Dorothy Sloan, 82, of Violet Town is facing 342 charges in Shepparton Magistrates’ Court.
They include eight charges of aggravated cruelty, 97 of killing wildlife by poison and 208 of possessing protected wildlife.
She also faces 25 charges of possessing wildlife taken from the wild, and it is these 25 charges that were under dispute in a hearing at Shepparton Magistrates’ Court on December 15.
Ms Sloan’s barrister Charles Morgan applied to the court to have evidence obtained under a search warrant at Ms Sloan’s house on August 27, 2019 be excluded from any court hearings because of a problem with the search warrant paperwork.
The evidence related to bird and animal carcases found in a freezer at the property.
If successful, the exclusion of the evidence would mean 25 charges of possessing wildlife taken from the wild would have to be dropped.
Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning prosecutor Megan Tittensor said the case rose from a DELWP investigation into reports of wedge-tailed eagle carcases in the area.
A search of nearby properties, including land owned by Ms Sloan, found 230 bird carcases.
This included 151 wedge-tailed eagles, as well as 59 other birds of prey including raptors, falcons and whistling kites, as well as other birds.
She said the dead birds were “primarily concentrated on or near Sloan land, particularly part of a property that was used for lambing”.
The prosecution alleges Ms Sloan told a neighbour “she baited to prevent birds preying on lambs”, Ms Tittensor said.
A dead kangaroo and sheep were also found, with testing on the animals and eight birds finding the presence of an insecticide.
The prosecution alleges some of the birds had been shot, butchered and injected with poison and left out as bait for birds of prey to eat.
Ms Tittensor said the injuries of the galahs and cockatoos found in the paddocks were consistent with injuries to birds and animals in the freezer inside Ms Sloan’s home.
An envelope with the handwritten words on it “gone to bait” was also seized from the house, Ms Tittensor said.
Mr Morgan said the search warrant issued by a magistrate in Wangaratta Magistrates’ Court four days before the search was defective because it did not include a date for the cessation of the warrant.
A DELWP authorised officer should have picked up the omission and had it corrected before Ms Sloan’s house was searched, Mr Morgan said.
The warrant, however, did say it had to be executed within seven days from when it was issued.
Mr Morgan argued that a warrant issued by the courts to allow authorities to enter a person’s home was “a serious bit of paper” that was “not to be taken lightly or flippantly”.
“The court should protect people’s privacy and guard against trespass by the state,” he said.
“It might seem to be trivial — the breach on first reading — … (but) once you start allowing the cutting of corners and lack of attention to requirements, it’s a slippery slope.”
Ms Tittensor admitted that the warrant was invalid because it did not include the date, but argued magistrate Marita Altman should still include the evidence found at the house in future court hearings.
She urged the magistrate to find that the desirability of including the evidence outweighed the undesirability of not doing so.
The prosecutor argued that the failure to specify the date in the warrant was “not a deliberate or reckless disregard of the law” and that the magistrate and the investigator “overlooked providing the date or believe the seven days applied”.
The magistrate has reserved her decision on the application to a later date.
