A second high-profile pathologist has told the Philip Polkinghorne murder trial he would have ruled the death of Pauline Hanna a suicide — if he was in charge of looking into it.
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The trial at the Auckland High Court is now in its seventh week, although it’s now fast approaching its final stages.
Polkinghorne, 71, is accused of killing his wife and staging it to look like a suicide at Easter 2021. His defence is that his wife, 63, ended her own life in their Auckland home and he woke to find her dead.
For weeks, lawyers in the trial have argued for and against Hanna’s death being a suicide.
From the trial’s first day, the Crown said a suicide does not add up.
Last week, defence witness Professor Stephen Cordner said evidence supported her death being self-inflicted.
A pathologist called by the Crown earlier in the trial could not say either way.
Today, Dr Christopher Milroy gave evidence by video link from Canada’s capital Ottawa.
When asked if Cordner had “gone too far” in his assessment, Milroy said the opinion was a reasonable one to give.
“I’ve considered this, as you might imagine, I would’ve given the cause of death as hanging,” he said.
He said there were features of Hanna’s death to support this.
“I don’t have concerns with giving an opinion of hanging,” he said.
“Of course, I’m aware it’s been raised this could be some other form of neck compression with a cover up, if you like, by suspending the victim after death.”
Milroy said he would have expected to see more injuries on Hanna if she had been fatally strangled.
“I really would expect if it was manual strangulation by throttling to see external injuries and internal injuries, especially in a lady of Ms Hanna’s age, damage in the voicebox structure.”
“Typically you would also see bruising in a manual strangulation, so I would exclude manual strangulation,” he said.
Turning to the possibility of ligature strangulation, he said internal injuries should be apparent because of a struggle. In a decades-long career, he is aware of one case where a homicide was disguised to look like a suicidal hanging.
Defence lawyer Ron Mansfield then asked about other injuries on Hanna’s body where a cause cannot be pinpointed. These are known as non-specific injuries.
Milroy agreed the injuries are non-specific and said they do not take either scenario, murder or suicide, further forward.
He also cast doubt on the Crown’s suggestions that Hanna’s use of the sedative Zopiclone could have stopped her fighting back.
Someone on the drug would be expected to wake up if attacked, he said.
Milroy, an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, is a sworn coroner. His university, the University of Ottawa, considers him a world-leading forensic pathologist.
He told Crown prosecutor Alysha McClintock under cross-examination he cannot recall a case of strangulation, he has dealt with, being at the hands of a medical practitioner.
Polkinghorne is an eye surgeon, now retired.
“Would you accept medical practitioners have a better understanding of the workings of the body than non-medical practitioners?” McClintock asked.
“Forensic pathologists and those who teach forensic medicine lament the lack of knowledge of their colleagues in general about forensic medicine issues,” Milroy replied.
McClintock asked Milroy if he agreed the so-called non-specific injuries could have been the result of an assault.
“I take it you don’t suggest otherwise?” she queried.
He responded: “No, I agree, non-specific means they could be from what you’re calling an assault, or otherwise, we can’t differentiate.”
McClintock said there are two boxes these injuries fit in — either Hanna was injured before or during an act of self-harm or injured in an assault.
“We’ve also heard most of these injuries don’t tie directly, in fact, I don’t think any of them, tie into the process of a partial hanging, would you agree with that?” she asked.
Milroy replied he did.
“So pathologically we can’t diagnose them one way or the other as you’ve told us,” McClintock asked.
“So what must happen then is that the jury will look at all the evidence on that issue including whether Ms Hanna had any known or seen injuries heading into the night on 4 April.”
“That’s the other obvious thing that needs to be looked at, right?” she asked.
“Yes, the jury will look at all the evidence,” Milroy said in return.
“Isn’t another way of looking at this is the pathology in this case is neutral?” McClintock asked the witness.
“I wouldn’t say the pathology is neutral between homicide and suicide, but one cannot exclude the application of a homicidal hold on this person,” Milroy said.
Under re-examination by the defence which called him, Milroy said cases of killings from strangulation without relevant signs of internal or external injuries happen “very, very rarely”.
Milroy told Mansfield the pathology in this case “favours” suicidal hanging because of the lack of neck injuries.
“And therefore in my opinion, when you look at it, it much more strongly favours suicide over homicide,” he said.
“So you couldn’t say it was neutral, it’s not a fifty-fifty coin toss,” he said.
Mansfield then picked up on the Crown’s questioning about Polkinghorne’s medical and surgical background.
“I’m not aware of any non-forensic specialists receiving any training in neck compression or neck holds,” Milroy said.
“I would not expect a non-forensic practitioner to have any skills in that area.”
