IT TOOK them more than 14 hours to reach a verdict – and even then they weren’t all in agreement. It was clear this jury had a tough task and some were moved to tears as they left the courtroom where they had to decide the fate of the woman who had killed her three young children.
In the end they turned to Justice Cameron Mander for instruction and he told them to deliver a majority verdict. And so the eight women and four men did: 11-1 found Lauren Dickason guilty of three counts of murder.
In all his time as a lawyer he’s never seen members of a jury cry, Dr James Mehigan, a legal expert in New Zealand, tells YOU. “They didn’t come to this decision quickly and discussed it for a long time.”
Dickason (42) was calm and quiet as she was found guilty of murdering six-year-old Liané and two-year-old twins Maya and Karla but cried as she was escorted out of court.
Her defence team, Kerryn Beaton and Anne Toohey, wept too when the verdict was delivered at the end of a trial that lasted nearly five weeks.
The date for her sentencing hasn’t yet been decided and it’s impossible to predict what kind of punishment she’ll get, Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland law professor Julia Tolmie told the New Zealand Herald. It depends on “how compassionate the judge is” given her mental-health problems.
Dickason’s parents, Malcolm and Wendy Fawkes, believe the “crippling disease” of post-partum depression is what killed their grandchildren. “There are no winners in this tragedy,” they said in a statement.
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