The final stages of the Polkinghorne murder trial are underway, with Crown prosecutors beginning their closing address to jurors today.
The trial is now in its eighth week.
Crown prosecutor Alysha McClintock wasted little time telling the jury about the Crown’s impressions of the 71-year-old murder accused.
Polkinghorne denies fatally strangling his wife and staging her death to look like a suicide in 2021.
His defence has said nothing sinister happened and he woke to find her already dead, highlighting her prescription pills and depression.
Large monitors in the courtroom were used this morning, including to show an image of Hanna’s covered body.
The public gallery at the High Court in Auckland was full to capacity.
Polkinghorne sat typing on his laptop during McClintock’s address, not looking up.
‘It isn’t suicide, it’s murder’
McClintock said the Crown case is that Polkinghorne took his wife’s life.
“It’s mind-boggling, you’ve got to handle a dead body, and it’s really hard to get your head around that,” she told the jury.
“There’s a lot to get your head around, but try, you must.
“And when you do, a picture emerges and it’s a clear picture, it’s not one of suicide, it’s one of homicide,” she said.
She said Hanna did not die by accident or by mistake at Easter 2021.
“It isn’t suicide, it’s a murder,” she said.
‘There is an arrogance in Dr Polkinghorne’
McClintock said police assumed the man who stood in front of them on Easter Monday, 2021, was a devastated husband.
They also assumed Hanna, lying on the floor and covered with a duvet, was a victim of suicide.
“Pauline Hanna’s death at first pass did look like a suicide,” she said. “It was meant to.”
She said police looked around, as per procedure, to assess the supposed suicide.
“So they did their job. They tested that rope, not expecting what happened next to happen next,” she said.
“Under minimal tension that rope fell the way to the ground, it seemed that things were not adding up.”
She told jurors some of them may think Polkinghorne could talk his way out of it.
“He never expected, you might think, to be at that police station in the first place… supposedly, the police should’ve just rubber-stamped this.
“They had questions… he talked about a whole range of things, but not a lot that was meaningful about his wife,” McClintock said.
“Pauline Hanna did not die tied to that rope. That’s why he couldn’t explain it,” she added.
“There is an arrogance in Dr Polkinghorne I suggest that you should not underestimate,” the jury was told.
“The Crown case is he has taken his wife’s life.
“As he blamed her in life, he blames her in death.”
‘You need to keep all the evidence in mind’
McClintock urged jurors to keep all of the several weeks of evidence in mind.
“What was he doing in the lead-up to that night? What was he doing immediately after that night?
“Because all of those things need to be looked at as well. Do his actions support his claim that his wife committed suicide?” she asked.
McClintock said Polkinghorne had manipulated evidence, deleting messages and making a blood mark on stairs in their home.
“That sort of testing of the evidence in this case is particularly telling, I suggest to you,” she said.
McClintock said the murder trial is determined by evidence from people who saw, knew and loved Hanna.
“And it’s determined by her own voice, in her emails, and her letters.
“She was not a woman who had given up. She was a woman whose husband was giving up on her.”
‘Living another life’
McClintock said Polkinghorne was an atypical man with “high levels of intelligence” and self-assurance.
“He was also living another life which you’ve heard about, he was living in another world.
“A world centred on Madison Ashton and their relationship, which, at least in his mind, was their future,” she said.
McClintock said it was clear in Polkinghorne’s mind he saw his future with the Australian escort.
“In this world, there was secret financial support for a number of sex workers… that’s the evidence,” she said.
“And he had, I suggest, a problematic methamphetamine habit.
“There’s the two worlds, the one with his wife and the one with Madison Ashton and the problematic methamphetamine habit.
“They were always going to collide at some point, and collide they did on the night of 4 April 2021,” she said.
“Ms Hanna’s death was the result of that but not by her own hand, by the hand of her husband.”
Closing to last all day
The Crown closing is expected to last all of Monday.
Prosecutors moved on to highlighting a web search Polkinghorne made after his police interview the day his wife died.
The Crown said he did “a series of things” that are “telling and critical”.
McClintock called it “double deception” that he made the search in a private browser, DuckDuckGo.
She said the search of “leg edema after strangulation” unmasked a murderer and his actions were not those of a distraught husband.
“Surely, his wife who’d just taken her life, that’d be the very last thing on his mind,” McClintock said.
She said it appeared to be the “one and only thing searched” using the search method, suggesting Polkinghorne wanted anonymity.
“That search in no way fits with a man whose wife has committed suicide. It simply does not fit,” she said.
McClintock said Hanna “experienced challenges” in life, and there was no doubt about this.
“She had a number of suicide risk factors, that’s true.
“But it’s Pauline Hanna as of April 4, 2021, that matters,” she suggested, adding that Hanna was not at risk at this point.
