Hakyung Lee, in the High Court at Auckland this month (right), is accused of killing her children in Auckland before moving to South Korea. Photos / Pool, Lawrence Smith / Supplied
A jury has begun deliberating over whether an Auckland mother is guilty of murdering her two young children.
Hakyung “Jasmine” Lee faces two counts of murder following the June 2018 deaths of her two children in South Auckland.
She admits giving daughter Yuna Jo, 8, and son Minu Jo, 6, a fatal dose of the anti-depressant nortriptyline before wrapping them in plastic and placing their bodies in suitcases, which were left in storage for four years.
But she says this was during an unsuccessful suicide attempt and claims her actions were the result of insanity following the death of her husband.
The Crown and defence closed their cases in the High Court at Auckland yesterday, and Justice Geoffrey Venning summed up the case this morning following two weeks of evidence before the jury was sent out to begin deliberating.
“You are here as members of the public, representing the community we all live in,” the judge said.
“You are the judges of fact, and have to decide if the Crown has proved its case of murder against Ms Lee, beyond reasonable doubt.”
He instructed the jury to initially disregard any evidence implying Lee was insane so they could focus on elements of the murder charge first.
“The Crown does not have to show she was sane at the time the children were killed. The defence of insanity does not arise until the elements of the charge of murder have been established.
“If the Crown fails to prove the elements of murder beyond reasonable doubt then you must find Ms Lee not guilty and the issue of insanity is irrelevant.”
The question of insanity came into play if the jury found Lee deliberately administered the drug, and it was a substantial and operative cause of the children’s death, the judge said.
“If the defence satisfy you Ms Lee did suffer from disease of the mind, then you must consider whether this meant she did not understand her actions in killing Minu and Yuna were morally wrong.”
The jury were also asked by Justice Venning not to let sympathy influence their decision.
“It’s natural to feel sympathy for the young children who are killed. It’s also natural to feel someone should be held responsible for their deaths.
“On the other hand, some of you may feel sympathy for the defendant.”
He told the jury they must be objective, but to come to their verdicts on the basis of the evidence they’d heard, and to do so fairly to both parties.
“You are acting as judges.”
Lee attended the trial via video link, not speaking or raising her head. Justice Venning noted this demeanour, reminding the 12 jurors that her lack of engagement did not go against her and her case.
He concluded his brief summary by reminding jurors that people make decisions in their everyday lives based on what they hear and read about issues.
“And that’s really what you have to do in deciding whether Ms Lee was guilty or not guilty in this case.”
Lee has represented herself, but her insanity defence is being delivered on behalf of her standby counsel.
Criminal defence lawyer Lorraine Smith began her closing remarks yesterday by asking the trial’s key question:
“How does Jasmine Lee go from mother, father, two children, to taking her children’s life and become the woman who has appeared on our screen in this courtroom over the last two weeks?”
Smith said the answer can be summarised in two words.
“Mental illness.”
She described Lee as a fragile person, whose inability to cope with adding her husband to the list of those she’d lost went unnoticed due to her dwindling support system.
“In early 2018, her social circle shrinks to nothing.
“So we have this vicious cycle of more isolation and the people who knew Jasmine were not around to see what was happening.”
Smith told the jury the Crown’s theory was superficially attractive, but disintegrates under closer inspection.
She said the Crown’s theory that Lee wanted to leave within days, if not hours, of the deaths doesn’t stack up, given she didn’t leave until July 19 – on a return ticket.
“Imagine what the Crown would have said to you if Jasmine had booked a one-way ticket for herself in early June.”
Smith added that keeping her items in a storage unit doesn’t fit with someone intending to leave for good, and questioned why a supposedly cold, calculated person would keep all of the family’s belongings.
Smith said Lee wasn’t living under a false identity in Korea, having kept her last name and date of birth.
The name change, Smith said, “is more relevant to Korean ideas about fate, luck and superstition”.
Smith pointed to their sole witness, forensic psychiatrist Dr Yvette Kelly, who found Lee to be struggling with a major depressive disorder at the time of the killings.
She told the jury to take Kelly’s word that Lee was suffering from delusions at the time, evidenced by the fact Lee thought she’d caused her father and husband’s deaths by bringing bad luck on the family.
