August 31, 2026 — 5:00amThe judge in the Erin Patterson trial was so concerned about whether the jury had been protected from outside influence during its deliberations that he instructed authorities to try to preserve CCTV from the regional hotel where jurors were sequestered for six days.What happened when the 12-person jury was sequestered in the same Gippsland hotel alongside police, prosecutors and media in July 2025 has become a central point in Patterson’s appeal against conviction for three murders and one attempted murder from the now infamous death cap mushroom lunch.Erin Patterson arrives at the Supreme Court on August 25 last year.APThe whereabouts of the footage is a mystery after Juries Commissioner Paul Dore reported to the court it had been erased.During this masthead’s reporting of the issue in July 2025, a hotel representative said the CCTV drive should have been available for weeks or even months after the trial.Patterson’s case, which is under deliberation by the Court of Appeal, claims the jury was potentially contaminated after staying in the same hotel as prosecutors and police in circumstances where it is impossible to know what interaction might have occurred between the parties.Patterson’s legal team labelled the situation a potentially catastrophic failure of the system.Last week, the court heard that no CCTV footage was available for undisclosed reasons.A source familiar with the court’s operations, but not authorised to speak publicly, said trial judge Christopher Beale sought to have the footage preserved for the appeal but was told by the juries commissioner that it had been inadvertently erased.Beale’s instructions to save any CCTV came days after this masthead published a story about how the jury had been knowingly housed during its deliberations alongside homicide investigators, trial prosecutors and the media.The source said Dore had reported no CCTV footage from the hotel was available after contacting the operator on July 16 – 11 days after the jury left the hotel.The source said Dore had reported his office was told no footage of before the afternoon of July 5, after the jury had already left the hotel that day, was available.Juries Commissioner Paul Dore.Documents released during Patterson’s appeal show the juries commissioner twice refused requests from Patterson’s legal counsel to use his powers to request police launch a formal investigation into their complaint.The Age visited the hotel on July 14, two days prior to Dore’s request, and was told the footage still existed but would not be released to the media.A hotel representative said at the time that the CCTV storage drive had capacity to keep footage for weeks or even months.“They’re welcome to it,” the person said.The hotel has not been named at the request of the operator. The operator did not respond to a request to comment further.Dore declined to comment on the decision not to initiate an investigation or if his office sought to independently confirm whether any CCTV existed.At the start of Patterson’s criminal trial, Beale had warned jurors that it was “not a good look if there’s any interaction between jurors and members of the respective legal teams”. “When you’re outside at lunchtime or at other times, your paths may cross with some of the lawyers – both legal teams. If they ignore you, don’t think they’re being rude. They’re supposed to ignore you. That’s because, as I said to you earlier, justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done.”The hotel lobby had multiple cameras and would have likely captured at least one incident described by multiple sources in which jurors accidentally came into physical contact with members of the media and at least two officials from the Office of Public Prosecutions on the night of July 4 when they were in their fifth day of deliberations.It was this incident that led the “jury keeper” – the official sworn to oversee the jury to protect its deliberations – to notify Beale in an email, later released by the court, the following day that numerous interested parties in the trial were all staying in the same hotel.At that stage, the jury had already occupied the same hotel as the lead informant from the homicide squad for five days without the knowledge of the judge or defence.Beale was informed at that time by the jury keeper that the matter was no longer an issue because the jury had already been moved to another hotel on the afternoon of July 5 due to a shortage of available bookings in the first hotel.Erin Patterson’s legal team (from left) barrister Veronika Drago, solicitor Ophelia Hollway, barrister Richard Edney, law student Ramona Dooley and solicitor Bill Doogue outside the Court of Appeal on August 19.Joe ArmaoThat Saturday afternoon, Beale decided not to notify the defence, waiting about another 36 hours until the end of the weekend.At 8.29am on July 7 – as the jury was about to begin its seventh day of deliberations – Beale’s associate sent a notification to the defence and OPP about what had occurred.“On Saturday afternoon, I was informed by my tipstaff that the informant and two prosecution solicitors have been staying at the same hotel as the jury. He also told me that there has been no interaction between them and the jury,” the email said.