Philip Polkinghorne murder trial: Judge tells jurors to not allow emotion to influence verdict

WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT

After 51 days the judge in Remuera eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne’s murder trial has delivered a final summary of the case before jurors head into deliberations tomorrow.

Today’s session began with defence lawyer Ron Mansfield KC finishing his closing address to jurors before Justice Graham Lang explained to the jury what was required when reaching a verdict and making a final summary of both the Crown and defence cases.

Polkinghorne, 71, has been on trial since July in the High Court at Auckland, accused by prosecutors of having fatally strangled his wife Pauline Hanna, 63, inside their Remuera home before staging the scene on the morning of April 5, 2021, to look like a suicide by hanging.

Justice Lang told jurors they must decide the verdict free of any sympathy or prejudice, which he said could be evoked in “numerous ways” in this case.

“Don’t allow emotion, sympathy or prejudice guide or in any way influence your deliberations,” Justice Lang urged, “Simply focus on the evidence.”

He said the Crown had submitted Hanna likely received the finger-mark injuries on one of her arms, the bruise on her skull, an abrasion to her nose and a graze on her back during a struggle.

The Crown also pointed to a small cut on Polkinghorne’s forehead, which he did not have the day before Hanna’s death.

Justice Lang said the Crown also said the jury could look beyond the pathology and at Polkinghorne’s conduct before Hanna died.

As far back as October 2018, the Crown argued, Polkinghorne had expressed an interest in moving to Australia and setting up a life with escort Madison Ashton.

The Crown also submitted there was a degree of threatening or violent behaviour before Hanna’s death, Justice Lang continued.

For example, he said they pointed to Hanna’s friends the Riordans claiming she told them Polkinghorne had put his hands around her neck before, and she mimed being strangled.

As well as this the Crown highlighted Polkinghorne’s conduct after Hanna’s death, including deleting his WhatsApp history, searching how to delete iCloud history and searching the term “leg edema following strangulation” on covert search platform DuckDuckGo.

The central theme of the defence case, Justice Lang said, was that the police did not have an open mind from an early stage.

He referenced Mansfield’s submission that the evidence does not support homicidal strangulation and that Hanna tragically took her own life.

Justice Lang recalled Dr Stephen Cordner told the jury that they would normally expect to find significant injuries in the areas where pressure was applied on the neck, which there were not.

Mansfield emphasised that the jury can’t read much into Polkinghorne’s dalliances with sex workers, and Hanna had previously participated herself, Justice Lang said.

He told the jury Mansfield submitted they cannot underestimate the extent other factors were having on Hanna’s mental health at the time of her death.

At times it appeared she was sending emails “all night” then going to work “all day”, Justice Lang says the defence suggested.

Adding to this, Hanna was taking a complicated variety of pharmaceutical drugs, according to the defence. She was on the anti-depressant Prozac, the weight loss pill Duromine, zopiclone for sleep and she was drinking alcohol.

Mansfield argued it was not a “realistic prospect” that Polkinghorne had been able to kill his wife without leaving trace evidence you would expect, like scuff marks or blood on the wall, Justice Lang said.

Mansfield said it was not surprising Polkinghorne deleted his messages as he would not have wanted anyone to see his communications with Madison Ashton and others.

The defence also submitted Polkinghorne had looked up “leg edema following strangulation” as he found Hanna’s legs in a funny position, Justice Lang says.

During the Crown’s day-long closing address earlier this week, Polkinghorne was described as a highly intelligent and arrogant “master manipulator” who also had a concerning methamphetamine habit and a yearning to end his 24-year marriage and start a new life with Sydney escort Madison Ashton. The Crown repeatedly said that suicide “makes no sense” and gave two alternative theories: either Polkinghorne got in an impromptu argument with his wife and lashed out at her or surprised her as she slept in a pre-meditated killing.

In his final response today, Mansfield accused the Crown of being derelict in their duties by not pinning down when, where, why or how Hanna was killed in their theory.

“Let’s keep our options open,” he said with sarcasm. “It’s only a murder trial, after all.”

