Philip Polkinghorne murder trial: Defence closing address to continue tomorrow

WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT

Despite Dr Philip Polkinghorne’s undisputed affinity for methamphetamine and sex workers, it would be an injustice if jurors were to use that information to return a verdict based on a “court of morals”, the eye surgeon’s lawyer said today as another full day was devoted to closing addresses in his unusual and high-profile murder trial.

“A lot of the trial has been invested in creating the villain that every murder mystery requires,” Ron Mansfield KC said, after having earlier blasted prosecutors for describing something more akin to an episode of Murder She Wrote than a credible murder case. “His entire lifestyle has been laid bare – I would say unnecessarily – seeking to create him as the villain that the Crown says he is.”

The addresses will continue for a third day tomorrow. The defence lawyer, who got off to a late start this morning so that the Crown could finish, has predicted he has one more hour of speaking left. After that, it is expected Justice Graham Lang will sum up the case to jurors, followed by the beginning of deliberations by mid-afternoon.

Polkinghorne, 71, has been on trial since late July, accused of having fatally strangled wife Pauline Hanna, 63, before staging the scene inside their Remuera home on April 5, 2021, to look like a suicide by hanging. Crown solicitor Alysha McClintock said the surgeon wanted his wife of 24 years out of his life for a variety of reasons – chief among them his fantasy of starting a new life with Sydney escort Madison Ashton.

But Mansfield insisted today that theory doesn’t add up. Any reading of the evidence not based on “emotion” and prejudice over the couple’s lifestyle would show it was a suicide, he argued.

Hanna was aware of Polkinyghorne’s involvement with Ashton and did not seem to be threatened by it, the defence lawyer said, noting that Hanna had made a group sex booking with the escort in 2016. The Crown has acknowledged the booking but argued that Hanna knew nothing of the serious, intimate nature of the relationship Polkinghorne and Ashton has developed in the years before her death. She told family in 2020 that she had stopped accompanying her husband to such activities a few years earlier.

“She doesn’t appear threatened by her,” Mansfield said today, describing “their” relationship with Ashton rather than “his” relationship.

“How people choose to lead their lives is very much a matter for them,” he added. “It would be wrong to blame Dr Polkinghorne for that or suggest that was all Dr Polkinghorne.

“They chose to be in a complex relationship. If it wasn’t a problem for her, what right do we have to make it a problem for us?”

While it was clear that Hanna didn’t want him developing a relationship with someone in Auckland, there was no indication she was against him seeing prostitutes, Mansfield said. But even if it did bother her, that just adds to the many suicide risk factors she was burdened with, he said.

And had Polkinghorne wanted so desperately to start a new life with Ashton., there was no need “for such a drastic step” as murder when they could have simply separated, the defence lawyer said.

“It is an absurd suggestion, which the Crown fully recognised,” Mansfield said, suggesting that is why prosecutors have been putting so much emphasis on his client’s meth use.

The Crown alleged Polkinghorne had a concerning dependency on the drug, based on the 37g – described as 370 doses, worth $13,000 – found inside the home. McClintock suggested to jurors during her address that Polkinghorne had a “toot” from the “Sweet Puff” brand pipe before confronting his wife with meth-fuelled courage. She suggested he either surprised his wife as she was sleeping in the guest room, killing her with pre-meditation, or he got into an argument with her and lashed out.

But having a bulk amount of methamphetamine in the house made perfect sense for a recreational user who happened to be in his tax bracket, Mansfield countered today, insisting there was no actual evidence he used the drug on the night of his wife’s death.

“Every time you engage in a methamphetamine purchase, you run the risk of apprehension,” Mansfield explained, noting that the substance doesn’t have an expiry date. “If you can afford it, it’s safer to buy in large quantities, one-off. It’s also cheaper.”

As for the meth-laced urine found in the toilet attached to the dishevelled guest bedroom, where Polkinghorne told police he hadn’t been, Mansfield told jurors “I accept that might interest you”.

But methamphetamine can remain in urine for up to five days, he said, arguing that unless it could be proven Polkinghorne used meth that night, it “has no relevance at all”. He noted that no paramedics or police officers reported signs of meth intoxication when they spoke to him that morning, nor did the detective who interviewed him for three hours.

“There is no suggestion from her at all he was under the influence of methamphetamine or appeared to be coming down from it,” the defence lawyer said of the video, in which Polkinghorne spoke in a fast-paced manner and seemed to have trouble organising his thoughts but was also friendly, conversational and could have been in shock.

Mansfield also focused briefly on Hanna’s alleged strangulation outcry in 2020, as described by two witnesses, and his search on an encrypted internet search app for “leg edema after strangulation”.

Hawke’s Bay couple John and Pheasant Riordan, both longtime friends of Hanna’s, described an incident at a restaurant in which Hanna placed her hands around her throat to demonstrate what she said her husband had done to her. Prosecutors pointed to it as one of the most important pieces of information for jurors to consider, quoting what John Riordan recalled telling Hanna at the time as he encouraged her to leave the relationship: if he’s done it once, he’ll do it again.

“I’m not going to suggest that Pheasant and John Riordan are liars,” Mansfield said before pointing to some minor inconsistencies in their statements. But he asked jurors to put more importance on Hanna’s own words when she told her niece in a recorded conversation: “I’m not physically battered... I am not abused... I am safe, darling. I am safe... I am not a doormat.”

He noted that the couple was “unified in the fact Pauline never mentioned or spoke of it again”, suggesting that it might have been because Hanna was either blackout drunk that night and didn’t remember the conversation or she was embarrassed over having told a lie.

The strangulation search, meanwhile, would have been telling if it had been before Hanna’s death but had no relevance since it was two days after, he suggested. The Crown’s suggestion that it “unmasks the murderer” is “just scare tactics and quite bizarre”, he said. At that point, his client knew police had suspected him of murder and it would have been obvious they thought it was via strangulation, Mansfield said.

“What he wants to know is what is causing their suspicion,” he said.

Jurors were released 30 minutes early this afternoon due to the foul weather. They are expected to return to the courtroom at 10am tomorrow for the final stretch of the trial, seven-and-half weeks after it began.

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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.