The trial of South African doctor Lauren Dickason, who has pleaded not guilty to the murder of her three children in New Zealand two years ago, has been moved forward to 13 July, from the original 17 July date.
News24 reports that Dickason was charged with murdering her twin girls, Maya and Karla (2) and their older sister Liane (6) in September 2021, a few weeks after the family moved to Timaru from Pretoria. Her husband, Dr Graham Dickason, had got a job in the area as an orthopaedic surgeon.
He discovered the girls’ bodies when he returned from work on 16 September 2021.
Dickason made her first appearance in court earlier this month, and is to mount a defence of insanity and infanticide at her trial.
Three defence experts are expected to testify that she was insane when she carried out the murders, therefore was not criminally culpable.
Her legal team needs to prove that a “mental disturbance” occurred as a direct result of childbirth, to fulfil an infanticide defence – which can, under New Zealand law, be used as a partial defence to murder or manslaughter.
Dickason has been in custody at a medium-security psychiatric unit at Hillmorton Hospital in Christchurch, where she has undergone extensive evaluation.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Dickason tragedy: Mom’s mental evaluation to take up to 18 months
Dickason tragedy: Further mental observation and trial date
Court date for SA mother after daughters’ murders in New Zealand