tunnel to the basement of the court and up an elevator to a rear entrance of Court 4 on the second floor of the Latrobe Valley law courts.
Mandy told the court Patterson wanted to be able to have the same access to her computer and notes that she received at Dame Phyllis Frost.
Because of the distance from Melbourne to Morwell, the 50-year-old was transported the two-and-a-half hours from remand to the cells on Monday morning and back on Friday evening.
Out of the sight of the jury, barrister Alex Solomon-Bridge appeared on behalf of the Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police before Beale to discuss the issue on May 5.
Solomon-Bridge said Patterson and her legal team had been made aware she would not have access to writing implements or a computer in her cell at Morwell in June 2024.
“The current custodial arrangements at the police cells shouldn’t have been a surprise to the accused,” he said.
The court heard that in emails set about the issue, Victoria Police had raised security concerns for both Patterson and staff at the facility.
Solomon-Bridge said the evidence in front of the court was that the cells were “not continuously monitored”.
He said he was instructed that Patterson now had a sheet, doona and pillow provided to her in the cells.
Mandy told the court, as he understood it, arrangements had been approved for Patterson to have her legal notes and paperwork in the cells.
The barrister said they’d been negotiating with police to allow Patterson to have her computer in the cell without a charging cord.
“One of the concerns that the police have is in relation to the charger, so the negotiation we’ve had with them is to this effect: charge the laptop – she can’t take the cord and the charger into her cell – charge the laptop and she can have the laptop with her until it runs out of charge,” Mandy said.
Mandy asked Justice Beale to give a “direction” to Victoria Police to address the “unsatisfactory nature” of Patterson’s cell arrangements.
He argued the amount of time she had access to her laptop was “insufficient”, claiming access overnight was essential to her “fair trial rights”.
“The gaoler might have a general concern about security with general propositions which are enforceable throughout the cells but in terms of any risk assessment of our client as to using either the laptop or any part of it as a weapon or to harm herself, that has not been undertaken and the evidence from Dame Phyllis Frost ... seems to suggest that there is no such danger to herself or anyone else by the provision of a laptop to her,” Mandy argued.
Several days later, the discussion popped back up in court as Mandy said he wanted to withdraw his objection to Patterson’s custody conditions.
“Things have improved for our client in the cells and we understand the – I’ve probably said enough,” Mandy said on May 8 in the second week of the trial.
“We’ll let Victoria Police and Mr Solomon-Bridge know that.”
Throughout the trial, the softly-spoken accused killer could often be seen conversing with her team of defence lawyers in the morning before the evidence began and during breaks.
Other times, she could be seen chatting and giggling with supporters in the court.
Leaning over the waist-height wooden panelling separating her from the rest of the courtroom, Patterson occasionally was seen passing over handwritten notes back and forward with her legal team.
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