THREE KEY FACTS
Steve Braunias is an award-winning New Zealand journalist, author, columnist and editor.
OPINION
Nearly there. Nearly done, this murder trial for the ages, this dangerously addictive saga set out these past seven weeks at one of New Zealand’s prettiest government department buildings, the red and white candybox of the Auckland High Court. The defence of murder-accused Dr Philip Polkinghorne is due to call its final witnesses. It will soon be over. No more long queues for sausage rolls at court cafe QCs; no more daily ritual for this reporter, this unshutupable criminal diarist, of catching the 101 bus from postcode 1011 at 9:11am.
What a trial; what a lot of evidence, from prosecution and defence; what a lot of stories and live crosses and various assorted journo yap, fanning the heat of an irresistible narrative - eminent surgeon (private membership at the Northern Club) from the nicer part of town ($4 million Remuera house decorated with two Hoteres and a McCahon) is accused of killing his wife as the depraved climax of an alleged double life (many prostitutes and in possession of 37 grams of methamphetamine). What a story. People love it.
The public have a right to gorge at the trough and it has been my righteous duty to help top it up with 25 - 25! - trial diaries so far, some 30,000 words telling what is either a horror story (murder) or a tragedy (suicide). Either telling shares the same devastatingly sad and violent fact. Pauline Hanna died on April 5, 2021. Cause of death was compression of the neck. She was 63. It has traumatised close friends and family - gee, you don’t say - and for much of these seven weeks a kind of vapour, something miasmic, has hung low over the courtroom.
There is a word for it. In the original Arabic, وهلة. In later, contemporary use in parts of Africa, wahala. In English, terror.
The terror of her death, as alleged by the Crown. The terror of her hanging, as proposed by Polkinghorne’s defence. The terror of whatever happened that night to leave a vivacious and adorable woman dead; Hanna, who made a Google search for Ranginui Walker’s classic work of Māori revisionist history, Struggle Without End, on the last night of her life; Hanna, who lamented Judith Collins losing to Ardern at the 2020 election; Hanna, no more.
Wahala. Terror. The Crown has asked the jury to imagine Polkinghorne killing his wife, maybe with a choker hold and perhaps in a methamphetamine rage, then carrying her down the stairs, perhaps in a fireman’s hold and maybe already summoning up the wherewithal to disguise her death as suicide. Must get belt, must get rope, must get chair… The choreography of it requires a special wickedness.
Terror. Wahala. The defence has asked the jury to imagine police sending in a bungling team of detectives who jumped to conclusions and destroyed the reputation of a grieving widower, made his life a misery that he continues to suffer throughout 30 days of a trial based on a false and monstrous premise. Another way of paraphrasing the defence position is they have asked the jury to imagine police sent in an elite team of clowns, that they created a comedy of terrors.
When I got off the 101 bus on Thursday morning at the university – my presence immediately plummeting the ambient IQ to beneath 100 – and walked through the grounds admiring the yew and the sequoia and the toothed lancewood, and got to court, and took out my Warwick 3B1 notebook, and got ready to record the first witness of the day, my heart sank to see that it was Ringo. His actual name is Jun Lee, a police IT forensic analyst, with the same doleful face and mop-top haircut of Ringo circa 1964. It was the third day Ringo has given evidence. He was being cross-examined by Ron Mansfield on dense technical matters. A hard day’s night lay ahead.
I put away my notebook and got the hell out – only as far as the nearby Pullman Hotel, where about 200 computer nerds had congregated for Dev Day Aotearoa 2024. Dev as in software developers, who would likely have welcomed Ringo into the fold. The day’s events at the annual conference included AI, cloud computing, and “next-gen tech”. I sat apart from the geeks and read the latest London Review of Books. When I returned to court three hours later, Ringo was still in the witness box. Honey, don’t.
The dense cross-exam was on an important point: whether Hanna had opened up the messaging app on her phone at about 4am on April 5, 2021, and accessed the numbers of Polkinghorne and a friend. No messages were sent but the defence implied that she may have been about to write a farewell note.
Ringo said the phone wasn’t accessed. Mansfield argued with him at great, very tiring length, and then he called another IT forensic analyst, who said the phone was accessed. Crown prosecutor Alysha McClintock argued with him, quite succinctly. Day 30 ended with another defence witness, a psychiatrist from Raglan, who breezed into court with the same louche kind of hipness associated with that seaside town.
Nearly done. Already done, for one juror, who was discharged on Wednesday for personal reasons. Eleven remain, probably on the High Court provisions of Cameo Cremes and Superwine biscuits at recesses, with tea bags, instant coffee and Milo arranged around a hot water urn. They sit around a snug round table with a whiteboard on the wall. They will have a lot to go over when the talking stops. More, in the meantime, to come, in this trial of terror, of wahala.
The Herald will be covering the case in a regular 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.
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