The jury has retired to begin its deliberations in the Lauren Dickason murder trial after the judge summed up the case this morning.
The 42-year-old has pleaded not guilty to murdering her girls Liane, Maya and Karla in September 2021, using the defences of infanticide and insanity.
Shortly after starting deliberations the jury asked to rewatch the police interviews with Dickason and her husband Graham, done shortly after the girls were killed.
Justice Mander is presiding over the High Court trial in Christchurch, which has now entered its fifth week.
Addressing the jury of eight women and four men this morning, he began by saying, "I'm going to be some time with you today".
He spoke to them about interviews Dickason gave to police, and the five experts for the Crown and defence.
He told the jury what she said in those interviews is for them to assess.
"You may accept parts of what she said, all of it or none of it. You can view it favourably or unfavourably to her.”
He cautioned them that they must lay any feelings of sympathy or prejudice aside, and that for the duration of the trial they are effectively judges.
“An entirely human response to three little girls being deliberately killed is outrage and horror, but you must put those understandable reactions and feelings to one side in order to carry out your task in the analytical way that is required of you to ensure your verdicts are based on the law and the evidence, and not prejudice.”
He told the jury: ”Mrs Dickason has not herself given evidence, she had no obligation to do so."
"That she has not given evidence does not add to the case against her. It is for the Crown to prove the elements of the charge of murder, and to negative the defence of infanticide. Mrs Dickason does not have to establish her innocence to the charge of murder nor prove this was infanticide."
Justice Mander outlined the arguments.
"The Crown said Mrs Dickason's actions that evening were a reaction to the frustration and anger she held towards the children and their behaviour, who as a result of their failure to conform to her standards, she'd come to resent. Combined with the pressures she was experiencing at that time, she snapped."
The accused shook her head at times as the judge summed up the Crown case.
"The defence on the other hand say the major depressive episode from which Ms Dickason was suffering not only caused her to think she had to kill herself but to take her children with her and that this depressive state was linked to or at least cannot be severed from the postpartum depression from which she had suffered that had never fully resolved."
Dickason often looked at the jury as Justice Mander summed up their position.
The judge addressed the jury separately on the charges of murder, and the defence of infanticide and insanity.
Murder
In relation to murder he told the jury “subject to the partial defence of infanticide, and the defence of insanity, if the deaths of the three children were acts of culpable homicide, they were acts of murder".
"For completeness I add, the Crown is not required to prove a motive to prove the offence of murder, only that the defendant had a murderous intent."
Infanticide
He then turned to infanticide, which has been described as a hybrid between an offence and a defence, but in this case it is raised as a defence to the charge of murder.
In New Zealand it applies to cases where children were under the age of 10 at the time of their death.
"If the failure to fully recover from the effects of birth or the disorder resulting from childbirth is a contributory cause to the disturbance of the women's mind, that will be enough.
"It must, at the time the children were killed, have been a substantial cause of the disturbance to the balance of Mrs Dickason's mind.
"This requires you to weigh the extent to which Mrs Dickason's mind was disturbed at the time, and having made that assessment and as a result, whether it is reasonably possibly she was so affected that she should not be held fully responsible for the children's murders."
He said it is only the, the jury can consider insanity.
Insanity
"Before considering the defence of insanity you are required to have first decided whether Mrs Dickason in killing her three children had committed acts of murder or infanticide.
"The Crown says you can be sure her acts were ones of murder and not infanticide, the defence says you cannot be sure that is the case, it says her acts were ones of infanticide."
With regard to the defence of insanity “the onus of proof is on the defendant to show what is called the balance of probabilities that she was insane at the time she killed her three children”.
"You would need to be satisfied on the balance of probabilities that 1) Mrs Dickason was suffering from a disease of mind at the time she killed her children, 2) Mrs Dickason so affected by that disease of the mind either a) she did not understand the nature and quality of her actions, or b) she did not know her actions were morally wrong."
"What you are tasked to do is to decide whether Mrs Dickason, because of the disease of her mind, did not know that what she was doing was morally wrong. The defence case is while Mrs Dickason knew what she was doing, that she was killing her children, because of the disease of the mind from which she was suffering she did not know the wrongness of that act. That I have said is the key issue in this case as it relates to the defence of insanity. Was that her state of mind at the time?"
Justice Mander made it clear “were you to be satisfied Mrs Dickason was insane, it would be for me to determine the appropriate order to be made in respect of her under what's called the Criminal Procedure (Mentally Impaired Persons) Act".
"It would not be a case of Mrs Dickason simply being released upon delivery of such verdicts, but rather for me to decide the best course to take in accordance with that legislation and with the benefit of further medical opinion."
Justice Mander said there are four possible outcomes for the jury.
"Your verdicts will be ones of either guilty of murder, not guilty of murder but guilty of infanticide, act of murder proven but not criminally responsible on account of insanity, act of infanticide proven but not criminally responsible due to insanity."
SHARE ME