Philip Polkinghorne trial: Mental health experts final two witnesses as defence finishes

WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT

After seven straight weeks of testimony involving more than 80 witnesses, both sides have finished presenting evidence in the high-profile murder trial of eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne.

Justice Graham Lang instructed jurors early this afternoon, after the final witness had left the courtroom, to return to the High Court at Auckland on Monday for the Crown’s lengthy closing address. The defence will give a closing address on Tuesday, with deliberations expected to start Wednesday.

Jurors are probably distrustful regarding timing predictions by now, Justice Lang joked of the unusually lengthy trial, which was initially scheduled to be finished in six weeks but now has the potential – depending on how long the jury deliberates – of stretching into a ninth week. However, the plans from this point on are relatively firm, he said.

Polkinghorne, now 71, was charged with murder in August 2022 – 16 months after wife Pauline Hanna, 63, was found dead in their Remuera home. The defence has been adamant that her death was exactly as it initially seemed – a suicide by partial hanging in the entryway of their home that had taken place sometime overnight while Polkinghorne was sleeping. The Crown, however, has presented a much more nefarious picture in which the surgeon strangled his wife of 24 years and then staged the scene to look like a suicide.

Prosecutors spent more than four weeks calling evidence that focused on, among other things, Polkinghorne’s methamphetamine usage, the hundreds of thousands of dollars he spent on sex workers, his alleged “double life” with Sydney escort Madison Ashton and an alleged prior outcry by Hanna in which two witnesses said she reported her husband had strangled her non-fatally.

Ashton did not testify and neither did Polkinghorne. His sister, who arrived at the scene before paramedics and police, was also not called by either side to the witness box.

The defence has sought to dismiss much of the sex and drugs evidence as irrelevant. The past two-and-a-half weeks has focused largely on Hanna’s mental health, which included a decades-long prescription for Prozac, revelations in her own emails noting at-times-intense work stress, a call to her GP in December 2019 reporting thoughts of suicide and an alleged outcry to her sister in the early 1990s about a previous attempt at self-harm.

The final witnesses today did not stray from that theme.

Dr Sarah Hetrick, a psychologist and University of Auckland associate professor who also serves as the principal clinical adviser to the Ministry of Health’s Suicide Prevention Office, was quizzed by the defence about “myths” surrounding suicide.

It’s untrue, she said, that “A-type” high achievers are immune from suicide. It’s also untrue that those who have something to live for, like family or upcoming events, are immune, she said. Hanna has been described as a successful health administrator who was looking forward in coming weeks to celebrating the opening of a major Covid-19 vaccination centre followed by a South Island holiday with friends.

“The evidence shows that suicide unfortunately touches every group, type of person,” Hetrick said. “Suicide touches all socio-economic groups, it touches all professions.”

Having close loved ones and things to look forward to can be protective against suicide risk, but distress can overwhelm those protective features at times, she said, adding that many people are good at putting up a front professionally even when they are in distress.

It’s also a myth that most people leave suicide notes, Hetrick said, explaining that it only seems to apply to about 25% of cases. There was no note found in the Polkinghorne home.

“I think people want there to be a note because it’s bewildering,” she said. “They hope for an explanation. Even where there is a note, they often don’t contain any explanation.”

While risk factors are widely studied and are important, “the science is very clear” they don’t help predict if an individual is suicidal, she said. It was a sentiment echoed by fellow Auckland University professor and psychiatrist David Menkes, who began giving evidence yesterday afternoon and returned to the witness box this morning.

Suicide can be “notoriously difficult to predict”, Menkes said, explaining that he had no way of knowing if Hanna had been suicidal.

“There will be some people for whom the risk is quite apparent,” he explained. “There will be other people for whom ... it seems to come out of the blue ...

“There is no pattern of risk that has been proven to be clinically useful.”

Both experts also agreed that there’s often no evidence of a detailed or long-term plan for those who commit suicide. In a study of people who survived suicide attempts, about half of them had come up with the idea only 10 or 20 minutes before they tried to carry it out, Menkes said. In some cases, it was as little as five minutes, Hetrick later added.

During cross-examination by Crown solicitor Alysha McClintock, Menkes was asked to explain the difference between suicidal thoughts and suicide plans. When Hanna called her GP in December 2019, she said she was having suicidal thoughts but didn’t have a plan in place.

Suicidal thoughts are relatively common, Menkes agreed, noting that there is a distinction made between thoughts and plans in psychiatry.

It’s relevant, McClintock suggested, that when Hanna was feeling low in 2019 she wasn’t afraid to reach out for help. Menkes agreed, but said it was concerning that there had been no follow-up as was advised. He also noted that Hanna hadn’t seen her GP in person in the two years prior to her death.

McClintock also pointed out that Hanna, who was known by everyone to be immaculately put together, was in a dishevelled state when authorities found her body. Menkes agreed with her that was the case, and that there would have likely been enough methamphetamine or sleeping pills in the house for a lethal dose.

The prosecution then listed a number of habits that were considered protective behaviours against suicide risk: having a high-responsibility work role, close relationships with family, regular exercise, still functioning socially and occupationally, and catching up with friends. Menkes agreed, but he added that someone who was so socially connected might have experienced a sense of isolation during the Covid lockdowns.

“She certainly had depressive symptoms on and off, but I think they were variable,” Menkes said, explaining there was no evidence of a sustained depressive illness. “She seems to suffer with quite variable mood for many years.”

The Crown closing address is set to begin at 10am on Monday.

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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.