“I understand that there is a shortage of accommodation in the district, but it is obviously undesirable for any of the parties or the informant to be staying at the same hotel as the jury.”The prosecution responded that they had been aware the jury was in the hotel one day before moving in but chose to stay there anyway because of availability issues.“We confirm that the prosecution solicitors did not interact with the jury at any stage and also took steps to avoid any incidental contact in common areas,” the prosecution wrote.The defence never responded to that email, according to materials filed with the Court of Appeal.About six hours after the notification to the parties, the jury came back with a finding of guilty on three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder for Patterson.Director of Public Prosecutions Brendan Kissane, KC.Jason SouthThere is no suggestion that any of the police officers, prosecutors or members of the media behaved inappropriately or attempted to influence the jury.Patterson’s legal team said the circumstances of the jury occupying the same hotel as the prosecution and police was potentially “catastrophic” and an “irregularity” where “the only proper remedy is the quashing of her convictions and an order for a retrial”.“What occurred here was a colossal failure to conform, and comply with, Lord Hewart(’s) important maxim (that justice must not only be done, but be seen to be done),” Patterson’s lawyers wrote in appeal documents.“A suggestion that the criminal justice process could or should tolerate jury sequestration in the same lodging as members of the prosecution team, the police informant (and arguably others) is unsustainable.”The defence’s central position to this was the total absence of availability of any CCTV footage from the hotel, which possessed cameras in the lobby and on every floor.During the appeal hearing, barrister Richard Edney, for Patterson, said the lack of CCTV over the jury’s six-day sequestration in that hotel had created an “evidentiary vacuum”.“There was no CCTV footage that could be obtained from the hotel to determine whether there was contact or opportunity for contact,” he argued.In the absence of CCTV, Patterson’s legal team tendered a series of articles detailing the unusual circumstances surrounding the jury’s sequestration from the ABC, Herald Sun and The Age.The argument was strenuously rejected by the OPP in the Court of Appeal.Director of Public Prosecutions Brendan Kissane, KC, told the court that concerns about the integrity of the jury sequestration “appear informed by unattributed, unverified (and seemingly inaccurate) media reporting of unknown levels of hearsay”.“Plainly, this is not a sound evidentiary platform from which to survey the circumstances of the applicant’s case,” he wrote.Kissane, however, did acknowledge that the crossover at the hotel would have never been allowed if it had been proposed in advance, and the jury would have been moved earlier if Beale had become aware of the situation earlier.During the appeal hearing, Edney raised the issue that the OPP had not sought affidavits from any of the parties who were in the hotel at the time to set a version of events down on the record.Those present – at various times simultaneously with the jury – included three jury keepers, three OPP lawyers and a social worker, at least three homicide squad detectives, one Court Services Victoria employee, seven members of the media, and the operator and staff of the hotel.“In our submission, the court should be concerned that there’s been no affidavit material put on over what went on over those five to six days,” Edney told the Court of Appeal.“[It is] inflamed by the prosecution’s failure to notify the applicant’s representatives at any given time of its conduct or, at the very least, of the information that it possessed. It raises questions about what occurred during that week.”Kissane argued that the court must decide the issue based on the actual evidence before it, which consisted of two emails – one from the judge’s associate setting out the trial judge’s report and the other containing the prosecution’s response.“The onus of establishing an irregularity resides with applicant [Patterson] not with respondent [OPP]. That’s the evidence before the court – in our submission that’s a complete answer,” Kissane told the court.The Court of Appeal has not yet set a date to hand down its decision.Meanwhile, an independent attempt to obtain information about the OPP and Victoria Police’s decision to stay at the hotel through freedom-of-information laws has been denied by both agencies.The request from this masthead identified 38 pages of email correspondence, travel itineraries and written notes held by Victoria Police, which the force has classified as exempt law enforcement documents.The OPP has denied access to a “bundle of correspondence” about its accommodation arrangements on the basis of legal professional privilege, on the justification that the DPP is the “client” of the OPP.Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. 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