Erin Patterson raised her chin and stared out on the brilliant blue promise of a mid-spring morning.

To the east, Victoria’s grandest court room was filled with people she had brought together, yet she was there only on a screen.

Patterson watched on, clad in prison-issued blue, from the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre.

Soon, three justices of the court of appeal would enter the Banco court, and Patterson would learn whether she would walk under that sky again as a free woman.

Patterson, 52, was last year sentenced to life imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 33 years, for the murders of her estranged husband’s parents, Don and Gail Patterson, and his aunt Heather Wilkinson, after she hosted them for lunch.

A court sketch of Erin Patterson as she appeared during a hearing via video link in August.…