WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT
A respected Australian pathologist hired to testify for the defence in the Philip Polkinghorne murder trial said today that he would have confidently ruled Pauline Hanna’s death a suicide had he been responsible for the case.
The bold assertion was his final statement to jurors after an entire day and an additional hour this morning of answering questions from the Auckland eye surgeon’s defence lawyer. But as had happened with the two Crown pathologists who testified before him, Dr Stephen Cordner’s answers appeared somewhat more equivocal under cross-examination.
“It’s perfectly reasonable for people to have different points of view,” he said of the other two pathologists, both of whom told jurors they could not determine if Hanna’s neck compression death was due to suicide or homicide.
Under cross-examination from the Crown, when asked if an injury on Polkinghorne’s forehead could have been made from his wife’s fingernail during a struggle, Cordner said it couldn’t be ruled out.
Polkinghorne, 71, has been on trial in the High Court at Auckland for six weeks, with jurors having learned today that they aren’t expected to begin deliberating until next Friday. Prosecutors have said the defendant strangled his wife of 24 years inside their Remuera home – perhaps during an argument over his exorbitant spending on sex workers, particularly his attention to Sydney escort Madison Ashton – before staging the scene on the morning of April 5, 2021, to look like a suicide by hanging.
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Defence lawyer Ron Mansfield KC has countered that her death was a tragic suicide, spurred by work stress and years of depression.
The Crown case has not put much emphasis on the pathology findings. They are inconclusive enough that jurors should instead focus on the other circumstantial evidence, Crown solicitor Alysha McClintock has suggested. But Polkinghorne’s lawyers have put more emphasis on the findings, especially the suicide opinion of the defence expert.
“We need to confine your evidence to the pathology, don’t we?” McClintock asked, explaining it was up to jurors to consider all of the evidence together.
Cordner – a professor emeritus from the Department of Forensic Medicine at Monash University in Melbourne, a Member of the Order of Australia and the retired director of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, which is tasked with conducting the region’s autopsies – agreed.
“So you’re not here to interpret all of the evidence in this case and tell us what the answer is, are you?” the prosecutor asked, to which he again agreed.
McClintock took him, step-by-step, over the injuries that were found on Hanna during a post-mortem examination. None of them were obviously assaultive in nature, he had said. But in the inverse, none of them were obviously non-assaultive, McClintock emphasised, and he agreed.
A 2-inch-by-1-inch bruise on her temple could have been the result of a fall or an accident anytime in the 24 hours before death or it could have been the result of a punch, the expert said, agreeing with the Crown that if it had been a punch it would have been “a decent one” to cause bruising in that area.
A small cluster of abrasions on the bridge of Hanna’s nose could have occurred after her death, the expert originally testified. McClintock pointed out that the pathologist at the scene saw blood, suggesting it happened before death.
“Look, that’s perfectly possible,” he said, explaining that the other pathologist’s observation could increase the likelihood it happened while Hanna was alive but it doesn’t rule out the post-death theory.
Likewise, an abrasion on Hanna’s back could have been incurred before or after death, the expert said, adding that he wouldn’t usually associate that injury with an assault.
McClintock then brought up a never-before-mentioned theory about blood found between two of Hanna’s fingers. Her hands were not bleeding, and all three pathologists determined the blood probably came from routine post-death haemorrhaging of her ear. Cordner said he figured the blood probably ended up between the fingers while the body was being moved prior to her autopsy.
“Really?” McClintock asked with a tone of incredulity.
”I really don’t think you should be sceptical about that,” the expert responded.
The prosecutor noted there was no obvious blood on the underside of Hanna’s hands. Could Cordner discount the possibility that someone had cleaned her hands of the blood, McClintock asked.
“I don’t know,” he said with obvious reluctance, adding that he “can’t say no” to that having been one possibility.
The defence objected to the line of questioning, pointing out that such a theory had never been put to the two Crown witnesses. McClintock said she was only trying to make the point that there are possibilities out there that pathology can’t account for, but she agreed with the judge to move on.
Throughout his testimony on Wednesday and again this morning, Cordner repeatedly noted that he would expect to see more injuries – including injuries to the inside and outside of the neck – had Hanna died as the result of a homicide.
“My view is that it’s reasonable to go a bit further,” Cordner said of the two assessments from his colleagues. ”The findings support hanging and there’s no findings to support homicidal ligature or manual strangulation.”
If one was to leave open the possibility of homicide even when there’s no findings to support it – as he said his colleagues did – it would be impossible to rule anything a suicide, he suggested.
”If I had been responsible for this case I would have concluded the cause of death was hanging because the findings fit with hanging and there are no findings to support the alternative of homicidal ligature or manual strangulation,” Cordner said.
But under cross-examination, McClintock referred back to Christchurch-based pathologist Martin Sage, who said there are a “huge number of variables” to a homicidal strangling – not all of which can be determined by a post-mortem exam.
”I agree things are pretty dynamic, yes,” Cordner responded.
The pathologist’s cross-examination is expected to continue this afternoon, after the jury’s lunch break concludes.
Justice Graham Lang revealed to jurors this morning that the trial, which was originally scheduled to last six weeks, will continue for all of next week and perhaps into an eighth week. The defence is expected to call it’s last witness on Tuesday, he said, followed by a Crown closing address on Wednesday and a defence closing address on Thursday. Deliberations, the judge predicted, will begin on Friday and there’s no assumption about how long that will take.
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.
