Lawyers for Erin Patterson, the Australian woman convicted of murdering three relatives by serving them a deadly mushroom-laced lunch in 2023, are arguing a hotel accommodation mix-up "fatally undermined" the fairness of her trial and are seeking a retrial. During the jury's deliberation period, jurors — who had been sequestered to shield them from intense public interest — shared a hotel in Victoria's Gippsland region with prosecution solicitors, the lead detective, and journalists, a situation made worse by a national table tennis championship that had depleted local accommodation. The prosecution maintains that the system functioned correctly, with no direct contact between jurors and other parties, but Patterson's defence team told Victoria's Court of Appeal the irregularity was "catastrophic" and left a damaging "vacuum of evidence" about what may have occurred during the trial's most critical week.