Philip Polkinghorne’s defence team has begun its case in his murder trial, telling jurors there’s no evidence of a crime being committed.
Warning: This article contains content that could be disturbing to some people.
Polkinghorne, 71, denies the Crown’s accusation that he killed his wife Pauline Hanna in their Auckland home at Easter 2021 and staged it to look like a suicide. His lawyer Ron Mansfield told the jury this morning the case comes down to “murder 101”.
“You don’t need a motive if a crime hasn’t been committed, and you don’t need a motive if there has been no murder,” he said.
Mansfield stood in front of the jurors, addressing them directly at the High Court in Auckland.
Shortly before, Polkinghorne walked into court with supporters — his family — for the first time since the trial started in late July.
“You might want to give some thought about what you actually know of him [rather] than allowing you to be distracted, or intoxicated like the police were, about drug use and relationships outside of the [marital] unit,” Mansfield said.
He told jurors police should have “stood back” because there was no evidence at all of culpable homicide.
Police were seeking to prove a crime that hadn’t happened, he added.
The defence has always maintained Polkinghorne woke up on April 5, 2021, and found his wife already dead by suicide.
The trial, in its opening stages, heard about police carrying out a so-called tension test on a rope.
In his opening, Mansfield cast judgement against a “relatively junior officer who fails to report anything he’s doing”.
“Suddenly everything looks suspicious, he does this tension check, he doesn’t record it, he doesn’t have anyone else record it,” he told the jury. “But that sets off the next train of inquiry or investigation because he’s thinking ‘that wouldn’t hold anybody’.
“He hadn’t bothered to see what Dr Polkinghorne was saying when he was being interviewed by consent by another officer,” he said.
Mansfield told jurors that, while they might be disappointed to find a person like Polkinghorne using meth, it didn’t diminish his control.
“There is no evidence he was unable to control his emotions.”
As the police investigation dragged on both in time and cost, there was more of a pressing need for a result, Mansfield suggested.
“It’s like a junket, it just gets bigger and bigger,” he told the jury.
He said there was an “absence of evidence” at the couple’s Remuera home of any fatal assault: “But what you do have at the scene is entirely consistent with what Dr Polkinghorne told police when he was interviewed on the 5th, that day.”
Polkinghorne had given police a full explanation, Mansfield said.
“And you’ve had the opportunity to hear the harrowing call by this man seeking help, albeit it was too late.”
Mansfield said there was no evidence at the scene or on Hanna’s body to show a killing.
“It would have to be a perfect murder. Can I suggest it was not?
“Pauline sadly was — despite all outward appearances, and only known to a few — a high risk for suicide,” he said.
He told the jury he would call evidence about whether Hanna was at risk of self harm while on the prescription drugs she was taking.
The court has heard previously it would be drawing links with the weight loss drug Duromine.
Hanna’s family is also at court.
Polkinghorne, who often uses a laptop during the trial, had the computer shut and looked at the jury as his lawyer outlined his defence.
Mansfield today urged jurors not to be distracted by a marriage that was not conventional and had outside relationships.
Polkinghorne will not be giving evidence himself in his defence, the jury was told.
Mansfield said that, while Polkinghorne’s police interview was not under oath, what he said at the time could not be more reliable.
Hanna’s sister tears up in court
Mansfield’s first witness was Tracey Hanna, Pauline Hanna’s sister who lives in London. She began crying recounting an evening decades ago when Pauline Hanna and their mother were having a serious argument in the kitchen.
“It escalated, Pauline was having a very emotional kind of crisis, she was shouting and crying, my mother was crying which was unusual for my mother.”
Tracey Hanna said she walked into the kitchen to find out what was going on.
“And then I intervened and I said to her, ‘Why are you upsetting mum so badly, this is awful’, I was really angry,” she told jurors.
“And then she turned her anger onto me … and then all of a sudden she …”
At this point Tracey Hanna began crying.
“She said that she tried to kill herself … and she flashed her arms up at me … as if to say she’d tried to harm herself,” she said.
Tracey Hanna, who is 11 years younger than Pauline, said she was 20 or 21 at the time.
“Of course I should’ve followed up and looked after her, but if I can give context, I was a very unworldly 21-year-old at the time.
“And in the ’80s and ’90s in New Zealand we didn’t talk about mental health or suicidal ideation, it was all a shameful secret,” she said.
“I was completely unqualified to deal with this and I didn’t know what to do.”
The argument and incident was never mentioned between the sisters again. Tracey Hanna said at a later point Pauline Hanna made a comment about taking pills, which she took to mean her sister was on medication.
She told jurors she never saw anything untoward in Pauline and Polkinghorne’s relationship, adding she never saw him trying to control her spending.