She said Kelly’s later revision of her stance, that Lee didn’t know she was morally wrong, was based on a speculative timeline.
The Crown suggested Lee made purchases such as bin bags, and changed her name, ahead of killing her children.
“The Crown asks you to ignore the fact that these actions were equally consistent with other reasons. Namely, a plan to pack up the house because they’re all going to Korea, and hoping for a new start with a lucky name.”
Smith told the jury the Crown’s argument “needs you to treat Jasmine as a mentally healthy woman, who was taking rational steps to kill her children – and they can’t do that".
The jury was also warned against guesswork and speculation, as Smith reiterated claims prosecutors pieced together a case from an investigation that started four years after the event.
Throughout the trial, Lee has attended via video link, sitting still with her hands clasped and her head bowed.
Smith referenced this demeanour when challenging the Crown’s claims that Lee told multiple lies during her evolving account of events.
She said prosecutors were wrong about Lee’s forgetfulness and confusion, and it was a result of her mental state.
“She’s not a liar, ladies and gentlemen. She’s mentally unwell. You’ve seen her, she barely has the will to lift her head.”
Addressing the jury this morning for the final time, Crown lawyer Natalie Walker reminded jurors of how Lee came to be found in a South Korean psychiatric hospital, four years after she and her children disappeared.
Lee had managed to get in contact with her mother’s pastor, who spoke to her over the phone in June 2022.
Walker said the pastor was aware Lee’s two children had been missing for some time, and asked what happened to them.
“To which she replied, ‘I have no children’,” Walker told the court.
“This was the first in a series of lies told by the defendant, Ms Lee, in relation to the deaths of her daughter, Yuna Jo, and son, Minu Jo.
“Her mother asked the same question and was told the same lie.”
Walker said she wanted to illustrate to the jury how much of an unreliable historian Lee was.
“The only evidence of her defence – that she attempted suicide and took her children’s lives as she didn’t want them to live without both parents – comes only from her.”
Walker said Lee had provided five different accounts about the deaths of her children since 2022. The prosecutor suggested none was true.
“First is that she had no children. Second, that she had the children but she left them behind in an institution.
“Third, that someone murdered her children, she knew who it was but it wasn’t her. Fourth, she was the person who killed her children by drug overdose but was suffering from a major depressive disorder at the time and thought it was the right thing to do.
“And fifth and finally, that voices told her to kill her children and she still thought it was the right thing to do.”
The potential that Lee planned her actions has formed a part of the Crown’s argument.
Walker reminded the jury of PlayStation data suggesting the children were alive at the same time Lee was purchasing a courier envelope on June 27, used to apply for a name change the same day.
Receipts showed Lee also went to Mitre 10 and purchased wheelie bin liners and duct tape, which the Crown said could have been used to conceal her children’s bodies.
All this, Walker said, meant it would be fair for the jury to infer the killings were intentional, and not the spontaneous actions of someone severely mentally unwell.
Walker said it was this timeline that shifted the position of the only defence witness, forensic psychiatrist Dr Yvette Kelly.
During cross-examination last week, Kelly appeared to reassess her findings that Lee was unaware what she was doing was morally wrong.
However, Kelly maintained Lee had a disease of the mind.
But Walker said the evidence of Crown witness forensic psychiatrist Erik Monasterio disputed this claim.
Monasterio accepted Lee was likely depressed, and suffering from a complex and prolonged grief reaction.
But he believed she was not impaired, adding that major depression was common in the community.
Walker also spoke of the effort Lee went to, on her own, to wrap her two dead children in three layers of plastic bags.
“Each of which she knotted, then lifted into the next layer, then knotted, lifted into the next layer, then knotted, then lifted and put into the suitcase ... it’s quite unimaginable.
“And yet, that’s what she did.”
Walker finished by telling the jury there were no grounds for an insanity defence.
“It was not the altruistic act of the mother who had lost her mind and believed it was the morally right thing to do – it was the opposite.
“Ms Lee deliberately and in sound mind murdered Minu and Yuna, and the right verdicts are verdicts of guilty.”
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