Mansfield also emphasised Hanna’s multiple suicide risk factors that mental health experts who gave evidence agreed on. He said she was a perfectionist, worried about professional disgrace, she was mourning the recent death of her mother, she reported prior thoughts of self-harm and she had a dangerous combination of alcohol and sleeping pills. He blamed Hanna’s work for not proactively reducing her hours when they saw she was sending work emails at all hours of the night.

He noted that taking a meal to friends and taking items to the tip the day before she died might be seen as signs of suicidal thinking, but more likely killing herself was a spur-of-the-moment decision in the middle of the night.

“There is no more lonely place when you’re already feeling low than the early hours of the morning,” he said. “At that time, when you’re that low, it is the darkest place to be. It is dark, it is bleak, it is desperate and that is where Pauline was likely to be woken to.”

He also went through some of the darkest moments found in her emails. In March 2019: “I cannot live if that is the result that I got it wrong,” she said of the prospect her husband didn’t love her. “I am lost.”

Mansfield said: “That sadly tells us a lot.”

In November 2019, during an accidentally recorded 24-minute conversation with her brother and niece, she called her husband a “sex fiend” and said he was angry at the world but also said at one point “I’ve considered just chucking myself off a bridge”. The Crown said it was an offhand comment, but Mansfield said it had to be interpreted in the context of all her other self-harm comments.

In early January 2020, in the early draft of a letter she wrote Polkinghorne after he disappeared for several days over Christmas, she said: “Right now I feel very scared, confused, sad and incredibly lonely.” She wrote an email to herself in April 2020 in which she said she was tired and not herself.

“I am never good enough despite my efforts,” she wrote. “I want desperately to tell someone and cry and ask for help but everyone seems to think I’m amazing and does not want to know that I have foibles and failings.

“... So I will go to bed and not sleep. V unusual for me – and it builds up – who knows what might follow. Have to tell someone even if no one but God ever sees this.”

In May 2020, she told family it was her first full day off in eight weeks and that she had “mixed emotions” about her new job helping to manage the Covid-19 response and that she had been “criticised and bullied and it has been incredibly brutal”.

Mansfield recounted a conversation in January 2021, recounted by a former corporate climber turned Anglican priest Gillian Reid, in which Hanna said she was struggling to do her job well.

“She was working longer and longer and harder and harder,” Reid testified. “She did not look well. This was a woman who was very stressed and struggling to handle what was going on around her.”

Then on March 28, 2021, exactly one week before her death, she wrote to her son-in-law and his wife: “My life is insane and I do not know what day it is sometimes. I (reluctantly) took this role as Head of Logistics for Vaccine. I did not want to. But Philip was so proud of me when Outbreak happened, I thought he would be proud of this – which I guess he is – but it is incredibly difficult and lonely.”

In the seven days before her death, Hanna was sending work emails at all hours of the day, including times when most people would be sleeping.

“Are you seriously about to believe that she wasn’t a suicide risk?” the lawyer asked as he began to wrap up his argument. “Is what I’m suggesting to you a stretch?”

Hanna was a beautiful and competent woman, “but she didn’t always see it that way”, he said.

“She had vulnerabilities – it’s a reality ... There were friends who would have dropped anything had they known how poor a state she was in – including Philip. But no one saw through that veneer because she didn’t want anyone to know.”

It’s fine, he said, if some jurors “are not able to shake the image of a dirty old man who didn’t realise how good he had it with Pauline”. They might even think his treatment of her contributed to her suicide risk factors, he said.

But jurors would be “emotional vigilantes” to find Polkinghorne guilty of anger towards him and sympathy towards Hanna when he didn’t do it, Mansfield added.

“There is no justice for Pauline if you ignore her vulnerabilities and ignore the decision she took,” he said. “The decision you make must be made on the evidence.

“If you believe the need for evidence for a case before you convict a man ... you already know the correct verdict in this case and it’s not necessary for me to tell you.”

Katie Harris is an Auckland-based journalist who covers issues including sexual assault, workplace misconduct, media, crime and justice. She joined the Herald in 2020.

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.