“And if he tried he clearly didn’t succeed well.”
Mansfield asked if Polkinghorne ever demeaned Pauline or put her down.
“I never saw that,” Tracey Hanna said.
Tracey Hanna last saw her sister in 2019, and in the time leading up to Pauline’s death in 2021, she said her sister never talked with her about her relationship.
Their brother Bruce, an earlier Crown witness, told Tracey that Polkinghorne was having an affair with a woman in Australia, but Tracey never brought this up with Pauline.
“I suppose I felt it was none of my business and I thought if she wanted me to know she would’ve told me,” she said.
Tracey Hanna said Pauline was very proud of her health administration job, was committed to her community and worked long hours.
She said Pauline would use the phrase “things have turned to custard” to indicate there was a lot of pressure on her.
But she also said Pauline “gave the persona” that she was in control and on top of those pressures.
Mansfield produced an email sent to family members in which she wrote about having a first day off in eight weeks.
“Awful isn’t it, not having a day off in eight weeks is naturally quite concerning,” Pauline Hanna said.
The cross examination by the Crown reached a prolonged heated point.
Crown prosecutor Brian Dickey asked why their brother Bruce, who had a close relationship with Pauline, didn’t know about what the defence says was Pauline’s 1992 suicide attempt.
“Are you suggesting I’m lying”? Tracey Hanna replied.
“I take offence.”
“He wasn’t there at the time,” she said.
Dickey pressed Tracey Hanna on which hospital Pauline had gone to at the time of the supposed attempt, but she said Pauline did not tell her and she did not ask.
“She didn’t offer much other than she tried to kill herself, I wasn’t going to sit there questioning her,” she said.
“Why not?” Dickey asked.
“Because she was upset, she was having an emotional breakdown, you don’t sit there and go ‘oh what hospital did you go to’,” she replied.
“I was completely inadequate, and I regret it deeply. I’m not lying, that’s what Pauline told me.”
Dickey continued to press Tracey Hanna and their exchanges remained heated.
“I feel completely inadequate, and you’re making me feel inadequate right now,” she told him forcefully.
She told the court emphatically that her sister killed herself.
At the end of her tense evidence, Justice Lang told Tracey Hanna she was free to go.
“Thank God, thank you, and thanks to the jury for all your time on this,” she said before walking past Polkinghorne and leaving court.
More defence witnesses after opening case
Polkinghorne’s first wife, and mother of his three children, was the next to give evidence for the defence. She was not able to be named.
The two separated in 1991, with Polkinghorne having an affair. She said her ex-husband was never threatening or violent.
The next witness, Gillian Reid, lived near the Coromandel beach house that has often come up during the trial. She detailed how she and Pauline Hanna would sometimes talk when Hanna felt she needed advice.
She had known the couple for more than 30 years. Reid recalled a conversation in January 2021 when Hanna was struggling with her job and workload as a health administrator during the Covid response.
“It was a role of significant stress for her and she felt she was struggling to actually do it well,” Reid said. “She was just working longer and longer hours and working harder and harder, and that was beginning to show, she did not look well.”
The witness said Hanna had lost a lot of weight and was “very stressed” and she felt she was being blamed for a bad and unusable batch of Covid-19 vaccines.
“She felt overworked, under resourced and she most certainly was under stress and not happy,” Reid later told Crown prosecutor Brian Dickey in cross examination.
Another defence witness, David Daniels, owned the beach house immediately next to Polkinghorne and Hanna and had known Polkinghorne for 27 years.
Daniels said he never saw Polkinghorne using drugs, had never seen him get angry or aggressive, and noticed no changes in his behaviour.
“Did you ever hear any yelling or screaming, or loud or concerning arguments?” Ron Mansfield asked. Daniels replied that he had not. “He can be quite eccentric… he’s quite a funny guy,” he said.
The defence also raised earlier evidence from one of Hanna’s long-time friends, Pheasant Riordan, who told the trial Hanna would make excuses for Polkinghorne in social settings.
One time, Hanna told people Polkinghorne was having a problem with his contact lens and wanted to go, Riordan said.
“So she went with him. She would make excuses for Philip,” she said in her evidence.
The defence today wanted to show that situation was legitimate.
Optometrist Irene Lien said she was working at SpecSavers in Hastings in 2020 when Polkinghorne came in.
She said she checked his eyes but couldn’t find a lens or broken lens.
But Lien added: “Sometimes when you try to remove a contact lens it has already fallen out and you can sometimes scratch your eye and cause a bit of irritation that feels as if something is still in the eye.”
The trial was scheduled to resume on Monday.