Wrongful Convictions Report

REPORT

The 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.

Andrew L. Urban.

What an exposé! Chris Merritt shows how a judge’s own words provide a rare and distressing insight into how this judge perceives the great public policy issue of our time: antisemitism and hatred of Israel. The judge’s ruling determined that Mohammed Farhat should not be subject to an extended supervision order when he completes his prison sentence for offences committed in a Jewish suburb of Sydney.  Continue reading →

Andrew L. Urban

It took 16 years to put Paul Charlton before a jury for the murder of his girlfriend, Joanne Howell. Just before the trial, he was kidnapped, taken into the bush, bashed and warned to plead guilty. The Herald Sun reported it, police took statements but the alleged thugs were never found. He pleaded not guilty. Emails to us from his partner Linda Barry (before a lapse in our communications) add some flesh to the bare bones of the time line. And there’s more to come on this story…  Continue reading →

Writing in her substack column, BETTINA ARNDT reports on the damage to men falsely accused of rape by women, often as revenge, weaponising a legal system biased in their favour – and the devastating impact on the men’s lives. Continue reading →

“After everything she said that is done to her in that room, Mr Barrientos rings room service to ask for a burger and she asked for chips to go,” said her lawyer David Edwardson. “A request made by her to him, when minutes earlier he slapped, choked and raped her and she said, ‘Can I have chips to go.’ That is what her narrative is … what you might think is utterly improbable,” reports The Australian’s Emma Kirk from a trial in Perth. Continue reading →