WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT
Two weeks ago today, the Crown’s final witness was called in the high-profile murder trial of Auckland eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne.
But police forensic data analyst Jun Lee made an encore trip to the witness box today, picking up largely where he left off on what has turned out to be a narrow but lasting point of contention between the Crown and the defence: Did Pauline Hanna open her phone’s messaging app around 4am on the morning she was found dead?
The answer, Lee said with confidence as he spent several more hours giving evidence, was no. The defence, citing their own IT expert who has not finished testifying, adamantly disagreed.
Polkinghorne, 71, is accused of having strangled Hanna, 63, inside their Remuera home before staging the scene on April 5, 2021, to look like a suicide. The Crown’s circumstantial case has relied on evidence about the defendant’s methamphetamine use, his significant spending on sex workers, an alleged “double life” with Sydney escort Madison Ashton and witness accounts of a prior strangulation outcry by Hanna.
The defence, meanwhile, has spent the past two weeks focused largely on Hanna’s mental health, including evidence of her work stress, a 2019 call to her doctor reporting suicidal ideation, an alleged self-harm outcry to her sister in the 1990s and the “cocktail” of drugs she was taking for sleeping, weight loss and depression.
The trial, originally scheduled for six weeks, is now in its seventh week - with an eighth week now inevitable, according to Justice Graham Lang, and the strong possibility of a ninth.
A police examination of Hanna’s phone indicated it was put into sleep mode at 10.47pm on April 4 and not used again before authorities arrived at the couple’s home around 8am the following morning responding to Polkinghorne’s 111 call.
But defence lawyer Ron Mansfield KC has said Hanna’s phone had logged two “identity lookup” interactions around 4am on the morning of her death. It was an indication, the lawyer suggested, that Hanna’s iPhone had been used at that time to draft two iMessage texts – one to her husband and another to the teen daughter of a friend. If that was the case, the messages were deleted before they were sent and their contents are unknown, jurors were told.
The defence has implied the supposed messages could have been aborted goodbye notes as Hanna contemplated suicide. If jurors decide the evidence is sufficient to conclude that Hanna was on the phone at 4am, it will also significantly reduce the timeframe for when she died.
Lee’s direct examination by prosecutors today was largely an echo of his previous trip to the witness box but with more certainty. He told jurors he had double-checked the data on Hanna’s phone in the time since he last testified and is now more convinced than ever that the defence interpretation was flat wrong.
The phone would have logged separate entries had she picked up the phone and turned it on around that time, Lee said, reiterating that there were no such entries. He said the iMessage “identity lookup” log was something that happened in the background of the phone as a protection against phishing attempts, requiring no user interaction.
During two hours of cross-examination that followed, the defence attempted to set up a mutually exclusive scenario for jurors: either they’ll trust Lee’s assessment or believe the opposite assessment from defence witness Atakan Shahho, a longtime IT business operator from Australia who started giving evidence yesterday before returning overseas. He is expected to continue testifying, this time via audio-video feed, tomorrow.
“He’s going to tell us ... he doesn’t accept that it’s, as you say, background activity,” Mansfield told the Crown witness.
Lee pointed out that the same background activity was seen to run on the phone on April 8, three days after Hanna’s death - another indication, he said, that logs can be created without direct interaction. Mansfield suggested that would have been because the police were using Hanna’s phone at that time to extract data.
Lee’s evidence is expected to continue tomorrow. The judge decided to pause his testimony with an hour left in the day because another witness was waiting to testify via audio-video feed from Europe, where it was early in the morning.
Sydney-based psychiatrist Dr Olav Neilssen was another familiar face to jurors, having started his testimony in person on Friday. But the suicide expert had not yet been cross-examined by the Crown by the end of last week, so he returned today.
Neilssen agreed with the defence lawyer last week that there were numerous risk factors for suicide in Hanna’s life even if she presented to others as as vivacious and outgoing. She had been taking the anti-depressant Prozac for over 20 years, had been on an amphetamine weight-loss drug for much longer than was generally recommended, had acknowledged to her doctor that she had a troubled relationship with alcohol and a hair test showed she had been using Zopiclone - a sleeping pill that had been prescribed to her husband - for months.
The witness also noted there was statistically “a hundred-fold increased probability of subsequent suicide” for someone who has self-harmed in the past.
Crown solicitor Alysha McClintock noted today that some of the witness’ information about Hanna’s situation was from what Polkinghorne said in his police interview. Relying on a murder suspect’s description for a diagnosis would be problematic, she insinuated.
The psychiatrist noted that insomnia can be a sign of depression, and Hanna was sending work emails at all hours of the night. The prosecutor asked him if he had seen testimony from Hanna’s supervisor in which Hanna said she preferred to send late emails and work was her “happy place”. But it would be concerning regardless, Neilssen responded.
“It’s all very well to say that. But objectively it doesn’t look quite right,” he explained.
McClintock later changed the focus to Polkinghorne, asking the defence witness about homicide risk factors. Neilssen agreed that prior violence such as a non-fatal strangulation would be a risk factor, as might be disinhibition due to drug use.
Today’s hearing ended with Justice Graham telling jurors that he was going to allow one of them to be dismissed, reducing the group to eight women and three men. The juror had personal commitments that only came into play as it became evident the trial would extend overschedule into next week.
”The other issues you face in your life are much more important,” the judge said, expressing regret that carrying on without her was the most feasible result after having committed to her civic duty for six-and-a-half weeks.
It is currently expected that closing addresses will be completed and Justice Lang will sum up the case on Tuesday or Wednesday, after which deliberations will begin.
The trial is set to resume tomorrow morning.
READ LIVE UPDATES FROM TODAY’S HEARING
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
The Herald will be covering the case in a daily podcast, Accused: The Polkinghorne Trial. You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, through The Front Page feed, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The Police Association supports cameras but worries about costs.