Lauren Dickason trial: SA mom in tears as jury rewatches police interviews

The jury in the triple murder trial of Lauren Dickason rewatched the police interviews with the South African murder-accused mother and her husband Graham.

The interviews were conducted shortly after their three little girls were killed.

The request by the jury of eight women and four men was made shortly after the start of deliberations as the headline-grabbing trial entered its fifth week at the High Court in Christchurch on Monday, 14 August.

Lauren Dickason murder trial: Five possible outcomes

There are five eventualities from the jury’s deliberations:

1. Guilty of murder;
2. Not guilty of murder but guilty of infanticide’
3. Act of murder proven, but not criminally responsible due to insanity;
4. Act of infanticide proven, but not criminally responsible due to insanity; and
5. Hung jury, if a unanimous or majority verdict cannot be reached.

Murder-accused mom in tears as jury replays police interviews

NZ Herald reported the former South African doctor’s hour-long interview was conducted when she was released from Timaru Hospital, in Canterbury, where she was being treated following a failed suicide attempt after killing her children in September 2021.

Her orthopaedic surgeon husband’s interview runs for more than two hours and was filmed not long after he found his little girls’ lifeless bodies in their beds when he returned home from a work dinner.

The Pretoria family immigrated to New Zealand and had just completed their hotel quarantine, in Auckland, a week before the horrific killings.

The 42-year-old Dickason, according to Stuff, was crying in court while the interviews were replayed.

ALSO READ: Lauren Dickason wants to ‘return to SA and die’ to be reunited with kids

Dickason admits to killing, defence of infanticide or insanity

Dickason has admitted to strangling her three daughters − Liane, six, and two-year-old twins Maya and Karla − with interconnected cable ties before smothering them to death one by one at their Timaru home, in Canterbury, on 16 September 2021.

She, however, has pleaded not guilty to murder, claiming she was severely mentally disturbed at the time and has mounted a defence of insanity or infanticide.

Dickason has not herself given evidence as she had no obligation to do so, according to Judge Cameron Mander.

‘Lay aside feelings of sympathy or prejudice’

The jury have now heard from five mental health experts who assessed Dickason after the children’s death – three called by the defence and two by the Crown.

The judge told the jury they must lay any feelings of sympathy or prejudice aside, and that for the duration of the trial they are “effectively judges”, 1News reported.

“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.”

ALSO READ: Lauren Dickason trial: Cable ties vs ‘too violent and messy’ shows ‘premeditation’

Dickason trial: The arguments in a nutshell

Mander provided the jury with a quick summary of the arguments.

The Crown

The Crown alleges Dickason is guilty of murder, saying she was aware of her actions before, during and after the crime. 

According to 1News, the murder-accused mother shook her head at times as the judge summed up the Crown’s case.

“The Crown said Dickason’s actions that evening were a reaction to the frustration and anger she held towards the children and their behaviour, whom 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,” said Mander.

ALSO READ: Lauren Dickason trial: Consequences of cable tie marks meant ‘no turning back’

For murder, the jury, according to NZ Herald, had to be sure the Crown had proved three elements:

• That the killing is a homicide − which is not in doubt;
• That the killing is culpable; and
• That there was murderous intent.

“If the deaths of the three children were acts of culpable homicide, they were acts of murder… the Crown is not required to prove a motive to prove the offence of murder, only that the defendant had a murderous intent,” added Mander.

ALSO READ: Dickason murder trial: Court hears ‘alienated’ mom labelled murders ‘a package deal’

The defence

“The defence on the other hand say the major depressive episode from which 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.”

Infanticide as defence under NZ law

Under New Zealand law, infanticide operates both as a stand-alone offence and as a partial defence to murder or manslaughter, according to NZ Herald.

In other countries infanticide applies to children under the age of one, but in New Zealand it’s extended to kids under 10 due to varying takes on the effects of postpartum depression.

Should the jury rule infanticide as the reason for the deaths, Dickason could be sentenced to just three years in jail. If they believe the prosecution’s version, she could be incarcerated for life.

Insanity as defence

Mander explained to the jury that if Dickason was found not guilty by reason of insanity, she would not simply be released.

It would be up to him − and no one else − to decide on her future, NZ Herald reported.

That would like be a detention order under the Criminal Procedure (Mentally Impaired Persons) Act 2003.

This would see Dickason being detained at a secure mental health facility as a special patient until such time as the national director of mental health determines her to be well enough for release back into the community.

The jury will continue their deliberations tomorrow.

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