Prosecutors say a Canberra woman accused of beating her mother to death with a hammer had used drugs, including ice and cannabis, extensively in the lead up to the killing as family members tried to help get her "chaotic" life back on track.
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Gabrielle Woutersz, 25, was charged with murder after her father arrived home to find his wife, Norma Cheryl Woutersz, 56, dead in the backyard of the family home in Dunlop in October 2014.
Woutersz pleaded not guilty and her trial began in the ACT Supreme Court on Monday.
The court was told Woutersz, who had only recently returned from interstate, repeatedly struck her mother in the head with the weapon, shattering her skull, before she tried to bury her body in a garden bed.
Her father arrived home to find the accused cooking eggs, dressed only in her underwear.
He discovered his wife's body, tied to a stepladder, in the backyard.
When he asked Woutersz what she had done, she is said to have replied: "Nothing."
In his opening submissions to the jury, prosecutor Shane Drumgold indicated the defence would not dispute Woutersz killed her mother, and the case would largely hinge on whether she had been mentally impaired at the time.
He said the Crown would not contest Woutersz had been in an altered state of mind, but it would argue that was due to drug use, rather than mental illness.
The jury was told Woutersz's alleged drug use in the lead-up to the killing would be a significant matter in the trial.
Woutersz had an "uneventful" upbringing and was described as a loving, caring and intelligent child who did well at school, the court heard.
But that changed when she began to experiment with drugs, including cocaine, ice, and ecstasy, on a trip to the United States in 2012, when one relative would give evidence she "ate drugs for breakfast, lunch and dinner".
On one occasion she went to hospital and was diagnosed with psychosis, after which her drug use allegedly continued to escalate and her behaviour became increasingly erratic.
She returned to Canberra, where she had worked as a personal trainer and a sex worker, and later moved to Perth to live with her aunt and uncle in a bid to sort out her "chaotic" life in the first half of 2014.
Her lifestyle had created "significant tensions" between the accused and her mother, the court was told.
Mr Drumgold said the jury would hear evidence Woutersz had continued to binge on drugs in the weeks before the killing, despite varying accounts she gave after her arrest in which she said she hadn't used ice for a month prior.
Defence barrister Bernard Collaery said it was not disputed his client murdered Mrs Woutersz and there would be little challenge to "graphic and terrible evidence" that would be heard by the jury.
"The central contention for the defence is that at the time of killing her mother she was mentally impaired and didn't know what she was doing was wrong," Mr Collaery said.
Mr Collaery argued Woutersz suffered genuine and lasting psychosis, which often caused her to hear voices, and she should not be held morally responsible for her mother's death.
She was a very troubled young woman, but not a drug-addicted killer, he said.
"The defence contention is she was, and is, mentally impaired."
He challenged the Crown's argument that evidence indicating Woutersz had thoroughly cleaned the house after the killing suggested an "ordered mind", pointing out she left her mother's body untouched in the backyard.
"Is that an ordered mind?" he said. "Is that someone covering up a crime?"
The trial, before Chief Justice Helen Murrell, continues.
